Nothing can be Standard
about Standard English Instruction
Research Question
What is the best approach to grammar instruction in the twenty-first century classroom?
Rationale
- Personal experience with grammar: Memory of having my grammar "corrected."
- Expectations of the Harford County English Department
- Literacy leaders and English teachers are tasked with the responsibility of promoting creativity and individualism in young writers whilst simultaneously requiring the use of SE.
VIPs
Theorists and Researchers
- Roman rhetorician named Quintilian “aimed to use grammar instruction as a means to produce habits of language that would enable students to become successful and productive citizens”(Gartland & Smolkin, 2016, p.392).
- In his approach, Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and literary theorist, relieves students of the often punitive process of avoiding errors that is synonymous with grammar instruction and rather sees grammar study as a lesson in the construction of language and meaning.
Essential Research
Jean and Simard (2013)
Purpose: Uncover students' responses to both deductive and inductive grammar instruction after experiencing both methods of instruction. Clear up inconsistencies with previous research.
- 138 students, receiving both types of instruction
- After the rule was presented or discovered (depending on the unit), then students completed one or two practice exercises and finally, they were prompted to produce a written task where they employed the grammar feature. Pre and post tests on pronouns were administered as a part of their study, along with preference questionnaires and a learning style survey.
- No significant correlation between learning styles and preferred method of instruction.
- Students learn from both inductive and deductive instruction similarly.
- Is inductive vs. deductive grammar instruction is really the significant question?
Feng and Powers (2005)
Purpose: Can an error-based approach to grammar instruction effectively help students master Standard English?
- Instruction reactive to writing samples, three times a year.
- Mini-lessons, with follow-up writing to assess short-term gains
- Final assessment to assess long-term gains involved students correcting their original writing sample (unmarked by the teacher)
- “On almost all of the grammatical items, accuracy can be improved through mini-lessons that target errors identified in student writing in both short and long-term measurements” (p.70).
- Error-based instruction is effective
Godley, Carpenter, and Werner (2007)
Purpose: Is traditional Daily Language Instruction effective and appropriate?
- Refocus language and grammar instruction on “conventions and effectiveness rather than on rules and correctness, as prescriptive approaches do” (Godley, Carpenter & Werner, 2007, p. 124).
- Concluded that the “Daily Language Practice” activity endorsed in mainstream curriculum promoted dominant language ideologies, a practice that conflicted with research on effective language and literary instruction for speakers of African American English.
- “Students’ home dialect, African American English, was neither validated through the activity nor viewed as a resource, but rather treated as a linguistic deficit because it did not adhere to the grammar of written Standard English” (p.123).
- Decontextualized activities miss valuable opportunities to link students’ existing knowledge of language to the use of SE.
- Students missed valuable opportunities to discuss and address the relationships between language and identity and language and social power.
Implications for the Classroom
Inductive vs Deductive Instruction does not matter as much as ensuring instruction is meaningful and culturally responsive.
Teachers of grammar should:
- Embed meaningful and reactive grammar lessons.
- Discuss language usage with students, emphasizing context, purpose, and audience.
- Value students’ linguistic and cultural understandings.
...to be continued.
Future research could:
- Attempt to uncover the best strategies for approaching language instruction for students who are not analytical and prefer “unconscious learning.”
- Compare the classroom discussions, lesson plans, and student writing samples of teachers who have strong foundations in their own knowledge of grammar to those of teachers who do not.
- Compare student progress with grammar as related to the amount of reading and writing they complete in SE.