Grammar & Usage

I have to start off by saying that I found Chapter 7 to be particularly taxing (although I have to admit, I actually enjoyed going over some of the common grammar/usage error exercises). There was so much information on the different types of grammar and I had a pretty tough time getting through the section on Chomsky and transformation-generative grammar. I will say, however, that I was intrigued by the studies that were conducted with high school students and used to discover whether or not teaching grammar or leaving it out of the curriculum affected students’ ability to write. The conclusion of the experiment was that grammar instruction had no significant bearing on a student’s writing skills. I thought this was remarkable since, from a very early age, instruction on how to write using the rules of traditional grammar is emphasized in schools.

In our last class discussion, it seemed like many people were reconsidering their stances on whether or not grammar was more important than meaning. Grammar, at least in my own experience, was drilled into my education as the tool to become a better writer. As I’m now beginning to realize, all this time I’ve been reading over my papers and trying to fix ‘grammatical’ errors, I’ve probably been looking at usage. So why do schools keep stressing the instruction of traditional grammar? As Williams’ points out, this method only “perpetuat[es] a historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language” (193). Transformational-generative grammar and cognitive grammar are fascinating for linguists and psychologists, but they don’t seem to have a real-world application for instructing students.

The alternative to these three is phrase-structure grammar, which Williams says is “superior” to traditional grammar because it “provides a more accurate analysis of language” (198). This description sounds wonderful, but since phase-structure grammar waned in popularity around the mid-1950s, it looks like this ongoing misunderstanding about what constitutes true grammatical errors and what are errors of usage will remain in our school systems for some time to come, especially if teachers cannot properly identify the difference. It comes as no surprise then that students get discouraged in their writing when so much weight is placed on mechanics and simple usage errors instead of content. Native speakers of English generally know how to get their thoughts across (whether spoken or written), but it takes the right type of instruction and practice throughout life, and particularly in school, to enable individuals to become competent readers and writers. As of the end of this chapter, I’m still not entirely sure what type of training that entails. Williams left me with little confidence that any of the types of the grammars he described will truly help students. And with each new chapter, I’m finding this issue of grammar versus meaning to be more and more perplexing.