A timeline for grammar teaching

  • 2,000 BCE, Babylon: the first written record of grammatical analysis – clay tablets with parallel verb forms in Akkadian and Sumerian for the use of scribes.
  • 500-400 BCE, India: Panini composed the first detailed grammatical and phonological analysis of a language. This was ‘pure’ research, but his grammar was adopted for use in schools and is still in use.
    • Shukla, Shaligram. 2006. Panini. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), 153–155. Oxford: Elsevier.
  • 400 BCE?, Greece: Grammar was included among the seven liberal arts. In the 9th century it was grouped with logic and rhetoric as the trivium, the essential preparation for the harder ‘scientific’ subjects of the quadrivium: music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy.
  • 0-100, Egypt: Dionysius Thrax (from Turkey) wrote the earliest surviving complete grammar of Greek – a pedagogical grammar which remained in use for 13 centuries.
    • Robins, Robert. 1967. A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman. p. 30-31.
  • 300-400, Rome: Donatus wrote a pedagogical grammar of Latin which remained in use for over a thousand years.
  • 500, Constantinople: Priscian wrote a long grammar of Latin which was also used for over a thousand years. He anticipated parsing.
  • 760–796, Baghdad: Sibawayh (a Persian speaker) wrote the standard grammar of Arabic, which still underlies textbooks used in Arabic schools.
  • 800-900: The start of parsing – a bottom-up teaching method in which children learn a standard list of attributes of a word (e.g. gender, number, case, tense) and learn to recognise them in the words of an unseen sentence.
    • Luhtala, A. 1994. Grammar, early mediaeval. In Ronald Asher (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 1460–1468. Oxford: Pergamon.
  • 1542, London: King Henry VIII commissioned and authorised a printed introduction to Latin grammar in English (called “Lily’s Grammar”), which survived until replaced by Kennedy’s Latin Grammar in 1888.
  • 1762, England and USA: Lowth published the first strongly prescriptive grammar of English, and inspired Murray (an American retired to England) to write one which was even more influential and was still influential in the late 19th century.
    • Lowth, Robert. 1762. A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes (1799 edition). Philadelphia: Aitken.
    • Murray, Lindley. 1795. English Grammar, adapted to the different classes of learners, with an appendix containing rules and observations, for assisting the more advanced students to write with perspicuity and accuracy (16th edition, 1809). London: William Tegg.
  • 1783, Germany: Meidinger wrote a pedagogical grammar of French for German students which started the grammar-translation method of teaching modern foreign languages, with systematic exercises to support each new point of grammar.
    • Meidinger, J. 1783. Praktische Französische Grammatik. Frankfurt.
  • 1829, Germany: The start of (top-down) analysis as part of language teaching and the first formal system for doing it: a table with a separate column for each main part of a German sentence. Because of the English translation this system was very influential in the UK.
    • Becker, Karl Ferdinand. 1829. Deutsche Sprachlehre, Vol 2. Frankfurt am Main: Hermann.
    • Becker, Karl Ferdinand. 1830. A Grammar of the German Language. London: John Murray.
    • Becker, Karl Ferdinand. 1831. Schulgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. Prague.
  • 1832, Germany: the first published sentence diagram (for a Latin sentence in a Latin grammar for secondary children)
    • Billroth, Johann. 1832. Lateinische Syntax für die obern Klassen gelehrter Schulen. Leipzig: Weidmann.
  • 1831, USA: the first published use of numbers to show syntactic structure.
  • 1836, USA: a system for representing syntactic relations in teaching the deaf.
  • 1845, USA: a diagramming system using pictures of ordinary trees (roots down, branches up), with the subject as the sentence root.
    • Barrett, Solomon. 1845. The Principles of Grammar: Being  a compendious treatise on the languages, English, Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, and French. Founded on the immutable principle of the relation which one word sustains to another. (Revised edition 1857). Cambridge: Metcalf.
  • 1847, USA: a diagramming system using bubbles linking related words.
  • 1873, Hungary: A new analysis in which the verb is central and the subject is one of its dependents, to replace the Aristotelian analysis of the subject and predicate as equals. The analysis is presented in a diagram that looks just like a Tesniere stemma (see 1957).
    • Brassai, Sámuel. 1873. Paraleipomena kai diorthoumena. A mit nem mondtak s a mit roszul mondtak a commentatorok Virg. Aeneise II. könyvére. [What the commentators did not say or wrongly said about Book II of Virgil’s Aeneid.]. Budapest: MTA.
    • Brassai, Sámuel. 2011. A magyar mondat. [The Hungarian sentence, 1860–1888] Texts selected by László Elekfi and Ferenc Kiefer. (Ed.) László Elekfi & Ferenc Kiefer. Budapest: Tinta.
    • Imrényi, András & Zsuzsa Vladár. forthcoming. Sámuel Brassai in the history of dependency grammar András Imrényi –. In András Imrényi & Nicolas Mazziotta (eds.), The origins of dependency syntax. A historical survey from Panini to Tesnière. John Benjamin.
  • 1877, Russia: Dmitrievsky published another (apparently independent) suggestion that the verb is central, but without diagrams.
    • Dmitrievskij, Aleksej. 1877. Praktičeskie zametki o russkom sintaksise, I : Opredelenie predloženija», [Practical remarks on Russian syntax : Definition of the proposition]. Filologičeskie zapiski (Voronež) 3. 1–15.
    • Seriot, Patrick. 2004. L’affaire du petit drame : filiation franco-russe ou communauté de pensée? (Tesnière et Dmitrievskij). Slavica Occitania, Toulouse 17. 93–118.
  • 1877, USA: Reed and Kellogg patented their diagrams; they were based directly on Clark’s system, with the bubbles replaced by lines.
    • Reed, Alonzo & Brainerd Kellogg. 1877. Higher Lessons in English. A work on English grammar and composition, in which the science of the language is made tributary to the art of expression. A course of practical lessons carefully graded, and adapted to every day use in the school-room.  (1890 edition). New York: Clark and Maynard.
    • Mazziotta, Nicolas. 2016. Drawing Syntax before Syntactic Trees  Stephen Watkins Clark’s Sentence Diagrams (1847). Historiographia Linguistica 43.
  • 1882, Germany: Viëtor published a pamphlet advocating the direct method, in reaction against the grammar-translation method.
    • Vietor, Wilhelm. 1882. Der Sprachunterricht muß umkehren!: ein Beitrag zur Überbürdungsfrage. Henninger.
  • 1883, Germany: Kern published a third independent proposal for a verb-centred analysis, this time with diagrams like those in Brassai 1873.
    • Kern, Franz. 1884. Grundriss der Deutschen Satzlehre. Berlin: Nicolaische Verlags-Buchhandlung.
  • 1890-1920, England, Germany, USA, France: A movement towards a unified grammatical terminology for all languages.
    • Hall, J., Edward Sonnenschein & A.J. Cooper. 1900. An English Grammar for Schools, based on the principles and requirements of the Grammatical Society. (Including Part 1. Parts of speech – accidence by J. Hall and E.A.Sonnenschein, published 1902, and Part 2. Analysis and syntax, by A.J.Cooper and E.A.Sonnenschein, published 1900.) (Parallel Grammar Series). London: Swan Sonnenschein.
    • Joint committee on Grammatical Terminology. 1911. On the terminology of grammar: being the report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology. (1913 edition). London (Albemarle Street, W.): J. Murray. //catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011682804.
    • Sonnenschein, Edward. 1912. A New French Grammar based on the Recommendations of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    • Sonnenschein, Edward. 1916. A New English Grammar based on the Recommendations of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    • Walmsley, John. 1989. The Sonnenschein v. Jespersen Controversy. In Udo Fries & Martin Heusser (eds.), Meaning and Beyond. Ernst Leisi zum 70. Geburtstag., 253–281. Tuebingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
  • 1906, USA: The first quantitative study of how the study of grammar affects writing produces negative results.
    • Hoyt, Franklin. 1906. The Place of Grammar in the Elementary School Curriculum. Teachers College Record 467–500.
  • 1921, England: The first review of English teaching includes a section on ‘The problem of grammar’, as grammar teaching had become highly contentious.
    • Board of Education. 1921. The Teaching of English in England (The Newbolt Report). London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.
  • 1947-75, UK and USA: A series of quantitative research projects found that the study of grammar had no effect on writing.
    • Andrews, Richard, Sue Beverton, Terry Locke, Graham Low, Alison Robinson, Carole Torgerson & Die Zhu. 2004. The effect of grammar teaching (syntax) in English on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education. http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWebContent/reel/review_groups/english/eng_rv6/eng_rv6.pdf.
    • Braddock, R., R Lloyd-Jones & L Schoer. 1963. Research in Written Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
    • Elley, Warwick, I Barham, H Lamb & M Wyllie. 1975. The Role of Grammar in a Secondary School Curriculum. New Zealand Council for Educational Studies 10. 26–41.
    • Harris, Roland. 1962. An experimental inquiry into the functions and value of formal grammar in the teaching of English, with special reference to the teaching of correct written English to children aged twelve to fourteen. University of London.
    • Macauley, W.J. 1947. The difficulty of grammar. British Journal of Educational Psychology 18. 153–162.
    • O’Hare, Frank. 1973. Sentence Combining: Improving Student Writing Without Formal Grammar Instruction. Research Report No. 15. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
    • Robinson, Nora. 1960. The relation between knowledge of English grammar and ability in English composition. British Journal of Educational Psychology 30. 184–186.
    • Wyse, Dominic. 2001. Grammar for Writing? A critical review of empirical evidence. British Journal of Educational Studies 49. 411–427.
  • 1959, France: Tesnière’s Éléments de Syntaxe Structurale (published posthumously) proposes a verb-centred analysis, with stemma diagrams, to improve school teaching of grammar.
    • Tesnière, Lucien. 2015. Elements of Structural Syntax. (Trans.) Timothy Osborne & Sylvain Kahane. Benjamins.
  • 1963-5, England: The last year in which the Ordinary-level (for 16-year olds at grammar schools) exam in English included an optional question on grammatical analysis.
  • 1970, USA, England: Linguists Gumperz and Halliday argue that grammatical knowledge is only a small part of ‘communicative competence’, which is interpreted as downgrading the importance of teaching grammar. These ideas underpin the new ‘communicative approach’ to foreign-language teaching.
    • Halliday, Michael. 1970. Language structure and language function. In John Lyons (ed.), New Horizons in Linguistics, 140–165. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
    • Hymes, Dell. 1970. On communicative competence. In John Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
    • Johnson, Keith & Helen Johnson. 1998. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. pp 68-74.
  • 1973-86, USA: Research showed that sentence-combining (manipulating sentences out of context, but without metalanguage) did benefit writing.
    • 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.
    • Hillocks, George & N. Mavrognes. 1986. Sentence combining. In George Hillocks (ed.), Research on Written Composition: New Directions for Teaching, 142–146. Urbana, IL: National Council for the Teaching of English.
    • O’Hare, Frank. 1973. Sentence Combining: Improving Student Writing Without Formal Grammar Instruction. Research Report No. 15. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
  • 1982, USA: Linguist Krashen, following Chomsky, argues that direct instruction (‘learning’) is irrelevant to the ‘acquisition’ of a second language, supporting the communicative approach.
    • Krashen, Stephen. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition.
  • 2000, USA: A series of research surveys support explicit teaching of second-language grammar.
    • Norris, John & Lourdes Ortega. 2000. Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50. 417–528.
    • Spada, N & Y Tomita. 2010. Spada, N. & Y. Tomita. 2010. Interactions between type of instruction and type of language feature: a meta-analysis. Language Learning 60. 1–46.
  • 2002, England: The first clear research evidence that the study of specific areas of morphology can affect children’s spelling.
    • Bryant, Peter, M Devine, A Ledward & Terezinha Nunes. 2002. Spelling with Apostrophes and Understanding Possession. British Journal of Educational Psychology 67. 91–110.
    • Nunes, Terezinha & Peter Bryant. 2006. Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes. London: Routledge.
  • 2012, England: The first clear evidence that the study of specific areas of syntax can affect those areas in first-language writing.
    • Jones, Susan, Debra Myhill & Trevor Bailey. 2013. Grammar for Writing? An investigation into the effect of Contextualised Grammar Teaching on Student Writing. Reading and Writing 26(8). 1241–1263.
    • Myhill, Debra, Susan Jones, Helen Lines & Annabel Watson. 2012. Re-Thinking Grammar: the Impact of Embedded Grammar Teaching on Students’ Writing and Students’ Metalinguistic Understanding. Research Papers in Education 27. 139–166.
  • 2013, England: The first compulsory test of grammatical knowledge (‘Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar’, or ‘SPaG’) for children in Year 6 (end of primary school).
 

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