Textbooks covering grammar
As your editorial suggests, textbooks that deal effectively with grammar would be a useful resource for teachers in schools (“A lesson learnt from Singapore”, 15/4).
It needs to be clearly understood, however, that grammar textbooks from the 1950s or 60s dusted off and tarted up with some colour print would not suffice. To be genuinely useful, new textbooks dealing with grammar would need to be properly aligned with the sensible approach to knowledge about language to be found in the English component of the Australian Curriculum.
In addition, the grammatical patterns of the language should be learnt in the process of working with texts that have value in their own right, both the ones that students read and those that they compose in response to them.
There is an overwhelming body of research evidence that shows that the way grammar was generally taught in schools prior to the 1970s did not really work well for the majority of students. Then, grammar was disconnected from other areas of the curriculum and students were often bored by arid exercises with deliberately faulty sentences that had no meaningful connection to any genuine writing.
Let’s have useful resources by all means, but we should be careful about unproductively trying to turn back the clock.
Garry Collins
President, Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE)
Tags: Curriculum matters |
May Masterclass 2021THE CHALLENGE OF TEACHING ANALYSIS: DO WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR PRACTICES? Teaching the process of analysing texts in order for students to produce a spoken or written response remains amongst the most exciting and difficult challenges we face as a community of English teachers. Most recently, the high-stakes nature of unseen examinations fo... |
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JCU SpectacularJoin Dr Claire Hansen for a two-hour session on teaching Macbeth. We'll dive into an exploration of the language of Macbeth and teaching strategies to engage students with Shakespeare's Scottish play. The workshop will also explore learning activities for Macbeth created by the Shakespeare Reloaded project. This session will... |
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Grammar DayA grammar workshop will be held at Elanora State High School on Saturday 29 May 2021 to assist attendees to develop their understandings of grammar in order to fully comprehend and to effectively teach the Australia Curriculum: English (AC:E). Also highly relevant to Years 11 & 12. This will be an updated re-run of the activity ... |
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Teacher event - external assessmentThe second series of pre-external examination events will be held for teachers on Saturday 31 July as a face-to-face event and online. Recorded materials will remain available to all participants online until the examination week in October. Date Claimer giving further information is available for download ... |
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Student event - external assessmentFlexible modes of delivery will allow you and your students to engage with the materials at a time that suits you. Once again this event will be fully online to cater for all members and their students. This year the materials will come to you live in the afternoon of Wednesday 8 September and again in the morning of Saturda... |
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