[English] National Curriculum Board reports

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi all,

Here are two National Curriculum Board reports just released, and a recent
article from The Australian.

Report One:

The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: English 

http://www.ncb.org.au/verve/_resources/Australian_Curriculum_-_English.pdf

The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: English will guide the writing of
the Australian English curriculum K–12. 

This paper has been prepared following analysis of extensive consultation
feedback to the National English Curriculum Framing Paper and decisions
taken by the National Curriculum Board ...

And, Report Two:

Framing Paper: Consultation Report

http://www.ncb.org.au/verve/_resources/Consultation_report_-_English.pdf

This report provides a brief description of the consultation process,
the process of data analysis, and a summary of the analysis of all 
feedback received. The summary analysis outlines affrmations for the 
directions in the framing papers & matters requiring further examination..

--

National English curriculum to include grammar guide

Justine Ferrari, Education writer | May 08, 2009 The Australian 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25446083-13881,00.html


THE national English curriculum will include a grammar guide setting out 
a systematic course of study to be taught in schools and the concepts 
students should learn.

Submissions received on the English curriculum-framing paper 
overwhelmingly supported teaching grammar, but the teaching profession 
disagrees on the type of grammar that should be taught in schools and how 
it should be taught. 

In a bid to settle any grammar war before it begins, the national 
curriculum board intends to declare from the start that school students 
should learn traditional grammar that is integrated into the English 
course as part of the study of language. 

The board has commissioned a report on the nature of grammar to be 
included in the curriculum, including a list of what should be taught at 
each stage of school. 

The paper will be considered by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and 
Reporting Authority, which will take control of the national curriculum. 

Interim National Curriculum Board chairman Barry McGaw, who is expected 
to remain head of the new ACARA, said yesterday that the draft grammar 
guide would set out a scope and sequence for teaching grammar. 

"We don't want to just nod in the direction of grammar, and that it 
should be taught and at the word and sentence level, we need to say what 
that means," he said. 

"The draft paper says this is when to teach active and passive voice, 
this is when to teach prepositions and conjunctions. It might even stop 
people saying 'between you and I'." 

A consultation report on the English curriculum released by the NCB 
yesterday summarising the submissions received says 96per cent "strongly 
and enthusiastically endorsed" the teaching of grammar.

However, many submissions called on the curriculum to avoid advocating 
one kind of grammar over another, and others called for a blending 
of "functional" and traditional grammar to be taught. 

The English teaching profession has previously been divided in the so-
called reading wars, on whether phonics or whole language is the way to 
teach reading, and English wars, over the place of print literature and 
the canon of "worthy literature" in the classroom. 

A similar fight looms over grammar, with elements of the profession 
favouring more analytical forms over traditional grammar, which is often 
dismissed as Latinate and therefore not strictly an English grammar. 

The three main forms of grammar are traditional, systemic functional 
grammar and transformational or generative grammar. 

An education consultant and expert in the teaching of grammar and 
writing, Peter Knapp, said transformational and systemic functional 
grammar were academic tools for analysing texts at a more sophisticated 
level and not the tools to teach children how to write. 

Dr Knapp, who has written books on teaching writing and developed the 
highly respected international assessments in literacy for the University 
of NSW, said traditional grammar was most suitable because it tells 
students what the words are and what they do. 

Dr Knapp said NSW had tried to teach functional grammar to primary 
students in the early 1990s but it was abandoned after two years because 
it was too difficult for students and teachers to understand. Traditional 
grammar was developed in 100BC by Greek grammarian Dionysius based on the 
eight parts of speech. It describes the types of words used, such as 
nouns and verbs, and what those words do. 

Systemic functional grammar was devised by Sydney University academic 
Michael Halliday in the 1960s, who used it to describe how language was 
used in everyday life. It has been influential in the development of 
critical literacy and the analysis of language for propaganda, and how 
different styles of language can position readers. 

Transformational grammar was developed by linguist Noam Chomsky, who saw 
it as a pyschological function that was "hard-wired" into the human 
psyche. His theory holds that no matter how complex the sentence, it can 
be traced back to deep structures that cannot be changed. A sentence 
cannot, for example, say "Hit the ball the boy", only "the boy hit the 
ball". 

The English consultation report says opinion was divided as to whether 
one specific kind of grammar should be mandated, with most respondents 
believing it should, but few nominating which kind. 

"One extensive submission argued that a functional approach is an 
appropriate model of language for the curriculum; another submission 
argued that a blend of traditional and functional grammar would be 
suitable; and another argued in favour of traditional grammar on the 
grounds that this would lessen the demand for professional development 
because of the likelihood that more teachers would be familiar with this 
type of grammar," it says. 

Other submissions called for a "visual grammar" to provide a language for 
discussing how visual texts work, such as images, films and multimodal 
texts that are studied in English. 

Teachers were also opposed to the idea of grammar being taught as an 
isolated skill and then tested as a separate subject in national literacy 
tests, as occurs at present. 

Professor McGaw said the board was yet to determine what other types of 
grammar might be included in the curriculum, but traditional grammar 
would be the main form taught. 

"I don't know what functional grammar is, frankly," he said. 

"People certainly need to be able to deal with complex texts and to 
understand something about the functions of texts. 

"But in grammar, they need to know the way to use words, and about the 
agreement between the noun and the verb and the objective and nominative 
case." 

Submissions from the profession also called for grammar to be taught as 
and when students needed to know particular aspects, not as an isolated 
skill. 

Professor McGaw said grammar would not be taught totally in isolation 
from writing, but it did need to be explicitly and systematically taught, 
not at random as occurred at present.

 

Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server