David Crystal suggests the following simple definition of grammar: ‘Grammar is the study of how we make sentences.’ David Crystal’s essentially practical definition is taken up by the NLS Grammar for Writing materials for teachers of Key Stage 2. Children will understand this concrete view – that we make sentences out of words just as a carpenter makes things out of wood. If we follow the conventions in putting the words together we can make them do a job. The approach in these materials and in Bain and Bridgewood’s resource book The Primary Grammar Book is to create resources – words, phrases and sentences which can be split up and reassembled or transformed into different patterns.
The explicit teaching of grammar in the United Kingdom went out of fashion from the 1960s until the National Literacy Strategy launched in 1998 brought it back on the agenda. The new approach involves children in talking about how parts of speech like nouns and verbs function in sentences. This way of teaching and learning grammar is likely to improve children’s spelling and punctuating. The requirement that teachers and children control a metalanguage for talking about such matters is bound to encourage a special awareness of language and how we use it. More controversial is the claim that it will improve the quality of children’s writing, although this is the belief underlying DfEE’s National Literacy Strategy Grammar for Writing.
In an interesting article in the Times Educational Supplement (22 January 1999), Sue Palmer sympathises with teachers not educated to analyse sentences: ‘…complex sentences can be a grammatical minefield into which even the most experienced grammarian steps with caution’. She cautions too against getting bogged down in terminology when teaching children, reminding us that knowing what a verb or complex sentence is, is not an end in itself but a way of improving literacy: ‘...whenever grammatical terminology begins to mystify rather than clarify, it’s time to stop using it’.
Bain and Bridgewood distinguish ‘teacher knowledge’, which is placed under headings called ‘reminders’, from the teaching objectives which specify what children are to learn. The loose-leaf file format of their book, which contains much useful photocopiable material, makes it flexible to use. It includes the means of making activity cards which help children to explore language at word, sentence and text level through games.
There are a number of books which are helpful to support our own knowledge of grammar including Crystal (1997), McArthur (1992) and Medwell et al. (2007). Some of the recently published books for secondary children can be helpful for those of us of any age who seek an accessible text and illuminating examples of grammatical rules. Many find Bain and Bain’s The Grammar Book accessibly written, as is John Seely’s Grammar for Teachers, which takes us through units on words, then sentences and then paragraphs and texts. Collins School Reference Grammar is a handy, alphabetically organised, quick reference book for anyone from secondary school upwards. The Grammar Guide by John Seely shows that linguistics can be put across in an interesting way.
My own breakthrough came about when I realised that what we need to do when defining phrases and clauses is to ask, just as one would of a word, what is the function of this phrase or clause in the sentence?
Children’s knowledge of grammar and punctuation
‘Sentence structure and punctuation’ is the eleventh of the twelve strands in the 2006 Literacy Framework and progression is built into the programme. However, learning is not neatly sequential and so teachers and children will return often to elements in grammar and punctuation first encountered in an earlier year. The following list, arranged under year groups and loosely based on Strand 11, is for guidance and hopefully for discussion by English/Literacy coordinators and their colleagues. Text in italic is my own comment.
Foundation stage
Moving towards simple sentences; some punctuation. (Capital letters for their names on pieces of work and full stops on brief annotations of their drawings.)
Year 1
Using simple sentences; capital letters and full stops.
Year 2
Using simple and compound sentences; using tense consistently; using question marks, and commas to separate items in a list. (Lists are likely to come into procedural/instructional kinds of writing, for example menus or making things.)
Year 3
Moving towards showing relationships of time and cause by use of subordination and connectives; using adjectives as well as verbs and nouns in sentences; understanding and using exclamation marks and speech marks.
Year 4
Developing ability to vary sentence structures to create meaning; using commas to mark clauses; incorporating the possessive apostrophe into writing.
Year 5
Linking sentence structure to different text types; maturing use of speech marks and apostrophes.
Year 6
Increasing control over constructing sentences to convey understanding of hypothesis, speculation and supposition; punctuation to clarify meaning in complex sentences. (We would expect to find use of: direct/indirect speech; active and passive voice; paragraphs. Writing will show appropriate use of different parts of speech, including conjunctions, adverbs, pronouns. Punctuation might include use of asterisk, parenthesis/brackets, dashes, semi-colon, colon, bullet points, hyphen.)
Year 6 – progression to Year 7
Moving towards using complex sentences with subordinate clauses; punctuation to integrate speech into larger sequences; show increasing confidence in using Standard English and in understanding some of the differences between spoken and written language. (Understanding about mode – writing, illustrating, design and multi-modal combinations – and about media – texting, e-mail and filming – increasingly has implications for how we conceive of, teach and assess writing and other ways of communicating meaning.)
Bain, Richard and Bridgewood, Marion (1998) The Primary Grammar Book Sheffield: NATE.
Bain and Bain (1995) The Grammar Book Sheffield: NATE.
Crystal, David (1997 edition) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McArthur, T. (1992) The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: OUP.
Mannion, Mark (1999) Collins School Reference Grammar London: Collins.
Medwell, Jane, Moore, George, Wray, David and Griffiths, Vivienne (2007, third edition) Primary English: Knowledge and Understanding Exeter: Learning Matters. (This is a course book meeting 2007 Standards.)
DfEE (2000) The National Literacy Strategy Grammar for Writing, Guidance London: DfEE.
Seely, J. (2006) Grammar for Teachers. London: Oxpecker.
This is the complete article, containing 1,053 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
