THE ROLE OF GRAMMAR IN THE WRITING CURRICULUM: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Abstract:
For most Anglophone countries, the history of grammar teaching over the past fifty years is one of
contestation, debate and dissent: and fifty years on we are no closer to reaching a consensus about the
role of grammar in the English/Language Arts curriculum. The debate has been described through the
metaphor of battle and grammar wars (Kamler 1995; Locke 2005), frequently pitting educational
professionals against politicians, but also pitting one professional against another. At the heart of the
debate are differing perspectives on the value of grammar for the language learner and opposing views of
what educational benefits learning grammar may or may not accrue. At the present time, several
jurisdictions, including England and Australia, are creating new mandates for grammar in the curriculum.
This article reviews the literature on the teaching of grammar and its role in the curriculum and indicates an
emerging consensus on a fully-theorised conceptualisation of grammar in the curriculum.
Introduction:
For most Anglophone countries, the history of grammar teaching over the past fifty years is one of
contestation, debate and dissent: and fifty years on we are no closer to reaching a consensus about the
role of grammar in the English/Language Arts curriculum. The debate has been described through the
metaphor of battle and grammar wars (Kamler 1995; Locke 2005), frequently pitting educational
professionals against politicians, but also pitting one professional against another. At the heart of the
debate are differing perspectives on the value of grammar for the language learner and opposing views of
what educational benefits learning grammar may or may not accrue. The debate has been well-rehearsed
elsewhere (Braddock et al 1963; Hartwell 1985; Cameron and Bourne 1988; QCA 1998; Christie 2004;
Hudson and Walmsley 2005; Locke 2009; Myhill and Jones 2011) and only a brief overview will be offered
here in order to frame the review which follows.

The Dartmouth Conference in the US in 1966 signalled a turning point in educational thinking about
grammar in the curriculum. Funded by the Carnegie Endowment, and organised by the Modern Language
Association and the National Conference of Teachers of English, the Dartmouth Conference brought
together teachers and educational researchers from the UK and the US to discuss the grammar issue. The
conference was prompted by growing dissatisfaction with classroom practice in grammar teaching, which
was largely characterised by drills and exercises in labelling and identifying word classes and syntactical
structures, and which to many education professionals had no educational relevance and no impact on
language development. As Muller noted, the general consensus was that grammar teaching was ‘a waste
of time’ (1967: 68). As a consequence of the Dartmouth Conference, many educational jurisdictions in the
US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada moved to exclude formal grammar teaching from the
English curriculum, although, of course, there will always have been those teachers who continued to teach
grammar, despite changed policy mandates.

The widespread abandoning of grammar teaching following the Dartmouth Conference activated two
further strands in the grammar debate. Firstly, whilst curriculum policy might have eschewed the teaching
of grammar, an underlying sense of barely-disguised outrage at its abandonment has surfaced repeatedly
over the years, often from politicians or the general public. This strand of discourse tends to have been
preoccupied with language standards and a pervading view that lack of attention to grammar was causing
falling standards in language users (for example, Macdonald 1995; Truss 2003; Uttley 2008; Paterson
2010). It positions grammar as a form of ‘verbal hygiene’ (Cameron 1995), which assumes a moral
significance and acts as guardian to the moral standards of the nation (Cameron 1994; Pullman 2005).
Secondly, the abandoning of grammar has fostered a strand of thinking about the role of knowledge about
language in the curriculum. Here linguists have argued for the place of grammar knowledge, including its
associated metalanguage, as a worthy and relevant body of knowledge in its own right (Hudson 2004). At
the same time, a broader view of knowledge about language places the emphasis on more inductive
approaches, which investigate language in social contexts (for example, Carter 1990; Keith 1990; NATE
1997; Barton 1999; Denham and Lobeck 2005).

This article is framed by this debate and by recent international developments which appear to be re-
introducing grammar to the language curriculum. Through a systematic review of the literature, the article
will provide a critical outline of research into the role of grammar in the English or Language Arts
curriculum.

Grammar in the L1 curriculum

As noted earlier, there appears to be an emerging trend to reintroduce grammar in the teaching of English,
particularly in England, the US and Australia. In England, the first National Curriculum for English (DES
1990) adopted a knowledge about language approach, though with an emphasis on Standard English, and
subsequent iterations of the National Curriculum (DfE 1995; DfEE 1999; DCSF 2007) have subtly shifted
these emphases (for more detail, see Myhill and Jones 2011). The 1995 version, for example, refers more
specifically to grammatical metalanguage, whereas the 2007 version has rather more emphasis on
grammar in functional contexts. However, an irony of the National Curriculum, is that although a statutory
instrument, actual classroom practice was much more significantly influenced by the assessment
framework and as grammar was not tested, the degree to which it is was taught was largely dependent on
individual teachers’ own predilections. Currently, however, a new draft National Curriculum presents a
Grammar Annex (DfE 2013a) which outlines year by year, the grammatical terminology which students
must learn and the grammatical structures which they must master. Moreover, a new national test of
Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (DfE 2013b) was introduced in 2013, which, as high-stakes assessment,
will inevitably have a significant impact on what is taught.

A more significant influence on classroom practice in England was the (non-statutory) National Literacy
Strategy, introduced in 1998 (DfE 1998), which matched to the requirements of the National Curriculum,
but which was also accompanied by substantial training and resources. The teaching of grammar was
strongly encouraged in training materials, including two training DVDs ( Grammar for Reading and
Grammar for Writing) which explicitly addressed grammar and in a manner which was clearly attempting to
be contextualised. However, the specified learning objectives and assessment focuses underpinning the
strategy left teachers the freedom to determine an appropriate context, which led to many lessons,
conducted in the ‘context’ of a writing lesson but which effectively de-contextualised grammar (Myhill
2004; 2006; Wyse 2006). At sentence level, in particular, this led to lessons on ‘using complex sentences’ or
‘using connectives’, where deployment of a particular grammatical feature became more important than
any understanding of a relationship between grammar and meaning.

Perhaps one reason for this discrepancy between policy-level principles and materials and classroom
practice is because in England there has been no clear articulation of a rationale for this renewed emphasis
on grammar. In contrast, in Australia where a National Curriculum is currently being developed for the first
time, the structure of the proposed English curriculum includes a Language strand which provides for
explicit grammatical knowledge: the articulated, purposeful, and conscious understanding of how language
works, which supports learners in ‘knowing how to choose words and grammatical and textual structures
that are more appropriate to the audience or readership’ (ACARA 2009:3). The inclusion of a Language
strand is built upon a rationale that seeks to foster ‘a coherent, dynamic, and evolving body of knowledge
about the English language and how it works’ (ACARA 2009:10).

To an extent, the position in the US is more akin to England than Australia, although there is no National
Curriculum mandating content. Instead, state intervention is principally standards-driven through the
Common Core Standards (CCSSI 2012), now adopted by all but five US states. The Common Core Standards
specify Language as a discrete standard, and two of the three Language Anchor standards relate to
accurate and avoidance of error. Language Standard 1 requires command of ‘ the conventions of standard
English grammar and usage when writing or speaking’ and, in similar vein, Language Standard 2, requires
command of ‘the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing’.
However, Language Strand 3 is considerably more meaning-oriented looking at knowledge of language ‘to
understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style,
and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening’ (CCSSI 2012). The list of progressive skills in
language which students have to master is principally directed towards accuracy, yet teachers are
reminded of the inseparability of language study from reading, writing, speaking and listening contexts, and
that students ‘must also be able to make informed, skillful choices among the many ways to express
themselves through language’ (CCSSI 2012).

What is evident from this brief consideration of three Anglophone jurisdictions is that the pedagogical
rationale for the re-emergence of grammar is not yet fully clear, particularly in England and the US. At
policy level, the reasons for maintaining or re-introducing grammar appear to be neither evidence-based,
nor clearly articulated. Indeed, many opposed to the re-introduction of grammar would highlight the
substantial body of research (reviewed later in this article) which points very conclusively to the
ineffectiveness of de-contextualised grammar in helping students improve their writing. The new National
Curriculum in England exemplifies this uncertainty, both in terms of the absence of an evidence base and
the ambiguity of the rationale for its inclusion. For example, it mandates that children ‘ learn the correct
grammatical terms in English and that these terms are integrated within teaching’ (DfE 2013:5) signalling
simultaneously a suggestion that a rationale for the inclusion of grammar is the learning of a discrete body
of linguistic knowledge (which is, of course, a defensible curriculum position to adopt) but also that this
teaching should be ‘integrated within teaching’. The meaning of ‘integrated’ is unclear as it would be
impossible to teach without integrating it into teaching, but it is perhaps implying a sense that the grammar
should be contextualised. If that is the case, the learning purpose of this is not communicated. Elsewhere,
the document argues that ‘once pupils are familiar with a grammatical concept [for example ‘modal verb’],
they should be encouraged to apply and explore this concept in the grammar of their own speech and
writing and to note where it is used by others’ (DfE 2013: 64). There is no evidence base to support this
assertion that learning progresses chronologically from learning a grammatical concept to being able to
apply it.

In non-English speaking countries, however, the position of the grammar in the curriculum is frequently
neither contentious nor questioned. In both Europe and Asia, the teaching of grammar as part of first
language teaching is largely regarded as the norm (for example, Gelderen 2010 notes the routine presence
of grammar in Dutch teaching). In the French-speaking world, grammar is heavily drawn upon in order to
develop students’ understanding of the inflections in French spelling (Fayol et al 1993; 1994; 2009) and this
grammar is based upon traditional explanations of rules which govern language patterns. However, in
Canada especially, ‘grammaire nouvelle’ is adopted as an alternative to traditional grammar teaching in
French as a first language. Grammaire nouvelle (new grammar) is essentially an inductive approach to
securing grammatical understanding, with a reduced emphasis on grammatical metalanguage, and a
greater emphasis on fostering student observation, reflection, and active participation in exploring
language (Poulin 1980). Leger (no date) summarises the approach as:

‘... a grammar of observation and reasoning based on effective manipulations, amongst other
things, of words and groups of words before analysing them and understanding their function.
The teaching offers us knowledge of French structures and allows us to build authentic
procedures of reflection which drive independence.’ (my translation)

The manipulations which learners are encouraged to undertake involve subtraction, substitution,
permutation and transformation, designed to help develop independent grammatical understanding
(Nadeau and Fisher, 2009, 2011; Boivin 2009; Boivin and Pinsonneault 2008). Curiously, although there are
some resonances between grammaire nouvelle and a grammar in context approach, there has been little
cross-fertilisation of ideas across the English-French language borders.

Theoretical perspectives on the teaching of grammar

The historical tendency to focus consideration of grammar in the curriculum on whether it should be
included has led to a somewhat impoverished theoretical base for conceptualising a role for grammar.
Often the ‘grammar debate’ has been framed by polemic (Macdonald 1995) and claim and counterclaim
(Robinson 1959; Harris 1962; Tomlinson 1994; Anderson 1995; Cameron and Bourne 1998; Sealey 1999;
Crowley 2003; Wyse 2001; Hudson 2004; Clark 2010), but there is relatively little coherent and developed
articulation of the contribution grammatical understanding might make to students’ learning about
language. As noted in the introduction, there is a folk theorisation of grammar as central to supporting
students’ accuracy as language users and in the eradication of errors from their speech and writing. In
essence, this is a theorisation which gives primacy to Standard English and positions grammar as the tool by
which Standard English is maintained. Drawing on historical discourses which advocated school as the
place where the ‘evil habits of speech contracted in the home and the street’ (Board of Education [Newbolt
Report] 1921:59) could be overcome, and where school can compensate for the linguistic disadvantage of
the home (Bernstein 1971), this perspective on grammar tends to be adopted by those outside the
profession. It is a largely prescriptive view of grammar, focused on form, and predicated on assumptions
that grammar prescribes how language should be used and acts as the benchmark by which deviations
should be judged. Theoretical arguments against this position are more robust than those for it and
include socio-cultural and socio-linguistic analyses which highlight the cultural hegemony of this stance and
its lack of understanding of language variation and the descriptive grammars advocated by modern
linguistics.

In contrast to this rather ill-defined, though strongly held, theorisation of grammar is the approach of
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and the seminal work of Halliday and the Sidney School. SFL is
essentially a meaning-oriented theorisation of grammar, concerned to explore the relationship between
text and context, and looking not simply at lexical or syntactical aspects of grammar but also the discourse
elements of organisation, development and cohesion (Halliday 1993; 1994; 2004; Hasan 2002; Derewianka
and Christie 2006; Christie and Unsworth 2006). It regards language as fundamentally a social semiotic
system, ‘abstract semiosis’ (Halliday 2004:5), and is concerned with how language works. Carter (1990), for
example, describes this approach as ‘ functionally oriented, related to the study of texts and responsive to
social purposes.’ (1990:104). SFL differs from other functional grammars in its emphasis upon what
Halliday (1978) has called the metafunctions of language, the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual.
The ideational metafunction refers to the communicative message, what a text is about; the interpersonal
metafunction refers to how the self is expressed and how the reader is understood; and the textual
metafunction refers to the structural aspects of text.

From the perspective of the classroom, Halliday’s argument that any act of communication requires the
making of choices and that 'the power of language resides in its organization as a huge network of
interrelated choices' (2003:8) is a direct contrast to the idea of grammar as the arbiter of accuracy.
Derewianka and Jones (2010) sum this up succinctly: ‘Whereas traditional approaches conceive of grammar
as a set of structures which can be assessed as correct or incorrect, Halliday sees language as a resource, a
meaning-making system through which we interactively shape and interpret our world and ourselves’
(2010:9). Teaching grammar through an SFL theoretical frame supports learners’ ability to think
grammatically about language (Williams 2005; Freebody and Maton 2008; Macken-Horarik 2011), and to
understand grammar’s potentiality as a meaning-making resource (Schleppegrell 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
2011, 2012; Coffin 2010).

Clearly, knowledge about language and grammar as a meaning-making resource is at the heart of SFL. The
same emphasis on meaning, rather than form, is evident in the theorisation of rhetorical grammar,
although it does not adopt the metalanguage of SFL and is a rather more eclectic and fragmented body of
theorisation than the strongly coherent work of SFL. The notion of rhetorical grammar is strong in the US
and stands in contrast to traditional pedagogical approaches which position grammar as a ‘fix-it approach
to weak writing’ (Micciche 2004:716). Rhetorical grammar conceives of grammar as tool for crafting and
shaping language and written text, in ways which connect grammar to ‘rhetorical and stylistic effects’
(Paraskevas 2006: 65) and which enables writers to ‘understand and control’ (Kolln 2006: xi). On one level,
rhetorical grammar is about explicitly showing young writers the repertoire that is available to them, what
Myhill et al have called ‘a repertoire of infinite possibilities’ (Myhill 2011a; Myhill et al 2011), and supporting
the ability to make conscious choices (Dawkins 1995; Hancock 2009; Petit 2003). On another level,
investigating the ways in which meanings are created in texts is about teaching thinking about ‘ the
interwoven relationship between what we say and how we say it’ (Micciche 2004:718).

Systemic Functional Linguistics and rhetorical approaches to grammar share a common focus on developing
understanding about how language works, rather than simply regarding grammar as a body of knowledge
which describes, or prescribes, the system of language. Theoretically, the knowledge which these
approaches foster is metalinguistic knowledge. The most comprehensive investigation of metalinguistic
knowledge and development is that of Gombert (1992). He suggests that metalinguistic knowledge moves
from an epilinguistic stage, where the knowledge is unconscious or implicit, to a metalinguistic stage,
where it is explicit. Alternative perspectives on the stages of metalinguistic development have been offered
by Culioli, (1990) Karmiloff-Smith (1996) and van Lier (1998) Gombert categorises metalinguistic knowledge
as addressing one of six areas: metaphonological; metalexical; metasemantic; metasyntactic; metatextual;
and metapragmatic, although Myhill (2011b) suggests that in older readers and writers, this categorisation
may be less appropriate as they are principally concerned with the metapragmatic, how texts communicate
in different contexts. However, the most significant body of work on metalinguistic knowledge or
development relates to second language learners (e.g. Bialystok 2007; ter Kuile et al 2011); to young
learners acquiring language (Downing and Oliver 1974; Tunmer et al 1983; Karmiloff Smith et al 1996); to
spelling development (e.g. Nunes, Bryant & Bindman 2006; Thevenin, Totereau, Fayol & Jarousse 1999;
Bourassa, Treiman and Kessler, 2006; Carovalas, Kessler, Hume & Snowling 2005); and to reading
comprehension (Heibert et al 1984; Macgillivray 1994; Zipke 2007).

Nonetheless, metalinguistic knowledge and understanding is central to any consideration of the role of
grammar in the English curriculum, particularly the notions of explicit and implicit knowledge, as they
underpin the differing views of the value of grammar teaching. Gombert (1992) maintained that
epilinguistic, implicit, grammatical knowledge precedes metalinguistic knowledge and it includes the
unconscious knowledge that language users acquire from communication and interaction, such as word
order or how to form the past tense. Roehr contrasts implicit knowledge which ‘ cannot be brought into
awareness or articulated’ with explicit metalinguistic knowledge which is ‘declarative knowledge that can
be brought into awareness and that is potentially available for verbal report’ (2008:179). The historical
disputes over the value of grammar teaching hinge upon this distinction and arguments that first language
speakers acquire grammar implicitly and therefore need language experience rather than grammatical
knowledge (Elbow 1991) or conversely, that explicit grammatical knowledge gives writers both choice and
control over their language use (Carter 1990).

Empirical studies on the teaching of grammar

Although the issue of the value of grammar teaching has often been framed in terms of the relevance of
explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge, it is also true that one strong line of argument has been
located in discussions of the impact of teaching grammar on students’ language use, particularly writing. In
other words, does explicit knowledge of grammar support writing development and attainment in writing,
or as Elbow argued, ‘nothing helps your writing so much as ignoring grammar’ (Elbow 1981).
Over the past fifty years, there have been a number of research reviews or meta-analyses addressing the
effect of grammar teaching on students’ learning (Braddock et al 1963; Hillocks 1984; Wyse 2001; Andrews
2005; Andrews et al 2006), all of which have concluded that ‘the teaching of school grammar has little or no
effect on students’ (Hillocks and Smith, 1991) or even that it has a ‘harmful effect on the improvement of
writing’ ’ (Braddock et al 1963:37). Indeed, Graham and Perin’s (2007) meta-analysis investigating effective
strategies for teaching writing found a negative effect for ’the explicit and systematic teaching of the parts
of speech and structure of sentences’ and the authors argue that this finding challenges ‘some educators’
enthusiasm for traditional grammar instruction as a focus of writing instruction for adolescents (2007:21).
The EPPI review (EPPI 2004) concluded that it could find no evidence for any benefit of grammar teaching
on writing quality, although the authors did also note that ‘the quality of seven out of ten of the primary
studies included in the in-depth review on the teaching of syntax is a limitation on the review, as is the lack
of recent research’ (Andrews et al 2006:51).

In the end, the EPPI review draws its conclusions based on the analysis of just three studies: Bateman and
Zidonis (1966); Elley et al (1975; 1979); and Fogel and Ehri (2000). It is worth looking at these three
studies more closely. The Bateman and Zidonis study, in the US, focused on sentence production in writing
and investigated whether high school students could ‘learn to apply the transformational rules of a
generative grammar in their writing?’ (1966:3). The sample size was rather small: 50 students assigned to
either the control or intervention, of whom only 41 were still in the sample at the end of the study. The
intervention group were taught explicitly about syntactical structures for sentences and written
compositions from the two groups were analysed sing an analytical tool which captured the generative
transformational grammar rules of sentence construction and allowed them to compare development pre
and post treatment. An outcome of the analysis was a structural complexity score for each piece of writing
(1966:8). The statistical results were not conclusive, but the authors suggest that they did indicate a
relationship between ‘a knowledge of generative grammar and an ability to produce well-formed sentences
of greater structural complexity’ (1966:39). In contrast to this small-scale study, the Elley et al study is
arguably the most robust research conducted in this field. They conducted a three year longitudinal study
in New Zealand, involving a sample of 250 secondary-aged students of average ability with eight classes,
matched for ability. There were three treatment groups:
Treatment 1: a transformational grammar course focusing on discovering facts about language and its
use. The course included teaching of sentence combining, subordination, participle modifiers, and
deep and surface structures;
Treatment 2: a reading-writing course with 40% spent free reading; 40% class reader; 20% time spent
writing especially creative writing;
Treatment 3: a course typical of New Zealand secondary English classes at the time, involving
functional grammar; comprehension; and writing
They found that there were no significant differences in the quality of writing produced post-test, although
the transformational grammar group did improve in their sentence-combining ability.

The Fogel and Ehri (2000) was different from the previous two studies as it took as its starting point an
identified writing problem, the use of Black English Vernacular (BEV) in the writing of low-attaining ethnic
minority students in primary school. The study set out to ‘examine how to structure dialect instruction so
that it is effective in teaching SE forms to students who use BEV in their writing’ (2000:215). An
experimental design was adopted with three treatment groups:
1) Exposure plus text
2) Exposure plus explicit instruction in strategies
3) Exposure, strategies, and guided practice in transforming BEV to SE and feedback (ESP)
According to the authors, treatments 1 and 2 mirror typical classroom practice. The results indicated a
statistically significant positive effect for group 3, leading the authors to conclude that the guided practice
had ‘clarified for students the link between features in their own non-standard writing and features in SE’
(2000:231). However, because of the small sample size, the EPPI review does not rate this as strong
evidence for a positive benefit.

The EPPI review noted the dearth of research in this area but a much more recent study, conducted in
primary schools in the UK by Sheard et al (2012), would appear to confirm its conclusions. They
investigated whether teaching grammar using electronic handsets which provided students with instant
feedback would improve their learning of grammatical terminology and whether it would improve their
writing. They conducted a 12 week study, drawing on a sample of 42 primary schools, half of which were
randomly assigned to use the electronic handsets and the other as a control group. Grammatical
knowledge was tested before and after the intervention using discrete grammar questions and a paragraph
revision writing task to ascertain whether the grammar knowledge transferred to writing. The results
indicated a strongly significant positive impact on grammar knowledge on the experimental group, using
the handsets, but no impact on writing.

However, one aspect of grammar teaching which has been repeatedly identified as successful is sentence-
combining, the practice of ‘teaching students to construct more complex and sophisticated sentences
through exercises in which two or more basic sentences are combined into a single sentence’ (Graham and
Perin 2007:18). The EPPI review (2004; Andrews et al 2006) maintained there was good evidence for the
efficacy of sentence-combining and it was one of the 11 instructional strategies identified by Graham and
Perin (2007) as beneficial to writing. Sentence-combining has a long history in the US with a chain of
studies (O’Hare 1971; Marzano 1976; Daiker et al 1978; Hake and Williams 1979; Kinneavy 1979; Savage
1980; Hillocks and Mavrognes 1986; Phillips 1996; Saddler and Graham 2005) all reporting the success of
sentence-combining. Most were conducted in high-schools or even at university level. The studies were
themselves followed by a flurry of similar studies (see Connors’ 2000 overview of this), most agreeing and
confirming the efficacy of the technique. The only UK study to look at this, with secondary school students,
(Keen 2004) also found a positive impact. But despite this apparent consistency in results, sentence-
combining is problematic in terms of both the studies and the teaching of writing. In general, the studies
measure whether teaching students to combine sentences, largely through exercises, improves their ability
to create effectively combined sentences, with very few studies looking at whether writing quality is
improved. Several critics have pointed out the shortcomings in these studies (Connors 2000; Witte 1980;
Faigley 1980) and Crowhurst (1980) conducted a study which demonstrated that increased syntactic
complexity, such as that achieved through sentence-combining, was not correlated with writing quality. In
addition, critics have suggested that any success deriving from sentence-combining is attributable to
discussions about the ‘rhetorical principles characteristic of good writing’ (1980:298), not to the strategy
itself. Significantly, for example, Keen’s study included a considerable amount of contextualised discussion
of the effectiveness of different sentences. Summarising the approach, Andrews et al argued that
‘sentence-combining suggests a pedagogy of applied knowledge—at its best, applied in situations of
contextualized learning; at its worst, drilling’ (2006:52), and it is probable that Andrews’ notion of applied
knowledge rooted in contextualised learning is central to this issue.

Andrews’ observation that the success of sentence-combining might owe more to its contextualisation than
to the approach per se is important. More recently, research in this area has begun to look at the benefits
of teaching grammar which is contextualised or embedded within the teaching of writing. In the US, Fearn
and Farnan (2007) found strong positive effects on students’ writing in high schools when teaching made
connections between the grammar being taught and children’s writing and they claimed that ‘grammar
instruction influences writing performance when grammar and writing share one instructional context’
(Fearn and Farnan 2007:16). In England, a mixed method study, involving 13-14 year olds, and combining a
large randomised controlled trial with a qualitative design has found a strongly significant benefit for
students of a contextualised approach (Myhill et al 2012; Jones et al 2012). In this study, the instructional
focus was the teaching of writing, and the teaching materials were designed around a consideration of
what grammatical understanding might support learners in making authorial decisions in the composition
of a particular text. It is the first robust study which has provided evidence of a positive impact of the
grammar teaching on writing, but it is important to note that the learning focus was writing, not grammar.
Nonetheless, it offers a coherent and evidenced rationale for developing a purposeful role for grammar in
the curriculum.

Teacher Perspectives on the teaching of grammar

Further insights into the role of grammar in the curriculum are provided by research studies or professional
publications which attend to teachers’ perspectives on the topic. Professional perspectives on grammar are
evident in numerous articles by teachers and teacher-educators, particularly in the special ‘grammar’
editions of the English Journal (1996 [85:7]; 2003 [92:3]; 2006 [95:6]). These articles tend to fall in to two
camps: those which position grammar predominantly as a matter of rule-learning and error-correction (e.g.
Brown 1996; Rose 1996; Benjamin et al. 2006), and those which position grammar as a tool for promoting
metalinguistic awareness and rhetorical choice (e.g. Hagemann 2003; Ehrenworth 2003; Gold 2006; Jayman
et al. 2006). The latter position is often informed, in articles from US practitioners, by Weaver’s concept of
contextualised grammar (1996; 2006) and Kolln’s concept of Rhetorical Grammar (2006).

The professional literature reflects the complexity of defining what is meant by the terms ‘grammar,’ and
‘grammar teaching’, as Vavra (1996) notes. A handful of studies have explored how teachers define or
conceptualise grammar. The largest, a survey of 137 primary and secondary school teachers in the UK,
reported that teachers lacked confidence in defining grammar, particularly in understanding ‘the
relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge of language’, and noted a strong association of explicit
grammar teaching with prescriptivism and old-fashioned teaching methods (QCA 1998:26). A similar
problem of definition has been reported in the US from a smaller-scale study by Petruzella which noted
confusion between grammatical rules, issues of usage, and spelling and punctuation (1996:69). This finding
was echoed in Cajkler and Hislam’s interviews with trainee primary teachers in the UK, with participants
associating grammar with phonics, spelling and punctuation (2002). UK studies by Pomphrey and Moger
(1999) and Watson (2012) report tension or inconsistency between prescriptive/descriptive and
prescriptive/rhetorical conceptualisations of grammar teaching among trainee and practising secondary
English teachers respectively, with the latter finding that teachers tend to immediately conceptualise
grammar as prescriptive, rule-bound and focused on correctness, while conversely offering a rhetorical
view focused on exploration, choice and effects when asked about how it might be useful in supporting
students’ writing development. All of these studies indicate that some degree of conceptual confusion
persists within the profession.

Research into teachers’ beliefs about grammar more generally provide evidence that UK teachers tend to
associate grammar with negative discourses of ‘old-fashioned’ teaching (QCA 1998; Watson 2012), and that
these ‘neo-conservative associations’ (Myhill 2006:78) can occur even in countries in which grammar is not
such a contested subject, such as Flanders and the Netherlands (Van Gelderen 2006). Investigations into
teachers’ affective responses to grammar have typically reported ‘anxiety’ (QCA 1998:26) and
‘apprehension’ (Watson 2012), and a general lack of confidence when it comes to dealing with grammar in
the classroom, in both the UK (Kelly and Safford 2009) and US (Hadjioannou and Hutchinson 2010).
Teachers and trainee teachers have tended to be disparaging and hyper-critical in their self-evaluations
(Pomphrey and Moger 1999; Watson 2012), and Cajkler and Hislam have found that anxiety remains high
even when trainee teachers made improvements in their linguistic subject knowledge (2002). T eachers who
feel anxious or insecure about their own declarative grammatical knowledge are also more likely to hold
prescriptivist, rule-bound views of grammar (Kamler 1995; Macken-Horarik 2001; Harper and Rennie 2009).
However, studies have also reported more positive attitudes. Both Turvey (2000), working with secondary-
level trainee teachers, and Cajkler and Hislam with primary-level (2002) found that, regardless of their
anxieties about subject knowledge, trainees valued the idea of grammar teaching: Turvey found that her
students felt that they had ‘missed out on something’ by not being taught grammar themselves at school,
and that this made it ‘all the more important that their pupils should have it’ (2000:143). Similarly, Watson
found that some secondary English teachers felt passionately that the negative discourse around grammar
teaching is misleading, and that far from being ‘the pit of doom’, grammar is actually ‘where freedom lies’,
thanks to its focus on making knowledge about language and the choices involved in writing explicit
(2012:32). Such reports indicate that there may be willingness to learn about and practise grammar
teaching even where teachers or trainees are insecure in their own linguistic or pedagogical knowledge.
The most recent research into teachers’ beliefs has found that teachers tend to value the potential that a
rhetorical approach to grammar teaching focused on experimentation has to increase students’
metalinguistic awareness and support them in consciously crafting their writing (Watson 2012). There still
persists, however, a tendency to associate grammar with a restrictive discourse of rules and accuracy
(Watson 2012) and to position grammar ‘as antipathetic to freedom and creativity’ (Wilson and Myhill
2012:11).

Attitudes to the use of grammatical terminology have been explored in three studies. Two of these indicate
a belief that it is more suitable for use with higher rather than lower ability students (QCA 1998; Petruzella
1996). The third study examined teachers’ personal epistemologies, their ‘beliefs about what knowledge is
relevant and valuable in learning to write’ (Wilson & Myhill 2012:4) in relation to literary and linguistic
metalanguage and poetry writing. This reported a recurrent epistemological argument that ‘linguistic
metalanguage was rule-bound and constraining, limiting young people’s writing in an unconstructive
fashion’ (Wilson & Myhill 2012:10), which counterpointed a view that literary metalanguage is ‘ a valuable
part of learning about literature’ (p.13). This is consistent with Findlay’s findings that UK teachers regard
grammar as ‘a chore’ (2010:4), and that they consistently value the literary aspects of the subject above the
linguistic.

The literature, therefore, indicates a continuing trend amongst practitioners to view grammar as
reactionary and restrictive, to value it less than literary aspects of the subject, and to be anxious about
teaching it. However, there is also evidence of a countervailing belief that grammar taught with an
exploratory and rhetorical approach can be valuable in increasing students’ metalinguistic understanding
and ability to consciously craft or design their writing.

Teaching grammar and the demands on content and pedagogical subject knowledge
While teachers’ knowledge about grammar is not generally raised as a concern in non-Anglophone
countries, historical factors mean that it is a significant issue for many first-language English teachers.
Shulman (1987) has distinguished between subject content knowledge (knowledge of an academic domain)
and pedagogical content knowledge (knowledge of how to teach that academic domain). The demands on
teachers’ subject content knowledge about grammar have become increasingly specific in Anglophone
countries: in the United States, the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts are heavily focused on
grammatical constructions which students are expected to master; in the UK grammar was made a
mandatory part of the curriculum in 1988, with the non-statutory but widely-adopted National Strategies
guidance (DfEE 1998; DfES 2001) including detailed teaching objectives for students aged 5-14; Australia is
currently developing a new National Curriculum which includes a strand on Knowledge about Language
aiming to foster ‘a coherent, dynamic, and evolving body of knowledge about the English language and how
it works’ (ACARA 2009:1); and in New Zealand, problems have occurred in trying to implement an
innovative syllabus with a strong grammar focus due to teachers’ ‘lack of knowledge about language’
(Gordon 2005:63).

While the extent to which students need to explicitly know about grammar is still hotly debated (Locke
2010), there is widespread agreement that teachers’ grammatical knowledge needs to be richer and more
substantive than the grammar they may need to teach to students. Teacher subject knowledge requires ‘ a
higher degree of grammar consciousness than most direct learners are likely to need or want’ (Leech
1994:18), with an ability to be ‘conscious analysts of linguistic processes’ (Brumfit 1997:163) and possess
‘conscious awareness’ (Armstrong 2004:223) of how texts are structured. It has been argued that teachers
who understand grammatical forms may be better placed to support developing writers (Andrews 2005), to
identify linguistic development in their students (Gordon 2005), and to ‘make the analysis explicit’ (Hudson
2004:113) when examining texts with their students.

The problem that current English teachers have with attaining the level of grammatical subject knowledge
outlined above has arisen for two reasons: firstly, the fall from favour of grammar teaching in Anglophone
countries following the Dartmouth Conference in the USA in 1966, due to the widespread view that the
formal teaching of grammar had no beneficial impact on students’ linguistic facility (Hudson and Walmsley
2005); secondly, the tendency in the UK for teachers to follow a literature degree route into teaching, along
with is a shortage of applicants from a linguistics route (Blake and Shortis 2010). As a result, many current
English teachers were not taught grammar at school or university, a point also noted in the US context by
Kolln and Hancock (2005), and by Gordon in New Zealand (2005). Of course, teachers who have literature
degrees and are keen readers themselves do have a lot of knowledge about texts which they can draw on
in language teaching, and they also have a substantial amount of implicit grammatical knowledge about
texts. However, as Andrews (2005) points out it is likely that ‘a teacher with a rich knowledge of
grammatical constructions and a more general awareness of the forms and varieties of the language will be
in a better position to help young writers’ (2005:75).

This subject knowledge problem extends into initial teacher training courses, with Kolln and Hancock (2005)
complaining most pre-service programs for English teachers in the US do not address grammatical
knowledge, and a number of UK studies reporting weaknesses in grammatical knowledge (Bloor 1986;
Andrews 1994; 1999; Chandler 1988; Wray 1993; Williamson and Hardman, 1995; Burgess et al 2000;
Hislam and Cajkler 2006). In Australia, Louden et al (2005) conducted a survey which indicated that
teachers do not feel confident about teaching grammar when they complete their training and Harper and
Rennie’s pre-service teachers (2009) ‘showed limited understandings in their ability to analyse the parts
and structure of sentences, and their knowledge of metalinguistic terms did not seem to extend past the
basic concepts of ‘noun, ‘verb’ and adjective’ (2009:27). However, studies in the UK and Australia have
indicated that some teachers may be over-critical or over-anxious in their self-evaluations, with Cajkler and
Hislam (2002) finding that primary trainee teachers in the UK had reasonable knowledge of grammar
despite being anxious about their subject knowledge, and Hammond and Macken-Horarik finding that
primary teachers in Australia were confident in their knowledge of genres and text types despite expressing
a lack of confidence in their own knowledge of ‘rules of traditional grammar’ (2001:125). At the same time,
in England, there has been criticism of the accuracy or appropriacy of curriculum materials prepared to
support teaching grammar (Cajkler 1999, 2002,2004; Cameron 1997).
The combination of curricular expectation that students will have explicit knowledge of grammar, and the
tendency towards an absence of grammatical knowledge in the academic experiences of English teachers,
creates a clear challenge for pedagogical practice and student learning. Research into teachers’ pedagogical
content knowledge related to grammar teaching is limited, yet there is evidence from second-language
research that strong declarative grammatical knowledge does not necessarily translate simply into effective
teaching of language (Andrews 2001; Borg 1999, 2001, 2003). Pedagogical content knowledge is dependent
upon teachers having a clear understanding of the role that grammatical knowledge can play in the
classroom, without which teachers may generate mismatches between their own use of grammatical
metalanguage and students’ understanding (Berry 1997) or unwittingly convey inappropriate messages to
learners. Lefstein (2009), for example, illustrates how teachers using policy materials underpinned by a
principally rhetorical notion of grammar can use them in meaningless or rule-bound prescriptive ways,
while the trainees in in Cajkler and Hislam’s study (2002) understood grammatical knowledge as essentially
about the naming of grammatical constructions but did not understand that pedagogically ‘grammatical
awareness is about making available a range of choices for writers to use for particular purposes in
particular contexts’ (2002:176). In a more recent UK study, Myhill et al (2013) have identified a range of
pedagogical problems faced by teachers who attempt to address grammar. These include: the difficulty of
defining and explaining grammatical terms (exacerbated by teachers’ tendency to use semantic rather than
functional definitions; also reported by Paraskevas 2004); the difficulty of explaining sentences and
syntactical features (exacerbated by the tendency to reduce explanations of sentence types to issues of
length and to use other non-grammatical explanations); the difficulty of making meaningful connections
between grammar and writing (seen particularly in the tendency to communicate highly generalised
principles for writing which are difficult for learners to operationalise meaningfully, such as ‘vary your
sentences’, and the tendency to talk vaguely and non-specifically about ‘effects’); and the difficulty of
fostering metalinguistic discussion, a risky activity which requires teachers to deal with misunderstandings,
unexpected questions and unexpected answers without advance preparation. This study also, however,
reported examples of teachers who were able to make meaningful connections between the linguistic
features being studied and specific context-relevant effects or purposes, and who responded sensitively to
students’ writing by explicitly drawing out effective grammatical choices and challenging students to reflect
metalinguistically on their own writing. This focus on the relationship between teachers’ subject knowledge
and pedagogical knowledge relating to grammar is mirrored in Australia by Jones and Chen (2012), who
have demonstrated how teachers have been able to evolve new understandings of both grammatical
knowledge and pedagogical practice through participatory collaboration with a research team. Current
research therefore indicates the vital importance of addressing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge
alongside subject knowledge of grammar.

Discussion
To an extent, what this review signals most clearly is that consideration of a fully-theorised role for
grammar within the writing curriculum has largely been hijacked by political-professional debates about
grammar’s inclusion or not, and that the debate has not substantially developed since it began in the early
sixties. The same arguments are voiced and re-voiced over time, but with little re-theorisation or
advancement. Silently underpinning this long-standing debate, and perhaps perpetuating it, is the
fundamental distinction between prescriptive and descriptive views of grammar. Whilst linguists have long
theorised grammar as a description of language which will change and evolve as language changes, public
and political views of grammar have strongly tended to prescriptive views of grammar. Hudson and
Walmsley, in their analysis of the separate development of academic linguistics and grammar teaching
draw attention to ‘an ever-widening gap in England between the practice of professional grammarians on
the one hand, and the lay public and practice in schools on the other’ (Hudson and Walmsley 2005:595).
However, this binary division between linguistics and educational perspectives on grammar is not wholly
correct. Following the eschewing of grammar teaching in Anglophone countries in the sixties, an
alternative view of grammar emerged which was characterised by a view of grammar as ‘knowledge about
language’, a view which was significantly influenced by sociolinguistics (eg the work of Peter Trudgill) and
was descriptive in theorisation. In England, the emphasis in the Bullock Report (DES 1975) on the
importance of developing students’ understanding of language and its rejection of traditional grammar
teaching was highly influential, and more fully realised in the late 80s in the government-commissioned
national project, Language in the National Curriculum (LINC), to investigate classroom approaches to
developing knowledge about language. The resultant materials, subsequently rejected by the government,
drew heavily on the work of Britton and Halliday, focusing on functionally-oriented understandings of
language in context and on placing meaning at the centre of attention. These materials have had a
significant legacy: the dominant professional view of grammar within the writing curriculum is strongly
oriented towards a descriptive approach (Wyse 2006; Watson 2012). Therefore, it is possible to argue that,
despite the prolonged debate, one element of the theorisation of grammar in the writing curriculum from
both a linguistic and theoretical perspective is that it is founded upon a theory of descriptive, functionally-
oriented grammar.

Given this foundation, the review also points to ways in which this theorisation may be developed further.
Within the theoretical perspectives offered by systemic functional linguistics, and rhetorical grammar, and
the recent empirical work of Fearn and Farnan (2007), Myhill et al (2012), Schleppegrell (2007) and
Macken-Horarik (2011), there are signs of an emerging consensus that grammar may be important in
developing learners’ understanding of how language works and specifically, how grammar choices are
significant in shaping and constructing meaning. Cameron argued theoretically that ‘ knowing grammar is
knowing how more than knowing what’ (1997:236), pointing out that grammatical terminology is simply
the tool which facilitates language investigation and analysis. To set this in a classroom context, this means
that it is more important to know how a passive construction alters the emphasis in information conveyed
than it is to know that it is a passive construction. The recent empirical work, described above, is providing
evidence of how this knowledge is realised in practice and how young writers develop understanding that
‘it is through the rhetorical and syntactic forms they choose that the content is constructed and evaluated’
(Schleppegrell 2007:122). This consensus is less concerned with grammar as an arbiter of accuracy, and
more concerned with ‘insights that go well beyond the minimum needed to write conventionally or
correctly’ (Hancock 2009:194). Carter and McCarthy (2006:7) draw attention to the notion of grammar as
choice, as well as a grammar of structure, and Myhill et al (2011) have conceptualised the contextual
teaching of grammar within the writing curriculum as one which seeks to open up to young writers ‘a
repertoire of infinite possibilities’.

Taking this theorisation one step further, fostering young writers’ awareness of the linguistic choices
available to them in writing and how those choices differently shape meaning is developing their
metalinguistic knowledge of writing. Gombert’s (1992) taxonomy of metalinguistic knowledge, as noted
earlier, relates principally to oral language development, but the category of metapragmatic knowledge is
concerned with language in use, language in social contexts. Arguably, adopting descriptive approaches to
grammar and nurturing students’ ability to make choices and decisions in their writing is developing this
metapragmatic knowledge, and rendering it available to inform the process of writing. Such knowledge is
explicit, what Roehr described as ‘declarative knowledge that can be brought into awareness’ (Roehr
2008:179) and goes beyond the use of linguistic metalanguage to label and identify to include explicit
knowledge of how linguistic choices subtly shape or alter meanings. It may also be significant that the
empirical studies of Keen (2004) on sentence-combining, of Wyse (2006) on vocabulary choices, and Myhill
et al (2011) all seem to be highlighting the importance of talk, or metalinguistic discussion, in enabling this
explicit metalinguistic knowledge of writing. Thus a more coherent theorisation of a role for grammar in
the curriculum might be framed as the teaching of grammar which promotes students’ explicit
metalinguistic understanding of how grammar choices shape meaning in texts and of the writing choices
available to them, founded upon a descriptive, functionally-oriented understanding of grammar.

Conclusion
This review of the literature has illustrated clearly that the role of grammar in first language teaching
remains a source of dispute, a conclusion underlined by the political/professional debate in England at
present about the grammar test at age 11 and the emphasis on grammar in the revised National
Curriculum. The review also signals that robust empirical studies in this area are limited and, apart from
indicating that simply teaching grammar as the isolated naming and labelling of word classes and
syntactical structures is of little obvious benefit, the research is rather impoverished in offering any
theoretically-grounded understanding of children’s learning of grammar and how they transfer that
learning to their own language use. It offers a way forward in theorising a role for grammar in the writing
curriculum as a functionally-oriented endeavour, developing students’ metalinguistic thinking and decision-
making in writing. It is also clear, however, that more well-designed studies in this area are much needed
to provide richer and broader understanding of how children develop metalinguistic understanding, how
that learning transfers into their own language use, and the pedagogies which support the development of
that understanding.
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