What is your belief regarding separate grammar instruction?

[LMD]

My experience is the same as Barbs, and I know many people with the same experience. I was a literature major in an arts degree at a good university, surrounded by people like me who easily and intuitively aced our high school english classes, but struggled. There are a lot of reasons for that (many of them relate to why I homeschool) but lack of grasp of how to use the language effectively was definitely one. No formal grammar was the common theory with my generation and it showed. After homeschooling for 7 years, I can now edit my friend's essays for publication with confidence.

[Barb_]

Hmm, I can see that, but I'm not sure it is the same as saying that without formal grammar, students won't be able to manage university level essay work.

No, I don't believe in absolutes either.

[StaceyinLA]

Yes, I think it is important, and we do grammar as a stand alone subject. I think it is important for kids to see how correctly written sentences are structured. Some kids are able to construct sentences "by ear" because they've been exposed to good writing, other kids (mine), even though they've been read to since the cradle, can't write a decent sentence to save their life and they need to specifically study subjects, verbs, etc.

 

However, another reason I think it is important is from a critical thinking standpoint. A huge pet peeve of mine is people who look at education from a strictly pragmatic standpoint. "How am I going to use this in the real world?" As in...."why learn algebra? Who uses algebra on a daily basis?" And then everyone gets all worked up because nobody has any critical thinking skills anymore. Grammar study and studying the grammar of other languages, math beyond arithmetic, learning to play music....all cause us to learn to think critically. It's an exercise of the brain. So, when I teach my kids grammar, and especially diagramming, I'm not only teaching it to them so they know how to write, but I want them to be able to analyze a sentence, see how the parts work together as a whole, analyze the function of each part and now it relates to the other parts.

This is very true. Actually, though it may be likely that Algebra rarely gets used, grammar skills are used daily. Even if the critical thinking didn't come into play, you can't really argue that grammar (okay maybe not sentence diagramming) isn't a necessary part of your daily life.

[Rosie_0801]

Hmm, I can see that, but I'm not sure it is the same as saying that without formal grammar, students won't be able to manage university level essay work.

 

My marks in my linguistics classes suffered due to a lack of formal grammar study. 

[LMD]

I didn't say academic failure - I don't think... just more of a struggle to elucidate complex ideas with incomplete tools. Of course it's not a universal law, but, as I said, it rang true IME.

 

Like I might write more freely when I can focus on what I want to say, easily using my store of tools (vocab/spelling), rather than constantly getting derailed mid sentence to look up a word. If I have a decent command of grammar, however I came to it, I can use my mental energy on the ideas and content, rather than struggling with the mechanics.

Does that make sense?

[Guest]

Linguistics is a pretty niche subject.

 

It's safe to say 99% of uni students won't be taking linguistics.

I took linguistics!

 

/dork

[Violet Crown]

I took linguistics!

 

/dork

My dh wrote a thousand-page dissertation on pronouns (well, anaphora). Grammar around here is taught the way Himself decrees.

 

I don't think there's actually fundamental disagreement in this discussion. Grammar is the study of how language functions. It's an area of academic study in its own right; it also provides useful tools for grasping and using language effectively. Many people intuit the structure and the conventions of usage through reading; others don't, or don't fully, for whatever reason. (I personally blame the 20th century literary reaction against complex and ornate Victorian prose in favor of a strong, often grammatically and orthographically simpler style that more closely reflects spoken language ... but I digress.) So some find their language use benefits from focused grammar study; some benefit intellectually from an awareness of the rudiments of linguistics; some proceed well without either.

 

ETA: Some benefit from proofreading

Edited May 27, 2017 by Violet Crown

[fralala]

My marks in my linguistics classes suffered due to a lack of formal grammar study. 

 

Ooh, I never thought about the reasons for this, but my mom and I both ended up attending college at the same time, and I was flailing in linguistics (despite having attended schools that were hyped as far superior to the institutions my mom had attended) while it became my mother's major! My mom, however, had received systematic grammar instruction and I never had. ("They didn't teach you to diagram yet?" was her refrain during my school days.) Hmm.

 

The thing about my superior schools, I realized, is that they dealt primarily with students who were privileged to have grown up speaking and reading grammatically "correct" American English. (I take my cues from my mother the linguist loves grammar but has a beef with the disparagement of dialects, which actually contain their own internal logic and grammar rules that are perfectly sensible-- hence the quotation marks). So they felt like they didn't have to spend lots of time and energy on formal grammar in the early grades. When we all talk about learning the rules being helpful to eventual study of foreign languages or linguistics, we should also acknowledge that for many children, the English they speak and read in school is not the same English (or language) they are using at home. While I don't know how one separates grammar instruction entirely from speaking, reading, or writing, I do know that my opinions on the appropriate ages for grammar instruction, and the amount of time devoted to the subject, would likely be very different if I weren't privileged to be working with a small population-- my own children-- who read and hear enough proper language to notice that their dad's double negatives are endearing but not quite right, and their grandpa's "ain't" isn't actually a grammatically acceptable contraction.

[Bluegoat]

I've done all three years of undergrad work, and two more in post grad, with no formal grammar instruction, in areas of study involving a LOT of writing - and achieved HD's. 

 

My dd had no formal grammar instruction, and has written third year college essays which also received HD's.

 

I simply don't believe that without formal grammar instruction, one is doomed to academic failure. It's obviously not true. I am not the exception to the rule, as none of my cohort recieved formal grammar instruction, and all of us finished our first degrees! Those of us who had done well in writing-heavy subjects in high school continued to do well at university.

 

This seems more familiar to me.  Most of the people I studied with didn't have much formal grammar, and most didn't struggle to write.  But, perhaps poor writers don't study classics?

 

The other thing is, I don't remember perfectly standard grammar as being a huge focus.   Many of the academics we read, or who taught us, had their own quirks as far as writing went.  One of the important professors in the department, who was somewhat famous as a philosopher in Canada, didn't really seem to use commas at all.

[Hannah]

Learning grammar through diagramming seems to be a very American thing.  We follow a UK education model (with IGCSE and A levels) and there is no grammar whatsoever in my daughter's English or 2nd language courses.

ETA:  Literature is a separate subject from English Language.

Edited May 27, 2017 by Hannah

[Bluegoat]

Learning grammar through diagramming seems to be a very American thing.  We follow a UK education model (with IGCSE and A levels) and there is no grammar whatsoever in my daughter's English or 2nd language courses.

ETA:  Literature is a separate subject from English Language.

 

Diagraming was invented/refined by Americans, and popularized in the US based on the books of one fellow, whose name I don't remember.  It never really traveled much beyond that, or even lasted that long as a fashion in schools, until you get to the neoclassical education model.

 

People in the UK, and elsewhere, seemed to learn to parse sentences in other ways.

[Crimson Wife]

Perhaps but - do you really know a lot of people who got past their first year of university and found they couldn't express what they needed to in essays?  And somehow more grammatical knowledge would help that?

 

Of all the writing and thinking problems I've encountered, that isn't a common one.

 

I haven't read a lot of college essays to be sure, but my brother mentioned in the anecdote upthread made it all the way to his senior year at a top 30 university as one. I don't know how he managed to pull off decent enough grades to get that far.

[Crimson Wife]

Diagraming was invented/refined by Americans, and popularized in the US based on the books of one fellow, whose name I don't remember.  It never really traveled much beyond that, or even lasted that long as a fashion in schools, until you get to the neoclassical education model.

 

I was taught Reed-Kellogg diagrams in 6th grade so ~1988. So I disagree that it didn't last long in schools. It lasted up until the "whole language" fad of the 1990's (which I am very glad that I escaped).