Open Eye: Letter: Devouring books, helping lads, and calendars

My heart leapt when I read in your October editorial that "it is not enough to teach children to read". I agree. It is important to teach them to `devour books', and, as an ex-OU student currently researching the teaching of English grammar, I share your passion for syntactic wallowing'

However, our reasons are not the same. You see, no first language speaker needs to be taught grammar in order to read books, no matter how intellectually demanding. Of course, this is not your main reason for advocating a return to grammar teaching: it is to get people to write "proper English".

One problem with this enduringly popular notion is that there is no clear research evidence that learning grammar leads to improved written performance. Tuition in the idiosyncrasies of English spelling might improve young people's spelling, but grammar is not about spelling.

Grammar is the structure of language - not the structure of "proper English", which the National Curriculum calls standard English and which has always been taught in schools. We don't need to be taught grammar in order to be able to read and write. We certainly don't need the old-fashioned grammar teaching that stifled rather than encouraged creativity.

So why teach grammar? Partly for its own sake: pupils should know how their language works, and have the technical language to talk about it, just as they are able to talk about science, geography and maths. But grammar also offers tools to investigate how language is used in particular situations and for particular purposes, to reveal ways in which language can be manipulated: to entertain, to elucidate or to deceive.

I would prefer a young person to leave school with a copy of the Sun under his* arm and an understanding of the linguistic techniques employed therein (both playful and malevolent) than to go through life accepting everything written in the Times.

No, literacy is not enough - even with added spelling and punctuation. If we want a properly functioning democracy in the 21st century, then we need people who are able not only to use language effectively themselves, but to understand how other people are using it - in other words, people who are critically literate. Grammar is part of the knowledge about language that makes critical literacy possible. Yes, let's be greedy for grammar - not for the sake of writing proper, but for the sake of our proper rights!

Pam Upton

P.S. I would very much like to know the views of other teachers and students on teaching grammar.

*Sic: an example of how `good English' changes. I excuse the outdated usage on the grounds that Sun-reading is a predominantly male activity!