2.1 Grammars for Language/Literacy Teaching

2.1 Grammars for Language/Literacy Teaching

At least three kinds of grammar are available for teachers to choose from: traditional grammar, transformative-generative grammar (TGG), and functional grammar. Different types of grammar offer teachers distinct ways of conceptualizing language, approaches to teaching grammar, and the role of grammar instruction in language/literacy learning (Gebhard & Martin, 2011). The most prevalent kind of grammar taught in school has been, as noted in Chapter 1, traditional grammar. This grammar seeks to define language rules, attempts to standardize language, and is rarely concerned with real world usage. It is, thus, both prescriptive and decontextualized. From this perspective, learning language and literacy is often synonymous with mastering parts of speech (e.g., noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition), prescriptive rules for correct language use (e.g., subject-verb agreement), and proscriptive rules of usage to be avoided (e.g., Never split an infinitive.).

Traditional grammar reflects the nowadays problematic view that one dialect or variety of a language (e.g., the so-called standard English) is to be privileged over others and should be the norm for all users of the language. As such, it is discriminatory against other social or regional dialects that are just as powerful resources for making meaning. Traditional grammar also imposes arbitrary rules that proficient users of language frequently violate. For example, instances of sentence beginning with a conjunction or ending with a preposition can often be found in academic and disciplinary texts. Moreover, with its focus on form rather than meaning, traditional grammar fails to engender truly proficient reading or powerful writing. For example, Hillocks (1986) concluded from an extensive review of research that traditional grammar instruction has no effect on raising the quality of student writing. For these reasons, traditional grammar has lost much of its appeal or glamor in English literacy teaching.

Unlike traditional grammar, transformative-generative grammar, is based on the idea that all humans have an innate capacity for language and that this capacity shapes the rules for what is considered "correct" grammar in a language. First developed by Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g., Chomsky, 1957, 1965), TGG is not interested in prescriptive rules; rather, it is interested in uncovering a finite set of basic principles and transformational rules that guide all language productions. It seeks to account for the syntactic constructions of a language by linguistic transformations and phrase structures. This grammar gives sentence combining, a teaching method that existed before the advent of TGG, a theoretical foundation. However, there has been little evidence suggesting that a focus on the structural complexity of syntax has any measurable impact on students' reading proficiency or writing quality (Gebhard & Martin, 2011).(https://www.daowen.com)

Because traditional grammar and transformative-generative grammar have hitherto not been able to demonstrate effectiveness in improving language learning and literacy development, they are now no longer enthusiastically promoted in English literacy teaching, particularly at the postsecondary level. In fact, grammar instruction is now often associated with bad teaching practices and actively shunned by teachers. A key factor accounting for the current aversion to grammar is that both traditional grammar and transformative-generative grammar focus on form/structure but ignore meaning and function. A more powerful kind of grammar, one that is descriptive and oriented to the study of meaning, is needed. Such a grammar is found in systemic-functional grammar, or functional grammar for short.

Functional grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) is a theory, or model, of grammar initially developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s and subsequently modified, expanded, and refined with the help of many scholars around the world (e.g., Robin Fawcett, Ruqaiya Hasan, Jay Lemke, Gunther Kress, James Martin, Christian Matthiessen). As part of a broad social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics, functional grammar is interested in how people use language and how language is structured for use. More specifically, functional grammar is concerned with language in use, focusing on the role of language in representing human experience, enacting social relations, and structuring discourse. It views grammar not as a set of prescriptive rules to be observed or proscriptive rules to be avoided in speaking and writing, but as a network of systems with interrelated sets of options that enable its users to choose for different purposes and contexts. In other words, grammar is no longer about formal rules of correctness, but rather a means of representing patterns of human experience; it enables us to build a mental picture of reality, to make sense of our experience with the material world, and to reflect on what goes on around us and inside us. In this sense, language use is simultaneously functional, semantic, contextual, and semiotic.