Reading

Another argument for teaching grammar is in improving reading skills. This is where it is important to stress that ‘grammar’ means grammatical analysis rather than mere error-avoidance. If the teaching of grammar was all about avoiding forms such as ain’t, it would be irrelevant to reading; after all, it is the author rather than the reader that chooses what words to use. In contrast, grammatical analysis is highly relevant to reading because it is simply a conscious and articulated version of the analysis that any reader makes. To read a sentence is to analyse it – its words, its grammar and, ultimately, its meaning. The only differences between ordinary expert reading and grammatical analysis are that the latter is completely conscious and reflective, that it is explicitly expressed in terms of a standard terminology and notation, and (of course) that it is much, much slower.

Grammatical analysis helps children’s reading in two ways, one very specific and the other global. Specific grammatical instruction helps children when reading sentences with particularly difficult syntax. The evidence for this claim comes from research by Ngoni Chipere[5], working with non-academic 18-year olds. The task for his subjects was to read complex sentences like The doctor knows that the fact that taking good care of himself is essential surprises Tom, and then to answer questions such as What does the doctor know? or What surprises Tom? All the sentences had a similar syntactic structure, so it was possible to train some subjects in handling sentences with this structure by showing them how to break the sentences down into simpler sentences and then to recombine these. The experiments showed that this training had a clear positive effect on comprehension skills, so trained subjects understood the sentences better than untrained subjects did. Like the research on writing reported above, this research shows the benefits of highly focused grammar teaching in which the construction taught is also the one tested in the research.

Turning to the global benefit of grammar teaching for reading, this is more a matter of conjecture than of research, but it is so plausible that it should be taken seriously. The claim is that grammar teaching encourages pupils to pay more attention to grammatical structure in their reading – in other words, to ‘notice’ it[6]. When we meet a difficult or unfamiliar word or structure, we can react in different ways. At one extreme, we can stop and look at it to puzzle out what it means and how it works. This is more likely if we are used to grammatical analysis because that is precisely what such analysis consists of: working out how the parts of a word or sentence fit together and produce their joint effect. At the other extreme, we can give up on grammar and guess the meaning. This is what most of us do with sentences such as this: No head-wound is too trivial to be ignored [7]. This apparently simple sentence is remarkably hard to understand, as you will confirm by considering its opposite: No head-wound is too trivial to be treated. I would guess that you found this just as sensible as the first, but they can’t both be sensible. In such cases, we switch off the normal rules of grammar and rely on common-sense.

Between these two extremes are constructions that most of us read but don’t hear, such as the house in which he lives. If the goal is simply to extract meaning, a reader can simply ignore the position of in; but a reader who finds syntax interesing will pause and absorb the syntactic detail. There is ample evidence that syntactic knowledge grows throughout the school years[8], and that one of the main models – perhaps the main model – for young writers is the material that they read. Moreover it is clear from errors such as the house in which he lives in that novices struggle to understand sophisticated constructions; so the more attention they pay to the sentences they read, the more effectively they will learn to use such constructions themselves. But paying attention to syntax is a waste of time if the only aim is to extract meaning. Some children are natural ‘noticers’, but many are not; and (so the argument goes) it is for the second kind of child that grammar teaching is particularly important. Of course the grammar teaching for writing may focus on particular constructions, such as in which, which children need to learn, but there is simply too much grammatical detail to teach it all in classroom time, so the best strategy is to provide a general tool which will allow children to learn from their reading.

One particularly important kind of reading where grammatical analysis is especially helpful is the reading of literature – stories, novels, poems and so on. Literary works that are read in class are, by definition, well written, so they serve as an excellent model for linguistic novices. And indeed, one of the main arguments for linking literature to language-teaching in English is that children will become better writers through reading literature. As we all know, mere ‘exposure’ works for some children, but not for all, and maybe those for whom it does work are those who are naturally inclined to ‘notice’ the grammar and vocabulary of what they read. If so, then small amounts of carefully focused grammatical analysis may help the others to notice, and learn. I give an example in section Ошибка! Источник ссылки не найден. of this kind of analysis.