Formal Instruction of Grammar in School, Research Paper Example

Grammar, in its entirety, entails the sound, organization, and connotation system of language. No language lacks grammar, and all words have their specific grammar. Individuals speaking the same language can communicate efficiently because instinctively, they understand the system of the syntax of that language, which are the instructions that create meaning. Native English speaking students are already aware of English grammar. They have skills in recognizing sounds, meaning, and the diverse methods of placing English words collectively to create sentences with meaning.

Nevertheless, even though students can effectively speak English, they require guidance to write effectively. This tutelage is because students must gain skills and knowledge of transferring concepts of grammar from oral to written language. This paper will explain why formal teaching of grammar in school is useful for an individual who desires to write.

To effectively relay grammar instructions, the teacher begins with what the student already knows concerning grammar because this is what helps the students to apply their understanding in oral language to written language. Therefore, the teacher connects the students’ knowledge of oral literature to written language. This process assists the teacher in demystifying abstract grammatical terminologies to enable the students to write and read more confidently and competently. Studies have shown that the most effective way to assist students in improving their skills in grammar writing is to use the writing of the students as the foundation of teaching grammatical concepts. Furthermore, research has proved that there is more efficacy in teaching sentence variation, punctuation, and application in the writing context than approaching the topic by teaching skills that are isolated (Graves 570).

While students are revising and editing their write-ups, the teacher can be providing grammar instructions that give guidelines to the students with an attempt to identify and correct problems in the structuring and application of sentences. An example is where a teacher identifies students who write sentences that contain modifiers that are misplaced. This teacher can organize an extra lesson for teaching the concept with examples from students’ write-ups. Besides, the teacher instructs students to revise their writings and one another’s writings. As a teacher integrates grammar instructions in revision and editing, this assists students in applying these instructions immediately, which enables them to see the significance of grammar in writing.

Since most students find writing to be complicated and challenging, teachers should, therefore, emphasize grammar concepts necessary for meaningful clarity in communication. Research that has been conducted since the early 1950s has proved that grammar instructions separated from writing instruction has no improvement in the writing competence of students (Braddock). Further research has shown that transferring guidelines of formal grammar to writing cannot be applied to higher components of the composition. A conclusion was made by Shaughnessy that the best instructions in grammar are those that give the highest returns for minimal time investment (318). Shaughnessy stands for four crucial concepts of grammar: the agreement, inflection, sentence, and tense. Shaughnessy suggests that teachers ought to encourage students to scrutinize grammar mistakes in their drafts. She also gives teachers a caution on overemphasizing grammatical terminologies at the cost of the ability of the student to understand and put the concepts to application. The same approach of teaching grammar was proposed by Weaver, where she suggested that what is needed by most students is guidance on how to understand and apply grammar aspects that have the most relevance to writing (1). Instead of striving to teach all students all the grammatical concepts, emphasis should be put on prioritizing and providing instructions on the grammar elements that have the most impact on the ability of the students to write effectively. Furthermore, teachers should put into consideration the readiness of individual students in learning and applying grammatical concepts.

Sentence combining also improves writing. Sentence combining is an approach in which short sentences are joined into longer and more compound sentences. Students learn variation in sentence structure as they engage in sentence combining practices. Students can learn how to create contrast in sentence structure to change style and meaning. Studies have shown that the application of the sentence combining approach is a useful technique as it improves the writing skills of students (Mellon 10). Sentence combining is valuable as students can recognize the effect that sentence variety has on their drafts. Hillocks explained that the practice of sentence combining offers students syntactic prospects of systematic knowledge, and also allows them to find alternatives from their brains and on the paper and choose the most appropriate (150). Studies have also shown that sentence combining has more effectiveness than free writing because sentence combining improves the standard of student writing (Hillocks 150).

Hillocks and Smith showed that, in sentence combining, regular practice increases the knowledge of the student on syntactic structures and improves their sentence quality, mainly when stylistic effects have also been discussed (591-603). Practices of sentence combining can be structured or unstructured, or, written or unwritten. Exercises of structured sentence combining give students guidance on creating new sentences, whereas, simple sentence combining, gives more diversity; however, students are still required to create sentences that are logical and meaningful. Hillocks reported that in a majority of research, exercises of sentence combining had produced a significant increase in the students’ maturity in sentence writing (105). The analysis of Given Noguchi showed that the choice of grammar affects the style of writing, and sentence combining has proved to be an effective method that helps students in developing eloquence and variation in their format of writing. Students can notice diversity in sentences, parallelism, length, and other devices of syntactic by making a comparison of their sentences with sentences made by fellow writers. Students can also learn from the decisions that other writers make in making revisions for effect and style.

Teachers can come up with their approaches to sentence combining practices by the use of short sentences written by students or by other relevant resources. An example is where a teacher notices many jerky sentences made by a student, but writing can assist in placing these sentences for display for it to be read by all students. After that, the teacher can ask students to combine the short sentences in diverse ways orally. As students participate in activities of oral and written sentence combining, they should comprehend how sentence meaning is affected by the structure, punctuation, and usage of the sentence. When sentence combining activities are presented in a revision strategy, it helps students to identify from their writing sentences that are short and jerky. This process then enables students to combine ideas that are flowing in a sophisticated way. Students then generate long and complex sentences from shorter ones, and they can comprehend how the organization of clauses and phrases has an effect on meaning and the impact it has on readers.

The proofreading, editing, and revising stages of the writing procedure are essential because it is during these processes that grammar instructions are mostly incorporated naturally. Students write their first draft. When they feel contented with the concepts and structure of their draft, the teacher may then apply different strategies that to assist the student in viewing the concepts of grammar as linguistic choices that improve their purpose of writing. In no time, the students become more receptive to revise, edit and proofread their essays. Besides, teachers can assist students in reviewing for effective word selections in writing symposia.  The teacher can engage the student in a discussion about the real audience for the writing, and then ask the student to put into consideration how formal or informal writing ought to be. The student is also reminded how people make adjustments depending on the standard of formality in conversations, subject to the type of listeners and context of speaking. Finally, the teacher assists the student in recognizing words from the written draft that cause change to the standard of the writing.

A publication was made by The National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, about the Standards for the English Language Arts, which clearly defined what students are required to understand and do with grammar (1). The twelve contents of standards have been carefully entwined and emphasize complex connections among language abilities. The national content standards for English language arts are based on proficient studies and the most appropriate exercises in class. As much as the rules give an acknowledgment of how important the concepts of grammar are, they also advocate for students to be learning and applying grammar with the aim of communicating effectively. Teachers can embed grammar instructions in writing instructions to have a positive impact on the actual writing skills of students. These discussions are significant enough to support that formal instruction of grammar in school is of help to a person who wants to write correctly, clearly, and logically.

Nevertheless, it is not entirely inaccurate to say that formal instruction in grammar is not helpful in writing. Some students do not retain some of the grammatical rules taught to them, therefore not producing long-term results. Furthermore, there are some cases where grammatical errors have a negligible impact on how the ideas are understood because the errors are very slight. Melissa Allen explained that, during her ESL teaching experience, she appreciated grammatical errors because she felt the authenticity of the sentences despite the grammatical errors.

Works Cited

Braddock, Richard. “Research in written composition.” (1963).

Graves, Donald H. “Research Update: When Children Want to Punctuate: Basic Skills Belong in Context—Lucy McCormick Calkins.” Language Arts 57.5 (1980): 567-573.

Hillocks Jr, George. Research on written composition: New directions for teaching. National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801 (Stock No. 40750, $19.00 member, $24.75 nonmember)., 1986.

Hillocks Jr, George, and Michael W. Smith. “Grammar and usage.” Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (1991): 591-603.

Mellon, John C. Transformational sentence-combining: A method for enhancing the development of syntactic fluency in English composition. No. 10. National Council of Teachers of English, 1969.

Shaughnessy, Mina. “Some needed research on writing.” College Composition and Communication 28.4 (1977): 317-320.

National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. (1996). Standards for the English Language Arts. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Weaver, Constance. Lessons to share on teaching grammar in context. Boynton/Cook, 1998.