David Crystal: The Importance of Grammar

(1) In 1988, I wrote a book called Rediscover Grammar at the end of a 20-year period during which few schools were doing much grammar teaching. The situation was nicely captured in cartoon form by McLachlan in its frontispiece. We see a man begging in the street, holding out his hat for donations. Around his neck there is a card, which says: “Grammar Explained: Thank You”. But the passers-by are ignoring him, and his hat is completely empty. Few people were seriously interested in grammar then.

How times have changed. From being a topic of marginal interest, beloved by a few, hated by many, and ignored by most, it has moved into the centre of educational attention. Why the change? The answer lies in developments in thinking about the nature of language, which became widely known during the 1990s, and which helped to shape the national curriculum in English. These demonstrated that the study of grammar has a point. Essentially, if it's taught well, it helps.

Grammar helps to improve a person’s language abilities. There are four core linguistic domains we need to attend to if children are to reach their full potential as communicating human beings: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. And in each of these, it can be shown that grammar has a fundamental role to play.

But only if we take on board that ever-so-critical clause: if it’s taught well. The key to good teaching of grammar is to appreciate that grammar relates to meaning, and to explore exactly how it does that.

Nobody would ever doubt the importance of meaning in educational practice. Meaning is why we communicate – to understand each other, enjoy each other’s company, build social rapport, obtain emotional support. We need to follow and interpret what other people do when they talk or write, and make ourselves clear and effective when we carry out these tasks ourselves.

It’s sometimes thought that meaning is nothing to do with grammar, that it is just a matter of vocabulary. When we say we’re going to “look the meaning of a word up in a dictionary”, we give this impression. But it’s a misleading impression. A word on its own conveys little meaning. Take, for example, the following question: “Write the correct meaning of the following word on the line below - jam.”

If meaning lived in a word, you’d be able to do this. But, of course, you can’t do this, because you don’t know which of the several possible meanings of jam I had in mind.

Did I mean jam in the sense of a preserve, a crush, a problem, a jazz session...? You have no way of knowing. “Give us some context,” you would argue, “and then we’ll be able to carry out the task.”

Quite right. But how am I to give you some context? You could rephrase: “Put the word into a sentence, and then we’ll know what you mean.”

Precisely. If I put the word into a sentence, then you will know what I mean. That is the key principle. Only by using words in sentences are we able to make sense of them. That is what sentences are for. They are there, quite literally, to make – create – sense.

Without sentences, words are vague, ambiguous things. So, to remove the ambiguity, we need to construct sentences such as “I like jam on bread” and “I got stuck in a 10-mile jam”. By giving jam some grammatical context, we relate it to other words, and thus convey a particular meaning.

Grammar is the study of how sentences mean, and how the bits of sentences mean. And that is why it helps.

If we want to understand the meaning conveyed by sentences, and to develop our ability to express and respond to this meaning, then the more we know about grammar, the more we’ll be able to carry out these tasks well.

Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves, so it can help foster precision, detect ambiguity, and exploit the richness of expression available in a language. And it can help everyone – not only teachers of English, but teachers of any subject, for all teaching is ultimately a matter of getting to grips with meaning.

-But I ain’t got sixty pounds.
-One would think you was my father.
-Here! You give me that handkerchief. He give it to me, not to you.

I hope I have luk. I got my rabits foot and my luky penny and my horshoe. Dr Strauss said dont be so superstitishus Charlie. This is science. I dont no what science is but they all keep saying it so mabye its something that helps you have good luk. Anyway Im keeping my rabits foot in one hand and my luky penny in the other hand with the hole in it. The penny I meen.