Fred tells us, "Let me go on record: grammar, syntax, and punctuation are important. That's not the question. Read Hartwell closely..."
Even though I am a product of the current-traditionalist school, and works by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch[1], Sir Ernest Gowers[2], and even A. W. McGuire[3] were/are my constant companions, I am excited by this week’s Hartwell reading. For it was Patrick Hartwell’s maverick 1985 article “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar”[4] that served to further disturb the mos maiorum of the teachers of English, which had in 1963 been shaken by the unfortunate findings of the NCTE report Research in Written Composition: this report declares in “strong and unqualified terms that the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible… even a harmful effect on improvement in writing.”[5] After reviewing a plethora of studies on the effectiveness of grammar instruction to improve student writing, Hartwell concludes that:
1. “the thrust of current research and theory is to take power from the teacher and to give that power to the learner”,
2. “it is time that we, as teachers, formulate theories of language and literacy and let those theories guide our teaching”, and
3. “it is time that we, as researchers, move on to more interesting areas of inquiry”. (Hartwell, 127)
Hartwell’s article was contentious. While NCTE founding member Martha Kolln, researcher Thomas N. Huckin (Carnegie-Mellon University), and NCTE members Joe Williams (University of Chicago), Richard D. Cureton (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Carole Moses (Lycoming College), and Edward A. Vavra (Shenandoah College & Conservatory of Music) questioned his research and conclusions, Hartwell’s article served to stimulate academic dialogue on the future of grammar instruction.
More seriously, Kolln says that Hartwell misinterpreted her comments, particularly as these relate to the definition of grammar. According to Kolln, despite the NCTE’s 1963 bugaboo that teaching formal grammar is harmful, it is formal grammar that we should define not the cross-disciplinary interpretations proposed by Hartwell. Further, Hartwell is accused of misinterpreting Kolln’s “suspicions” on the 1930 Elley et al study and Kolln corrects him, affirming that she agrees with Elley et al and the NCTE report’s finding that “formal method is certainly not the way to teach grammar.”[6] Kolln was suspicious of grammar being “set up” in studies (like Elley et al). She wondered what the result would be “if someone who really believes in the usefulness of teaching grammar designed an experiment in which grammar was deliberately brought into the composition class, if the teacher made every possible effort to help students write, using traditional or structural or transformation grammar, or all three—whatever works.” [7]
Kolln goes on to say that “we at the college level will not solve the problem of the language arts curriculum by turning our composition classes into grammar classes” and “I have never advocated such measures despite Professor Harwell’s words to the contrary”.[8] To demonstrate her true feelings on the matter, Kolln offers us a very useful analogy that we can also consider for our own interpretation of this great academic divide:
“Imagine a research study carried out by the History Department to find out if learning the dates of historical events enhances a student’s understanding of history. During one period a week the usual history lesson is replaced by an experimental class where students spend their time memorizing dates: they recite the dates, they diagram the dates, they drill. At the end of the experiment—a semester, perhaps a year—all the history students, those who studied the dates in their special class as well as those who did not, are given two tests: one is a test of dates; the other is a test of the students’ general knowledge, or understanding, of history. Here are the results: (1) The students in the experimental class score better on the test of dates, just as we would have predicted. (2) There is no correlation between the two tests: that is, students who score high on general knowledge are not significantly better at dates than those with a low general history score. Or, to put in another way, given a student’s high score on dates, we cannot predict a comparable high score on general knowledge.”[9]
Huckin claims that Hartwell’s use of his ESL student article flowchart, and Hartwell’s conclusion that “CE readers (who are presumably native speakers) have a great deal of frustration using it”, misrepresents his work. Huckin says that the flowchart is “hardly an example of formal grammar, nor was it ever intended to be”.[10] Instead, “it is a pedagogical rule, a rule-of-thumb, designed for use only as a simple prompt for students doing our exercises” and has been taken out of context. Hartwell responds by asking if “does a diagram on article use in an ESL textbook come accompanied by explanations and examples? Would a native speaker who worked through the 32 pages in the Huckin and Olsen text find the diagram immediately usable? Does a scholar who accuses me of nonsequiturs create nonsequiturs?”[11]
Huckin also accuses Hartwell of sloppy research, using as an example Hartwell’s conclusion from the Arthur S. Reber experiments (in cognitive psychology and second language acquisition theory) that subjects given the rules of the language do much less well in acquiring the rules than do subjects not given the rules. Huckin points out that this was true only of Reber's 1967 and 1976 studies; in their 1980 study, Reber and his colleagues reversed these earlier findings.
The opinions and comments of English instruction luminaries notwithstanding, I find Hartwell’s argument that grammar instruction does nothing to improve student writing to be most intriguing. The results of his informal experiment, in which he asked different groups to state the rule for ordering adjectives of nationality, age, and number in English (the groups couldn’t because they didn’t know the rule), demonstrated that perhaps we understand grammatical structure without being taught “the rules” (the groups could perform the active language task successfully). Similarly, when asked to pluralize “Bachs”[12], subjects instinctively knew how to do this correctly…no doubt because they were Grammar 1 practitioners[13] and/or they had read extensively.
I believe that Huckin and Olsen’s diagram illustrating the proper use of articles, despite their claim that it was excerpted from a 30-page chapter, seems unduly complicated and littered with “jargon” words (i.e. referent, countable). Brandwein’s paragraph[14] does produce “a great deal of frustration, a curious sense of working against, rather than with, the rule. The rule, however valuable it may be for non-native speakers, is, for the most part, simply unusable for native speakers of the language.”[15]
And there, I think, lies an important issue that current-traditional grammar instruction has the most difficulty addressing: how to teach foreign-language students English. If we use grammar, we can easily confuse them. And if we assume that foreign-language students do not have a base competency in their native language, then we need to teach the communication of ideas more so than grammar rules. But should we abandon grammar instruction research for “more interesting areas of inquiry” as Hartwell recommends? Only if the more interesting areas of inquiry result in successful methodologies for improving student writing.
Lastly, we can’t leave Hartwell without discussing his views on error. As we’ve seen in our readings, English instruction seems to be unduly focused on the elimination of error. English teachers, often, seem to consider themselves holders of the “sacred chalice” of grammar knowledge that they deign to share with their students (a form of hubris, if you will). Hartwell calls on the work and research of Chomsky, Shaughnessy, and others to prove this point. As an example, Hartwell gives us a sentence with four errors, three of which are grammatical and one of which is logical (“there is four errors in this sentance. Can you find them?)[16]. The current-traditionalists would only teach the elimination of the grammatical errors, leaving the most important error (the logical) un-taught.
In conclusion, and to Fred’s statement that “grammar, syntax, and punctuation are important”, it is important that all errors be corrected in student writing, not just the grammatical ones. And how this is to be done will be addressed in my final course project.[17]
[1] Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. On the Art of Writing. Guild Books for the British Publishers Guild by the Cambridge University Press. 1946.
[2] Sir Ernest Gowers. The Complete Plain Words: a guide and reference book to the use of English for official and other purposes. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1954.
[3] A. W. McGuire. Grammar is Important: A Basic Course for Canadian Schools. Agincourt, The Book Society of Canada Limited. 1953. (note: I found this book so eminently useful that I kept it after Grade 9 English).
[4] Patrick Hartwell. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar”.
College English, Vol. 47, No. 2. (Feb., 1985), pp. 105-127. Stable URL:
[5] Research in Written Composition (Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1937-38. URL: http://www.coe.uga.edu/~smago/Books/Braddock_et_al.pdf. pp. 37-38.
[6] Martha Kolln. A Comment on "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar. College English, Vol. 47, No. 8 (Dec., 1985), pp. 874-877.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/376626
[7] Kolln, p. 876
[8] Hartwell, p. 106: “She concludes with a stirring call to place grammar instruction at the center of the composition curriculum…”
[9] Kolln, p. 877
[10] Thomas N. Huckin. A Comment on "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar". College English, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Apr., 1986), pp. 397-400. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377267
[11] Patrick Hartwell. Patrick Hartwell Responds. College English, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Apr., 1986), pp. 400-401. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377268
[12] Hartwell, p. 113
[13] Hartwell identifies 5 types of grammar knowledge: 1. Grammar as the mind’s internalized, naturalized rules of language usage. These are rules that we use to communicate, but they are not readily accessible if we are asked to state why we talk in a certain way. In other words, they are the unconscious rules of a language that we have acquired as native speakers; 2. The scientific study of grammar (linguistics). Native speakers do not have to consciously know that rules of a language in order to speak or perform the language. Therefore, according to Hartwell, learning rules has no affect on language production; 3. Actual grammar usage performance. This is able to occur without learning the rules of the language through direct instruction. Moreover, at times direct instruction can degrade performance; 4. Grammar instruction as taught in school. This is necessarily inadequate because it does not reflect either actually usage or the complexities of how language works in the mind; 5. Grammar as a stylistic tool. Language needs to be understood by how it can be manipulated in print contexts to impact meaning. [Extracted from student Erica Wallis’ Precis, available at this URL: http://erickawillsprecis.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/patrick-hartwells-grammar-grammars-and-teh-teaching-of-grammar/ ]
[14] Hartwell, p. 116
[15] Ibid.
[16] Hartwell, p. 121
[17] And yes, I started this and other sentences in this post with a conjunction…oh, dear!
Debbie, I love reading your blogs. They’re simultaneously so informative and so intimidating. I mean that in the best way, of course!
ReplyDeleteA couple of things that struck me about Hartwell had to do with an article I read about Chinese writers: “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China” by Carolyn Matalene (_College English_, Vol. 47, No. 8 (Dec., 1985), pp. 789-808). Her article explores how the very way Chinese and English people learn our respective alphabets determines how we view what constitutes “good” rhetorical strategies in our writing (and, by extension, our respective cultures).
Hartwell says, “It seems that native speakers of English behave as if they have productive control, as Grammar 1 knowledge, of abstract sound features….” (570). Matalene’s article notes that this productive/inventive rhetoric is unique to speakers of phonetic alphabets. People who use symbolic alphabets (like Chinese) rely on memorized clichés instead of “productive control” to prove that they are “educated.”
Anyway, I thought her article might help you draw some interesting insights about ESL learners who come from symbolic alphabets, including 1) why they have trouble with English’s “inventiveness” (which they view as chaotic or inconsistent) and 2) how their values about “higher order” writing values differ from Western values.
Debbie, this was vivacious! I read Hartwell's article yesterday and thought it was a HOOT. Years ago, I'd presented "Grammar Groundwork" at a conference; this article now makes me want to present the antithesis. Also humorous are the two sides to the argument in the article, complete with each group slinging mud and name calling. As Dr. Kemp pointed out, this is a VERY big deal. It threatens the very current-traditionalist foundations that we grew up with. I WILL confess that even when I explicitly taught official EFL Grammar classes, I wondered how much my Qatari kids were truly absorbing, comprehending, applying.
ReplyDeleteAlso elucidating were the different definitions of grammar and how we accidentally mix them up...constantly.
Favorite quote: "We are constrained to reinvent the wheel. Too often the wheel we reinvent is square."