[English] NCTE's position on grammar teaching

[Scott Bulfin]

Hope everyone is coping with all the exam stress! Here's one to tell  
all our Y12s before they head into the exam room tomorrow ...


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 24, 2006
Contact:  Mark Schultz
800-369-6283, ext. 3630
public_info at ncte.org

NCTE’s Position Unchanged: Isolated Grammar Drills Do Not Produce  
Good Writers

The National Council of Teachers of English has not changed its  
position on the teaching of grammar. Decades of research have shown  
that isolated grammar drills do little to improve student writing and  
are a poor use of instructional time.

In classrooms where much of the time is spent on grammar exercises,  
student writing suffers.  This happens because, in those classes,  
students are spending more time underlining random parts of speech or  
diagramming sentences than actually composing. A recent report has  
just confirmed these findings (see Writing Next: Effective Strategies  
to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools by Steve  
Graham and Delores Perin, New York, Carnegie Corporation, 2006). NCTE  
stands by them.

"Teaching how language works is the basis for good grammar  
instruction," says Kyoko Sato, NCTE President.  Randy Bomer, NCTE  
Past President, adds, "Most English teachers do not see themselves as  
grammar police, on the lookout for mistakes and intolerant of diverse  
ways of speaking.  Rather, they want students to see grammar as an  
important resource for writing and for understanding the language  
around them in everyday life."

Students need to be able to compose complex, varied sentences, and  
they need to be able to proofread their writing for mistakes that  
might distract their audiences or distort their intended meaning.  
Skilled teachers of writing know how to teach grammar to their  
students as they write, when they have a particular need to know the  
information.

NCTE believes that, in a time when the education profession sees  
constant calls for teaching to be research-based, it is important to  
keep in mind the body of evidence about the teaching of grammar.

Research reviews about the teaching of grammar:

* Braddock, Richard; Richard Lloyd-Jones; and Lowell Schoerr.  
Research in Written composition. Urbana, Illinois: National Council  
of Teachers of English, 1963.

* Graham, Steve, and Delores Perin. Writing Next: Effective  
Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High  
Schools. New York: Carnegie Corporation, 2006.

* Hillocks, George, Jr. Research on Written Composition: New  
Directions for Teaching. Urbana, Illinois: National Conference on  
Research in English and ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and  
Communication Skills, 1986.

* Hillocks, George Jr., and Michael W. Smith, "Grammars and Literacy  
Learning," in Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language  
Arts. 2nd. ed. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,  
Publishers, 2003.


To talk to a spokesperson about NCTE's unchanged position on grammar,  
please call Mark Schultz at 800-369-6283, ext. 3630.

###

The National Council of Teachers of English, with 50,000 individual  
and institutional members worldwide, is dedicated to improving the  
teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels  
of education.  For more information, please visit http://www.ncte.org.


Related Information:
# Beyond Grammar Drills: How Language Works in Learning to Write

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