I’ve been reading an article written by Urszula Clark in 2009: Grammar in the Curriculum for English: what next?
In it she surveys the attempts over the last fifty years to bring explicit teaching about language into the English curriculum and outlines the kind of syllabus that such teaching could follow.
These are some of the points she makes:
(1) There is no evidence that teaching grammar per se has any effect on pupils’ command of formal written English (noting that no-one takes any notice of research in these debates*). Teaching about language must be integrated with subject teaching in order to be effective.
(2) Systemic linguistics as a means of describing the structure of the English language has underpinned attempts in this country and Australia to bring language study into the classroom. Although it is excellent for description, it is highly technical and laden with unfamiliar words. To help classroom teachers get to grips with this powerful tool, a pedagogic grammar is needed.
(3) Teachers (of reading, for example) are aware of the need to teach at the level of the word, but are less competent in the equally important structures at the levels of the sentence and discourse.
(4) There is little, if any, explicit teaching of the difference between narrative texts that children learn to read and write with and the non-narrative structures of all school subjects.
It is now twenty-one years since the Wigan Language Project, which taught Breakthrough to Learning systematically, produced its results (doubling the percentage of pupils gaining good GCSE’s across the curriculum). Clark’s article (though not written for that purpose) gives theoretical reasons why it was so effective:
(1) The technical teaching about language at every level was integrated with the language of subjects across the curriculum. For instance, being made aware of nouns (Book 1, chapter 5) is not an empty exercise but shows us how human beings think: one cannot begin to study anything without first naming the parts of a structure.
(2) The descriptive basis of BTL is systemic linguistics. However, in teaching a first version of word-classes (parts of speech) I use the traditional terms (noun, verb etc.) and keep it simple. The Fasttrack of BTL or, better still, the self-access course Knowledge About Language, which I produced for PGCE students at UCE in 1997 (when the Government suddenly required students to have knowledge about language) would enable teachers to gain an understanding of the complexities of language without overwhelming them.
Even better, as a first step, is the interactive online course for post 16 students Language of Ideas, which teaches the structure of language by familiarity, without using any metalanguage. This would empower teachers to become aware of the special abstract language of their own subjects.
(3) In all my courses the structure of language at all three levels is taught. Quite the easiest and most empowering of these is an understanding of discourse structures. This requires no esoteric metalanguage. It is described in common terms: problem – solution, general – particular, compare – contrast. It is systematically taught in Book 3 of BTL and promoted to first place in the Fasttrack. The first two are taught in the context of examination questions in Language of Ideas.
(4) I drew attention to the failure of English teachers to teach the structure of non-narrative texts in my recent article for Creative Teaching and Learning. ** (And why should they teach it, when their own subject uniquely uses narrative as the principal form of discourse?)
Book 3 of BTL teaches explicitly first narrative structures and then non-narrative structures.
Clark’s article explains in her own terms why BTL produced its amazing results. Nothing to do with frightening people with tests or reviving ancient dogmas about “grammar”, but the result of applying linguistic science to language across the school curriculum.
* See also Geoff Petty: Evidence Based Teaching
** Death of a Great Idea in Creative Teaching and Learning Volume 2.4: