Research on the effects of learning about grammar

1. Writing (syntax)
2. Spelling
3. Grammar growth during school years
4. Listening and comprehension
5. Scientific method and thinking skills

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1. Writing (syntax) is improved by:

• focussed integrated teaching

• 2014. David Torgerson, Carole Torgerson, Natasha Mitchell, Hannah Buckley, Hannah Ainsworth, Clare Heaps, Laura Jefferson: Grammar for Writing. Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. (Education Endowment Foundation)
  • Grammar teaching had little or no effect on Year 6.
• 2013. The Buckinghamshire Grammar Project. “What [the teachers] have all shown is that, when taught in context, focused on ‘real’ language and closely linked to the children’s needs, the teaching of grammar can not only improve the quality of their writing, but also their levels of engagement.
• 2013. Jones, S.M.  Myhill, D.A.  and Bailey, T.C.  Grammar for Writing? An investigation into the effect of Contextualised Grammar Teaching on Student Writing.  Reading and Writing   26 (8) 1241-1263
  • Contextualized grammar teaching does improve writing.
• 2012. Myhill, D.A. Jones, S.M., Lines, H. and Watson A. Re-thinking grammar: the impact of embedded grammar teaching on students’ writing and students’ metalinguistic understanding Research Papers in Education  27 (2) 139-166
  • Contextualized grammar teaching, with ‘playful experimentation’, does improve writing, but its effect depends both on the pupils’ ability (with stronger learners benefitting more) and on the teachers’ ‘linguistic subject knowledge’.
• 2011. Debra Myhill, Helen Lines, Annabel Watson: Making meaning with grammar: a repertoire of possibilities. ( Metaphor,4)
  • Carefully planned grammar teaching had a strong positive effect on writing quality in Year 9.
• 2005. Richard Andrews: Knowledge about the teaching of [sentence] grammar: The state of play. (English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 4: 69-76.
  • Previous research (in English) showed no positive effect at all of sentence grammar.
• 2005 Richard Andrews and others. The effect of grammar teaching (sentence combining) in English on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition. (University of York research paper)
  • Sentence combining does have a positive effect on writing.

• sentence combining

  • Hillocks, G. and Mavrognes, N. (1986). Sentence combining. In Hillocks, G.(ed.), Research on Wrtten Composition: New Directions for Teaching. Urbana, IL: NCTE. 142-146.

  • Andrews, Richard, Carole Torgerson, Sue Beverton, A Freeman, Terry Locke, Graham Low, Alison Robinson & Die Zhu. 2004. The effect of grammar teaching (sentence combining) in English on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education – Research Evidence in Education Library.

• unintegrated grammar teaching (but only for some children)

  • Bateman, D. R. and Zidonis, F. J. (1966). The effect of a study of transformational grammar on the writing of ninth and tenth graders. Champaign, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English.

• – but not, for most children, by unintegrated grammar teaching

  • Andrews, R., Beverton, S., Locke, T., Low, G., Robinson, A., Torgerson, C., and Zhu, D. (2004). The effect of grammar teaching (syntax) in English on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition.
  • Elley, W. (1994). Grammar Teaching and Language Skill. In Asher, R. E.(ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon. 1468-1471.
  • Hudson, R. (2001). Grammar teaching and writing skills: the research evidence. Syntax in the Schools 17. 1-6.
  • Wyse, D. (2001). Grammar for Writing? A critical review of empirical evidence. British Journal of Educational Studies 49. 411-427.

2. Teaching about morphology improves spelling

• 2006. Nunes, T. and Bryant, P.  Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes. (London: Routledge)
• 2005. Hurry, J. (2005) Why morphology matters and comprehension counts. Discussion paper for QCA’s “English 21” inquiry.
• 2005. Hurry, J; Nunes, T; Bryant, P; Pretzlik, U; Parker, M; Curno, T; and Midgely, L.  Transforming research on morphology into teaching practice. Research Papers in Education 20. 187-206.
• 2004. Bryant, P., Nunes, T., and Bindman, M.  The Relations Between Children’s Linguistic Awareness and Spelling: The Case of the Apostrophe. Reading and Writing 12. 253-276.
• 2002. Bryant, P., Devine, M., Ledward, A., and Nunes, T.  Spelling with Apostrophes and Understanding Possession. British Journal of Educational Psychology 67. 91-110.
• 1997. Nunes, T., Bryant, P., and Bindman, M.  Learning to Spell Regular and Irregular Verbs. Reading and Writing 9. 427-449.

3. Grammars continue to grow through school age.

• Chomsky, C. (1969). The  acquisition  of  syntax  in  children  from  5  to  10. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Perera, K. (1984). Children’s Writing and Reading. Analysing Classroom Language. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Perera, K. (1990). Grammatical differentiation between speech and writing in children aged 8 to 12. In Carter, R.(ed.), Knowledge About Language and the Curriculum. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 216-233.

4. Teaching pupils grammar improves their listening and comprehension skills

• Dabrowska, E. (1997) The LAD goes to school: A cautionary tale for nativists. Linguistics 35, 735-766.
• Chipere, N. (2001). Variations in native speaker competence: Implications for native language teaching. Language Awareness 10. 107-124.
• Chipere, N. (2003). Understanding Complex Sentences: Native Speaker Variation in Syntactic Competence. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Street, J & Dabrowska, E. (2010) More individual differences in language attainment: How much do adult native speakers of English know about passives and quantifiers? Lingua 120, 2080-2094

5. Investigative grammar teaching helps children to understand the scientific method.

• Fabb, N. (1985). Linguistics for ten-year-olds. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 6. 45-61.
• Honda, M. (1994). Linguistic inquiry in the science classroom: “It Is Science, but It’s Not Like a Science Problem in a Book”. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 6. 1-262.
• Honda, M. and O’Neil, W. (1993). Triggering science-forming capacity through linguistic inquiry. In Hale, K. & Keyser, J.(eds.), The View From Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 229-255.