1. From theoretical grammar to school grammar – and back Richard Hudson Valencia, January 2016 1

2. Plan 1.The history and geography of grammar teaching 2.The crisis in Britain 3.Theoretical grammar and school grammar 4.Questions about teaching grammar and my answers This talk is available at http://dickhudson.com/talks 2

3. 1. The oldest grammar? 3 Conjugation of the verb 'to stand' in both Sumerian and Akkadian Babylon. Earliest examples: 18-17 centuries BC

4. The long history of grammar Panini ?5c BC Babylon 2K BC Greece 5c BC Alexandria 3c BC Rome 1c BC Ireland 6c AD Baghdad 8c AD 4

5. Medieval education School Latin! Via grammar-translation method So new schools in England were called ‘grammar schools’ (now 11-18) in the USA, grammar schools are elementary schools (4-11) University Trivium – grammar, logic, rhetoric Quadrivium – maths, music, geometry, astronomy 5

6. The grammar crisis According to Bronckart and Besson (1988), the grammar crisis in language education is as old as the generalisation of the compulsory school system adopted more than a century ago by the majority of European countries. It appears in different ways and also at different times in: the UK French-speaking countries Spanish-speaking countries Catalan-speaking countries Portuguese-speaking countries (Marta Milian in Ribas, Fontich and Guasch 2014) 6

7. Now: grammar teaching in crisis! But universities are helping... Exeter Prague 7 Barcelona Paris Odense

8. ‘Grammar crisis’ in Spain: Samuel Gili Gaya 1952 8

9. France 9 Enseigner la grammaire et le vocabulaire à l'école By Renée Léon 2014

10. Germany 10 Perspektiven des Grammatikunterrichts By Claus Gnutzmann 1995

11. Eastern Europe ? I hear that grammar teaching is still active and successful in Russia and in the Czech Republic No crisis!! Is this true? If so, we need to know more..... 11

12. 2. The crisis in Britain 12

13. But is there a crisis or just a problem? English speakers don’t generally write about a grammar crisis. Google Ngram Viewer does not recognise grammar crisis in its millions of books 1800-2000 it requires a phrase to be used in at least 40 books But... 13

14. It finds a recent rise in grammar problem 14

15. Problems go up but grammar stays the same 15

16. And grammar teaching is back 16

17. Welcome to teach-grammar.com 17

18. The death of grammar teaching in Britain 16 th -I9th century school grammar was supported by research and major thinkers: 16 th century: Erasmus of Rotterdam (Renaissance super-star) 18 th century: Joseph Priestley (also discovered oxygen) 19 th century: various professors and scholars 20 th century, 1900-1950 no grammar research at all in universities so grammar teaching stopped 18

19. A test of UK school-leavers’ grammatical knowledge in 1986 and 2009 19

20. A student starting a university Spanish degree 20

21. So what? This student is typical! What if they become a school teacher? They have no choice about whether to use grammar how to teach it what to teach They cannot teach it! 21

22. But Spanish students do learn grammar Isabel Corona and Pilar Mur-Dueñas used the same test at Zaragoza University with 148 Spanish-speaking students in English! scores count mean errors, so a low score is good! 73 linguists (studying English): score = 2 the best UK linguists in 1986 scored 3.02 75 non-linguists (studying engineering and nursing): score = 3.1 errors the best UK non-linguists scored 7.45 22

23. Summary Grammar is one of the oldest school subjects. It has been taught across Europe for thousands of years. It is still taught in some countries especially in Eastern Europe But in most European or colonial countries there is some kind of crisis in grammar teaching. But every country has a different crisis, so we need to share information between countries. That’s why this conference is so important! 23

24. 3. Theoretical grammar and school grammar Grammar died in British schools because it had died in British universities. So universities are important for school teaching In an ideal world, schools feed universities with people universities feed schools with information 24

25. 25 The ideal education cycle infant adult school university research know- ledge know- ledge know- ledge school teaching

26. 4. Questions about grammar teaching and my (very brief!) answers Why should schools teach grammar? How should they teach grammar? and how to assess it? Who should teach grammar? When should they teach grammar? What grammar should they teach? what topics? what skills? what theory? 26

27. Why teach grammar? For self-understanding compare biology a ‘window into the mind’ (Chomsky) or Language Awareness (Hawkins) For growth complex grammar standard grammar foreign grammar NOT for avoiding errors! 27

28. How to teach grammar? Distinguish Teaching grammar: compare arithmetic follow internal logic of grammar: “The instructional sequences to learn grammar are planned directly with a grammar learning objective in mind, and therefore they allow linguistic notions to be programmed in an interrelated way.” (GREAL) Applying grammar: build on what is taught 28

29. More on the GREAL approach “The basis of the sequence is students’ active work on the language forms and the notions involved, often framed as inquiry or research, or as problem solving or finding the answer to a question. The entire set of activities, from stating the problem to the final report, in which students must summarise what they have done and learned, including all the research, sharing, consultation and other activities, requires exchanges among participants.” 29

30. How should they assess grammatical knowledge? By a formal examination compare mathematics It’s important to give students credit for their understanding 30

31. Who should teach grammar? The grammar teacher (GREAL) “The instructor plays a crucial role, first in designing the activities themselves and later in monitoring and controlling the dynamics, providing materials and making decisions on the right kind of intervention at all times (explanation, moderation of the debate, conversation with small groups, etc.).“ And who should apply grammar? L1 teacher L2 teacher any other teacher 31

32. When should grammar be taught? From Year 1 Each year can revisit the previous year’s work By the end of school, students should know a lot of grammar! 32

33. Which topics? syntax e.g. agreement rules inflectional morphology e.g. verb inflections word formation e.g. how to change a verb into a noun? semantics e.g. semantics of tenses 33

34. Which skills? analysis of examples including real texts in non-standard dialects analysis of the system terminology special notation e.g. dogs is the plural of DOG diagramming e.g. 34 Dependency analyses can be very simple.

35. Which theory? Which linguistic theory? Chomsky? Halliday? etc. Grammar researchers do agree on some things: general principles e.g. description, not prescription ideas e.g. function ≠ form ≠ class descriptions e.g. determiners ≠ adjectives 35

36. Conclusions Schools should teach grammar. But they should teach it seriously, like mathematics. taught by grammar teachers applied by L1 and L2 teachers They need support from universities: training for grammar teachers research in descriptive grammar research in theoretical grammar research in applied linguistics. 36

37. Gràcies, gracias, merci, danke, thank you! This talk is available at http://dickhudson.com/talks 37