Should children be taught grammar?

Should children be taught grammar in primary school?

Grammar is the whole structure of language. Crystal (2004) explains that grammar makes sense of language and gives it meaning. Sometimes grammar can be described as the ‘rules’ of language however language doesn’t have set ‘rules’ but it changes over time and grammar can be reflection of that.


Young children are able to understand what someone might be saying before they can speak. Halliwell (1992) explains that facial expressions, gestures and actions can all help children know and understand what is being said before they know the words. This means that children are beginning to understand language before they can speak it. Children come to school with a vast knowledge of language, and they are often very creative with grammatical forms.

DfEE (2000) states that the knowledge of grammar children have is implicit. Children are able to generalise and improvise this knowledge to make sense when using language. Children often say things like ‘I hurted’ this is incorrect but it shows that the child has a grasp of how the language works and is applying generalisations.

An explicit knowledge of grammar is more clear and detailed, it has to be taught. Teachers should be aiming to build on children’s already vast implicit knowledge. Neather (2003) points out that when writing children find it easier to write ‘correctly’ if they have direct teaching and they understand the rule to apply. On school experience children did not use a variety of conjunctions as much on their own than when they were taught how to use them and why we use them. Teaching grammar means that children can begin to understand how the language system works, so children can use language more confidently.

Czerniewska states that ‘ language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first’ (1994:46)

Crystal (2004) discusses the differences between written and spoken language. Spoken language happens once, between participants who are usually present. Speech is very spontaneous and rarely is it planned to a complex level. Speech looses lots of construction that written language has, sentences become unclear. Speakers rely on gestures and facial expressions and not all words are said. Whereas writing is static and permanent. Often the writer is distant from the reader, this means the context has to be very clear for the reader to understand. Writing contains clauses, phrases, sentences and other features of grammar so the reader can make sense of the writing.

Children need to explore written texts to see how verbs, adverbs, adjectives etc. are used in written texts. On school experience, children often read pieces of writing together as a class to explore a certain type of grammatical term. They thought about how it improved the writing, how they could use an adjective in their own pieces of work and how that could improve their work. The teacher read them a piece of work without adjectives, describing a monster and then read a description of a monster that did have adjectives. Children were asked what the difference was between the two pieces of writing; children discussed which one was better. Children were investigating the text and from this they could write more effectively. DfEE (2000) describes that if children are taught explicit grammar it helps their writing improve, they become more competent in writing. Children’s thinking becomes broader and they can be more reflective about writing.

Standard English refers to a dialect, which is considered to be grammatically correct. Not many children speak Standard English from home. Standard English can help children understand grammar better if they are taught Standard English in school. However language is ever changing and grammatical forms from non-standard English make sense and are acceptable. Children should be taught the difference between the two and when it is appropriate to use, this develops children as writers. Standard English is used in formal situations while non –standard is used in less formal situations this both applies to speech and writing. it is valuable for children to understand the difference so they can improve their skills as writer and speakers.


Children should be taught grammar in school and extend their implicit knowledge to help them understand how language works as a system. This means they have more control over their written and spoken language. Within writing they are open to more choices. They are more able to manipulate their writing. Children should not be over- corrected for grammatical mistakes as this could lead to children being put off writing. Teachers should put more emphasis on teaching at the point of writing not correcting afterwards.

What are simple, complex and compound sentences?

A sentence can be simple, complex or compound. A simple sentence consists of one clause; it is a main clause, as it can stand alone as a sentence, for example:

The boy went for a walk.

A simple sentence is made up of words containing a subject and predicate, which is a verb. This example shows that the subject and verb can be identifiable no matter how much extra information is in a simple sentence. The verb is in bold and the subject is underlined.

The miserable boy went out for a quick walk.

A compound sentence has two or more clauses which are joined by co-ordinating conjunctions such as and, or, but and so. The clauses are both main clauses and can stand alone as simple sentences. Here is an example of a compound sentence, the co-ordinating conjunction is in bold, the first main clause is underlined and the second main clause is in italic:

The boy went for a walk but it was very cold.

A complex sentence has a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses. A subordinate clause could not stand alone as a sentence because it has a subordinating conjunction such as within, because, whenever. This makes the clause incomplete if it stands alone as sentence. An example of complex sentence, the main clause is underlined, the subordinate clause is in italic and the subordinate conjunction in bold.

Whenever he went out for a walk, he stayed out late.


Evaluation of unit in Developing Early Writing

I used unit 6 from Developing Early Writing because it fitted in with the topic the class were doing at the time, which was houses and gardens. Children needed to be assessed on sequencing and writing a traditional story. Children were looking at Jack and the Beanstalk. Before children did any work on Jack and the Beanstalk they read through different versions of the story during shared reading time using big books.

The objectives for sentence level work in unit 6 were: S1, S5, S6 and S7. The year 1 class was lower ability and some of these objectives were not obtainable with the class so some lessons were adapted to cater for them. During the first literacy lesson in this unit children did role-plays based on Jack and the Beanstalk. They acted out the events of the story and used freeze frames to sequence them. In the next session children took part in shared writing, we recapped on the role-plays and retold the story verbally. On the white board we began to write the beginning of the story. Children contributed ideas of how to start the first sentence. Unit 6 session 2 explains about using a simple story plan. I thought it would help children understand more about how to sequence a story they knew well. However it was adapted so that it was not just a rough plan but written in full sentences. Children were asked key questions such as, is this a full sentence? Do we need a full stop? What about a capital letter? How many full stops do we have? What does this mean? Children responded well to this during shared writing and were able to point out how many sentences there were. They did not know what capital letters were and why they were used; this was addressed later in the next session. In this session children did not do any independent writing. The independent task that was given in unit 6 was too difficult for them to do. Instead they sequenced pictures of Jack and the Beanstalk in order and stuck them on a page. At the end of the lesson some children shared what order they put their pictures in and retold the story while doing so.

The class had difficulty understanding what capital letters were and what they look like. I decided not to carry on with unit 6 for a session as I thought that children should take some time to learn about capital letters. In groups’ children played games like pairs, matching lower and upper case letters. By the end of this session children had a better understanding of what a capital letter is and why we use them.

The next session started off with shared writing that we had done previously. Unit 6 suggests using dry wipe boards to write what children want to happen next, this is a great idea for getting children involved. In the year 1 class we focused on capital letters. On the board was a lower case letters and in pairs children wrote the capital letter on their board. Again we talked about how many sentences we had in our writing and how we could tell that. We also read the sentences aloud to see if they made sense this was suggested by unit 6. Children did independent writing; they were retelling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. This piece of writing was an assessment piece so children were not given any help. If this was not an assessment piece it would be important to look at children’s work and see if they are implementing full stops and capital letters and helping them use them. Overall this unit was very helpful and gave plenty of practical ideas to help children achieve sentence level objectives especially through shared writing. It can be easily adapted to any traditional fairy story. Sentence level objectives achieved through this unit were demarcating sentences in writing, checking sentences made sense and to use capital letters.


References

Crystal, D. 2004, rediscover grammar third edition published by Pearson education.

Czerniewska, P. 1994, Learning about writing, published by Blackwell.

Grammar for writing DfEE, 2000.

Halliwell, S. 1992, Teaching English in the primary classroom published by Longman handbooks.

Neather, T. 2003, Getting to grips with grammar published by the centre for the information on language teaching and research.