Forgiving Ourselves and Forging Ahead: Teaching Grammar in a New Millennium

Author(s): Susan Losee Nunan

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Mar., 2005), pp. 70-75
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30046463
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 GENERAL INTEREST

Susan Losee Nunan

Forgiving Ourselves and

Forging Ahead: Teaching
Grammar in a New Millennium

While studies show the ineffectiveness of direct grammar instruction to produce better writers, h
school teacher Susan Losee Nunan finds that explaining grammar rules provides students with too
for building complex thoughts and expressing themselves more elaborately.

W e worked on complex sentences forI was

full week. Knowing the punctua-

Texas eighth graders understand the need for

a nonplussed. What had happened to all those
drills, minilessons, and sentence strips? Did the lists
of subordinating conjunctions hanging on the wall
tional pitfalls of complex sentences,
I had taken special care to help my
and the miniature duplicate in their student binders
mean
a nothing? How could an obviously colloquial
comma after an initial dependent clause. The"y'all"
DOL have more meaning than the textbook exer-
cises aand corrected worksheets over which I had
(Daily Oral Language) sentence should have been
slaved? The universal response to my teaching made
cinch: "If you are good girls and boys santa brought
clear that the problem was mine; I had to revise how
you presents." The class had already capitalized Santa
I thought about and taught grammar if I wanted my
and changed the original "brought" to "will bring."
students to learn and, even more important, apply
All I wanted was for these eager, spongelike minds-
what they had learned.
soaking up all the knowledge I had to dispense-to
notice the comma missing after the initial clause.
First class of the day: After puzzling over what Mrs.
(Native) Grammar Acquisition
Nunan, with first-year-teacher confidence, had as-
It took me ten years to realize the handiness ofy'all
sumed they would all catch, the students still looked
as second-person plural. I also learned that students
baffled. Suddenly, Matt shot his
hand
For the purpose of this into the air and waved (and most of the general population) view writing
discussion, grammar madly, exhibiting absolute cer- differently than English teachers. We frequently look
tainty that he'd gotten it. Re- at form; they look at function and meaning. Mina
means the syntactical
lieved that someone had been Shaughnessy wonders, "how many readers are likely
choices writers and
listening to the past five gram- to have the same sensitivity to error as English teach-
speakers make, including
mar lessons, I called on him. ers" (119). While we are busily reading the list of
the punctuation necessary "You change the second rules and cautions for use, most people are happily
for written clarity.you to y'all, " he said, gloating forging ahead, forgiving their mistakes. We all know
that he had caught what his those folks who have picture-perfect kitchens with
classmates had so clearly missed. the latest tools, tools that rarely see use. For too
He stopped me cold. A Connecticut Yankee, many of us, grammar rules-the tools of language-
transplanted into South Texas soil, I was amused become ends in themselves. For the rest of the world,
(OK, really I was appalled) that my students thought language and its grammar are there for meaning. To
this Southernism was an actual rule that the teacher add to the confusion, English teachers define gram-
wanted corrected, but when the same thing hap- mar in many different ways (see a discussion of this
pened in second-, third-, and seventh-period classes, topic in Weaver 1-2). For the purpose of this dis-

70 English Journal Vol. 94, No. 4 March 2005

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 Susan Losee Nunan

andwrit-
cussion, grammar means the syntactical choices reading. Weaver reports a more modest, infor-
ers and speakers make, including the punctuation
mal study by Finlay McQuade in 1980 that found
necessary for written clarity. that, after taking an Editorial Skills class developed
In the '50s, Noam Chomsky suggestedtothat"enhance students' performance on the College
Entrance
linguistic systems are hardwired. Baugh and CableExamination Board's Achievement Test in
Composition
reinforced this idea in the '90s: "knowledge of lin- ... .t.he class average on the pre-test
was
guistic universals is part of the innate structure ofactually
the higher than the average on the post-
test"
human brain... [and] study of language [is] (22-23). McQuade further concluded that be-
ulti-
cause of the utter self-consciousness of the second set
mately rooted in the biology of the speaking animal"
(327-28). While we may not be born with theof
gram-
essays in an effort to avoid grammatical errors, the
matical patterns of our native language, earlypost-Editorial
expo- Skills class essays were "miserable"
(qtd. in Weaver 23).
sure to spoken language, combined with the plasticity
With the results of these studies ringing in
of the young brain, makes acquiring language as nat-
ural and intuitive as learning to walk or ride teachers'
a bike. heads, the temptation to desert teaching
As such, most speech is correct and natural. We un- altogether is great. Many have. OK, I con-
grammar
fess.
derstand that a "big red house" is different from I have tried that, too. Teaching grammar, how-
a "red
big house" and that, barring a jailhouse colloquial-
ever, is necessary for many reasons.
ism, the first one sounds more natural and says what
we mean. We know this without learning rules about
Grammatical Correctness
order of adjectives. Native speakers learn their lan-
guage through making generalizations and applying
We should teach grammar for the traditional reason:
them. I remember my son as he learned to Grammar
talk: rules are fixed and must be learned be-
"Mommy, Mommy, I runned faster than Daddy,"
causehe'd
patterns of speech reflect education, class, even
say, applying the -ed rule from "walked" and morality.
"talked" Prescriptivist grammarians came onto the
to all past-tense verbs. Stephen Pinker English
states, scene in the eighteenth century, compelled
to determine
"[njeuroimaging techniques suggest that regular and for the rest of the English-speaking
world
irregular forms [of verbs] may trigger different what was correct and incorrect in spoken and
parts
of the brain" (86), suggesting that our physical brainslanguage. At the same time, because of the
written
are, at least to some degree, hardwired. rigid nature of their approach as well as prevalent so-
Firmly imprinted in our brains, grammar cial attitudes of the time, these grammarians equated
correctness
comes naturally, and if written expression defies writ- (adherence to es-
ing conventions, what is an English teachertablished
to do? rules) with morality. Syntax, word choice, and
Studies show that there is little transfer fromThomas
gram-Sheridan wrote in
punctuation affect how
1756, "'a revival of the art of
mar exercises to writing. One 1962 study by Roland
readers of students'
Harris took place in London with junior high stu- and the study of our
speaking,
writing perceive the
dents (Weaver 175). The second study, by Elleylanguage,
et al., might contribute, in
students themselves.
explored grammar learning in thirteen-year-olds in measure,' to the cure of
a great
New Zealand in 1976 (20-21). Both studies demon-
'the evils of immorality, igno-
strate that students who are taught grammar through
rance and false taste' " (qtd. in Baugh and Cable 270).
a direct, traditional approach (i.e., worksheet,Grammatical
gram- correctness provided a legitimate mea-
mar textbook exercises, and so forth) do not sure
showof aa person's character. Lest you were worried
and missing the good old days, prescriptivists are
significant difference in their ability to construct
compositions. Don't these formal studies only
alivecon-
and well, terrorizing first-year teachers in the
firm what we, as English teachers, already know? teachers lounge. Indeed, I can tell which of my stu-
Indeed, from the results of these studies,dents
someare products of their classrooms. These stu-
educators have concluded that traditional instruc- dents don't write with any fewer errors than the
tion is detrimental because it takes time away from others, but they're convinced they are terrible at
activities that appear to be useful, such as writing "grammar," and they all hate English.

English Journal 71

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 Forgiving Ourselves and Forging Ahead: Teaching Grammar in a New Millennium

Attitudes have not changed. Syntax, word tool is what it does; its purpose is what makes it
choice, and punctuation affect how readers of stu- exist in the first place. Ultimately grammar is a tool
dents' writing perceive the students themselves. A used by writers to accomplish specific purposes.
1981 study by Maxine Hairston demonstrated that Only after using the block plane-watching perfect
this attitude continued for another two hundred strips of walnut curl up in long, graceful spirals and
years; we see evidence that it persists today. Hairstonfeeling the precise, square, smooth surface left
behind-can I understand and use a block plane ef-
took sixty-five sentences with various errors and
asked professional people to rate the mistakes basedfectively. Until then, it is a useless tool, taking up
on their perception of the "seriousness" of the error
space in my shop.
(Noguchi 24-30). Her results support what our brief Whether used self-consciously or intuitively,
history of grammar reveals: We different techniques accomplish different objec-
Like any other device to still view grammar and its tives. Harry R. Noden explains the idea that gram-
rules with the same sense of in- mar is an artist's tool: "writing is not constructed
help with cooking or
violability that those in the merely from experiences, information, characters or
cleaning, or a tool for a
eighteenth century did. This plots, but from fundamental artistic elements of
professional trade,
suggests an important, albeit grammar" (1). When we give students the stylistic
grammatical tools will be superficial, reason to study tool of different kinds of grammatical construc-
used more effectively if grammar. When Amber says, tions, we enable them to express ideas in artful
we use them frequently "Miss, I ain't got no pencil," I ways. Martha Kolln, a strong proponent of tradi-
and purposefully. don't correct her or cringe be- tional grammar, also advocates teaching rhetorical
cause I don't understand what grammar "as a tool that enables the writer to make
she means. I reveal the prevalent attitude when I ac- effective choices" (29).
knowledge that she sounds uneducated to my lin- Students deserve to learn these purposes and
guistic ear (and secretly I wonder how her parentsput grammar in their writing toolbox to make their
talk at home). Nor do we mistake the meaning ofwritten communication as effective as possible. Like
ain't. Social convention and status, equivalent to any other device to help with cooking or cleaning,
choosing to burp or not to burp at a formal dinner, or a tool for a professional trade, grammatical tools
dictate that we dare not send students into a world will be used more effectively if we use them fre-
that views grammar and proper speech in this way quently and purposefully.
without the necessary tools to succeed.

Language and Thought

Rhetorical Grammar
The most important reason to teach grammar hits at
Rules without purpose are meaningless. They do not the heart of what teachers hope to accomplish: to
stick, they are not remembered, they are not used. give students the tools by which to think with
Learning to use grammar for rhetorical effect, to greater breadth and depth and act independently on
make stylistic decisions, is the second reason stu- those thoughts. Complex sentence structure and
dents should learn grammar. complex thought are mutually dependent; they are
Imagine being presented with a metal, box- the chicken-and-egg conundrum of language. Lev
like object, called a block plane. You are told to run Vygotsky in Thought and Language writes extensively
it with the wood grain, to make sure the edge of the on the interrelationship of thought and language.
blade is parallel to a flat surface, to use even strokes, Unlike Piaget, who believed in the self-centeredness
to keep the blade sharp. You still don't truly know and isolation of a young child's thought and lan-
how to use this tool without knowing that it is use- guage development, Vygotsky declares, "[dlirected
ful for making smooth, flat surfaces on a plank of thought is social" (16) or related to communication.
wood or neatly rounding and softening hard, sharp He further asserts that experience precedes and leads
corners of a wooden board. Yet we frequently ex- to thought, effectively linking thinking and social
pect students to understand grammatical rules reality. Thought development is determined by lan-
without enlightening them as to their purpose. A guage, and instruction precedes development. As we

72 March 2005

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 Susan Losee Nunan

society, media, and lack of printed literature limit

develop writing and related areas such as grammar,
we develop speech and thought. students' exposure to language, then they will also
limit students' capability for complex thought. If, on
Thought and language are inextricably linked,
the
with language not only reflecting culture and other hand, we introduce students to ways to ex-
expe-
rience but determining them as well. Thepress themselves, language and grammar that are
Sapir-
Whorf Hypothesis of language and culturemore complex, and sentence structures that inher-
both
ently
supports and allows us to extend and apply this require more intricate thought patterns, then
idea.
we not only allow them to express deeper ideas accu-
Through anthropological studies of many different
rately, we also give them the tools to entertain those
cultures and language, Edward Sapir and Benjamin
thoughts.
Whorf determined that not only does experience dic- As we provide students with the means to
write
tate language and culture but language itself in more elaborate ways, we also facilitate mul-
con-
tifaceted interpretations and analyses of experience.
trols experiences as well. This hypothesis concludes
that, through syntax and vocabulary, languageWe must push students into what Vygotsky called
drives
theirThe
and determines thought patterns almost totally. "zone of proximal development" so that they
can think and express deeper thoughts appropriately.
linguistic and sometimes the cognitive interpreta-
tion of the physical world or the abstract concept Unfortunately,
of schooling necessitates some lin-
ear teaching and educating en masse rather than
time is dictated by what the limitations of a specific
solelyna-
language allow. Whorf writes that "M[we dissect on an individual basis. Students come to us at
ture along lines laid down by our native lan-
unique stages and with different capabilities. We
guages .... [Tihe world is presented in a have 25 or 150 students, and our lessons cannot tar-
get individuals as specifically as we would like.
kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be or-
ganized by our minds-and this means largely by However, generic exercises are not the answer.
the linguistic systems in our minds" (213). The lin-
guistic systems of our native languages build, and
Teaching Grammar Differently
sometimes limit, the neural pathways for our
thoughts and logic. We must teach grammar, but we must teach it in a
Whorf demonstrates the effect of these hard- different way than in the past. An analogy is helpful
wired grammatical systems when he compares the at this point. I didn't develop my hobby of being a
Hopi language and English: "'lightning, wave, furniture-maker overnight. Instead, I moved into a
flame, meteor, puff of smoke, pulsation' are verbs-- wonderful, old house that desperately needed work.
events of necessarily brief duration cannot be any- Circumstances forced me to acquire, apply, and prac-
thing but verbs .... Hopi, you see, actually has a tice skills that I had never used before. One person
classification of events (or linguistic isolates) by du- gave me a table saw, another
As we provide students
ration type, something strange to our modes of gave me a router, a third vol-
with the means to write
thought" (215). Grammatical nouns or objects in unteered as my uncomplaining
one language are not necessarily so in another; how- consultant, and I was unstop- in more elaborate ways,
ever, the grammatical wiring in a native English- pable. I asked questions and we also facilitate
speaker's brain interferes with his or her ability to read books to learn how I could multifaceted
grasp the Hopi's sense of verbness. make the house livable. At first
interpretations and
Whorf writes that language sculpts thought: renovations were amateur and
analyses of experience.
"It was found that the background linguistic system minimal, but in using various
(in other words, the grammar) of each language is skills over and over in different contexts I became

not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing
ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the pro-
gram and guide for the individual's mental activity,
for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his
mental stock in trade" (212).
As teachers we can draw two conclusions from
this staggering information. The first is that if home,
adept at carpentry, and eventually those same abili-
ties began to translate into creating real furniture:
sleigh beds, dining-room tables, entertainment cen-
ters. The first time fixing up my home I did more
wrong than right. I am on my second round of
restorations now, but this time the remodels are
something I am proud of.

English Journal 73
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 Forgiving Ourselves and Forging Ahead: Teaching Grammar in a New Millennium

Grammar can be acquired in much the same vising any writing); collect student samples as well
way. Teachers expose students to different gram- as those of published writers on butcher-paper wall
matical techniques, determining lessons based on banners. Students can explore how professional writ-
needs they observe in student writing and making ers use specific techniques in literature and compare
lessons memorable so that a skill becomes a part of them to their own. Awareness of a grammatical tech-
the students' repertoire. While students might not nique in a variety of contexts wears that particular
be able to completely diagram a sentence from this brain pathway a little more deeply, making the writ-
exposure, or identify parts of speech on a worksheet, ing tool easier to retrieve the next time the writer
they become aware of the possibilities and store up wishes to accomplish that specific stylistic purpose.
tactics in their personal writing files, pulling them Before teachers of grammar can teach grammar
out more frequently as they become adept at in- differently, they must think differently and approach
creasingly complex thinking. the subject analytically and pragmatically. Think
Brain research shows us how to make a stylis- through the function of a specific grammatical tech-
tic grammar lesson striking and easier to recall. First nique or objective. Remember that written and spo-
the introduction must be novel, something that will ken language reflect experience, and think of what
impress itself on malleable brains. Change location. that experience or event is. What could a student do
Use different materials. In addition, it should be fun or witness that would allow for a natural use of your
because when a lesson involves the emotions, it en- objective?
gages the mind. Finally, and most important, it I must give you a final warning. The human
should be something that brain can only hold and act on so much at one time.
Awareness of a
shows meaning rather than Noguchi writes that "the surge or grip of ideas some-
grammatical technique merely form. Remember, y'all times proves strong enough to override the con-
won out over the comma and straints of form" (73). Expect that as your students
in a variety of contexts
wears that particular dependent clause. My students take risks and try new techniques, they will also
needed a plural form for second make mistakes. Mina Shaughnessy in Errors and Ex-
brain pathway a little
person; commas for introduc- pectations reports, "it is not unusual for people ac-
more deeply, making the
tory dependent clauses had not quiring a skill to get 'worse' before they get better
writing tool easier to yet registered. and for writers to err more as they venture more"
retrieve the next time the Instead of stopping at the (119). I noticed for years that middle school students
writer wishes to minilesson on verbals, let stu- seemed to leave dependent clauses as fragments in
accomplish that specific dents act out the possibilities their writing, never realizing that it was because they
of a participial phrase. After had begun to have the complicated thoughts that re-
stylistic purpose.
all, a participial phrase is per- quire complex sentences but had not yet grown into
fect for showing that one actor can accomplish two the structure's conventional punctuation. Chelsea
actions at one time. It layers information. One stu- demonstrated this perfectly. I conferenced with her
dent acting out two things at once demonstrates thefor a second time on a short story on which she had
potential. Then, can the students' writing accom-been working. It was her third draft, and I noticed
modate more action? that she had more punctuation mistakes, not fewer,
This is not to say that technique should be in- in her writing.
troduced and then tucked away. Anyone who once Chelsea wanted to point out something else
received a food processor or waffle iron as a gift and entirely. "Look, Miss. Look at all the participial
then put it away knows how seldom the tool makes phrases I fit into my story. I really like this one," she
it back out to the countertop. Rhetorical grammar said proudly, pointing to a sentence that had a teen-
must reappear in the classroom frequently in vary- age girl screaming and running simultaneously.
ing contexts: apply the technique in warmups as After a lesson on participial phrases and an adventure
writing at the beginning of class; revise a prior entry in a parking lot with sidewalk chalk and physical
in their journal with the new tool; require exit slips dramatization, she had certainly learned layering ac-
(tickets out of the classroom that use the grammat- tion using participial phrases; however, her sentence
ical tool); practice revising (which can include re- structure errors had increased dramatically. In fact,

74 March 2005

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 Susan Losee Nunan

the grammatical syntax of her first draft had a less

than 10 percent error rate in her sentence structure.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
This increased to slightly over 20 percent in the
third, edited draft. The complexity of thought and
Connor, Ulla. "Contrastive Rhetoric: Implications fo
Teachers of Writing in Multicultural Class-
action in her subsequent draft had come at a cost.
rooms." Writing in Multicultural Settings. Ed.
Experience has taught me that as Chelsea grows into
Carol Severino, Juan C. Guerra, and Johnnella
her new talent, she will not only have more inter- E. Butler. New York: MLA, 1997. 198-208.
Graves,
esting ideas to express but she will have the ways to Donald H. The Energy to Teach. Ports-
mouth: Heinemann, 2001.
express them and will soon learn the correct punc-
Jensen, Eric. Teaching with the Brain in Mind.
tuation, too. Alexandria: ASCD, 1998.
When you first take the training wheels Killgallon,
off a Don. Sentence Composing for Middle
two-wheel bike, children fall. They are working soSchool: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and
Maturity. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1997.
hard on balance that they don't watch where they are
Rosen, Lois Matz. "Developing Correctness in Stu-
going and hit things. They forget how to work the dent Writing: Alternatives to the Error Hunt."
Lessons to Share on Teaching Grammar in
brakes and can't stop. Writing is no different. Teach
Context. Ed. Constance Weaver. Portsmouth:
students grammar as a tool. But just like the kid who
Boynton/Cook, 1998. 137-54.
is popping wheelies in no time, your students willJohn R. Writing with Style: Conversations
Trimble,
become adept at controlling and balancing theiron the Art of Writing. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle
River: Prentice, 2000.
newfound writing skills and they will go places, in
their heads and in their writing, that you never
dreamed possible.

Works Cited Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the
Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.
Baugh, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English
Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. Trans. and ed. Alex
Language. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1993.
Kozulin. Cambridge: MIT, 1989.
Kolln, Martha. "Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Les-
Weaver, Constance. Teaching Grammar in Context. Ports-
son." English Journal 85.7 (1996): 25-31.
mouth: Boynton/Cook, 1996.
Noden, Harry R. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. "Science and Linguistics." Language,
to Teach Writing. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1999.
Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee
Noguchi, Rei R. Grammar and the Teaching of Writing: Limits
Whorf Ed. John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT P, 1956.
and Possibilities. Urbana: NCTE, 1991. 207-19.
Pinker, Steven. "Horton Heared a Who! What the Slips of
Children Tell Us about Language, History and the
Human Mind." Time 154.18 (1 Nov. 1999): 86.

Susan Losee Nunan has taught middle school, high school, and college in San Antonio, Texas. She currently teaches high
school in Northside Independent School District. email: susanstre@aol.com.

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