Grammar – Do you need it?

Grammar: Do you need it?

There aren’t many things that will cause the linguistic sparks to fly. But this question can usually be relied upon to provoke strong feelings among linguists and non-linguists alike.

I’ll summarise both sides of the argument.

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Yes! We need grammar.

Language is “rule-governed behaviour.”

You only have to watch a child acquiring their first (native) language to see that they are attempting to learn and apply the rules of the language.

Some people say that they are only mimicking what their parents say. But less than a minute’s reflection should tell us that this is not true.

Me want milk. Is it likely that they’ve heard that from their parents? I don’t think so and even if they did, it won’t be long before they move on to I want some milk. Why? Because I want some milk is based on an English grammatical rule that the child has learnt. And when I say ‘learnt’ I don’t mean that they can recite a rule (‘The subject of a sentence takes a pronoun in the nominative case.’) This involves knowing a metalanguage (a language for talking about language). If the child grows up to become a linguist then he might also acquire the metalanguage because the linguist’s job is to talk about language. But the child is in the process of identifying the patterns (rules) that underpin their language. And by the time they are about 4 years old they’ll have worked out how the language they were born into works (i.e. they’ll have mastered the grammar of the language)..

But on the way to figuring out the rules they’ll make a lot of errors. But it’s these errors which often provide the best evidence that the child is learning grammar rules.

Tom sitted on the see-saw demonstrates that the child is building a sentence on an incorrect rule. But it’s a very intelligent error and shows that already the child knows that there are consistent patterns on which the language is based and all he needs to do to learn the language is to work out the patterns. In this example, he worked on his knowledge that very often a verb like sit will end in ed if it’s describing something that happened in the past. Mostly he’d be right (lift/lifted, fit/fitted). But he hadn’t bargained on the complexity of English and it will take a bit more experimentation before he gets it right consistently. But even when he gets it right, don’t expect him to be able to use metalanguage to explain the grammar rules on which the language is based.

Our language use is based on our knowledge of the rules. But clearly we are not talking about conscious knowledge, because if we asked most people to explain even the most elementary English sentence they would experience great difficulty and mostly would not know where to start. But they could generate all the sentences of their language without consciously thinking about the rules on which they are based.

So it seems that we have somehow internalised all the rules of our language so that when we want to express ourselves, we don’t need to consciously think of the rules before we make an utterance.

Now for the other side of the argument

No! We don’t need grammar

Although it would be hard to deny that language is based on grammatical rules, it would be equally hard to argue that we consciously consider the rules before engaging in an utterance. And if our grammatical knowledge is unconscious, why should we need to spend time consciously learning it? If a child is raised in a particular linguistic community, it is inevitable they’ll learn whatever language they hear in that community. The form that it takes may be slightly (or considerably) different from the one that is promoted in the school that the child attends. But this is another issue and probably has to do with factors such as social class, the peer group, gender, or a combination of all these (and other) factors.

Some people believe that if we want to have children use the form of the language that the school prefers, we need to teach grammar. Others have found this approach a recipe for frustration for the teacher and acute boredom for the child. My experience has been that the only students who do well in grammar are those who already use the variety of language which the school promotes and perhaps we need to wonder about the point of teaching grammar to this group if they already speak the language and did so without any special grammar lessons.

So let’s synthesise: the yes & no of grammar

Yes, grammar underpins all language. We could never learn a language without learning its rules. And it’s because of a finite number of grammar rules that we are able to comprehend and generate an infinite number of utterances some of which we may never have heard before.

No, we may not be conscious of the rules that we use to generate and to comprehend the language we use all day, every day, but yes our language use demonstrates that we are unconsciously manipulating the rules which we have unconsciously learnt.

No, the teaching and learning of grammar in schools will probably make little difference to a child who speaks a form of the language which does not have the school’s approval.

So the language children speak is determined by the language environment they have been born into and that language is based on a set of grammar rules that the child has learnt unconsciously and uses unconsciously. These rules may be different from the rules which underpin the language which is preferred by the school. Teaching grammar rules to children in a conscious way will make little difference to the language they speak.

For the observant

You will have noticed that our discussion has focused on the issue of grammar in the context of first language. And that this blog is called Second Language Mentor and is usually about second language learning. Does this make a difference? Is there a difference between first and second language acquisition? Well, the answer seems obvious. For most of us there is a vast difference.

Now if there is a difference and if grammar and language are so closely related, is there a difference between the place of grammar in first and second language learning?

Stay tuned as this question will be answered in the next posting

3 Comments

• 

  By ruth, March 18, 2011 @ 5:31 pm

  Lovely summary Gary, of the pros and cons of consciously learning grammar.
  Two comments.
  1. Is there not an apples/oranges problem in your examples? – in the case for YES, you’re referring to a toddler-pre-school child; while in the case for NO, we have that child many years older, when their functional needs are surely v. different
  2. You cite the well-known problem of boring grammar lessons at school. I believe this has more to do with the WAY grammar has been taught both traditionally and more recently, than with WHAT was taught. Once we teach grammar in the context of students’ lives, and not as a set of rules to be memorized and applied, things start to look up. IMHO.

  I’m looking forward to your next post, Gary.
  Ruth

• 

  By Anthony H, March 18, 2011 @ 6:58 pm

  Hi Gary, I’m really enjoying reading your articles. Thanks. This may be a question for a future blog but is one type of grammar more appropriate than another in the second language classroom?

  cheers
  Anthony

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