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Teaching Grammar: Working withstudent teachersTony Burgess , Anne Turvey & Richard QuarshiePublished online: 28 Jun 2010.

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Changing English, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2000

Teaching Grammar: working withstudent teachersTONY BURGESS, ANNE TURVEY & RICHARDQUARSHIE

Last year, as PGCE tutors, we undertook a small research intended to explore theissues posed by teaching grammar for student teachers of English, with whom wework in secondary initial teacher training. We wanted to explore how trainees arebest supported in what is these days referred to as their ‘subject knowledge’ andaided in the acquisition of teaching strategies in this area of English. Traineeteachers in both primary and secondary sectors have embarked upon new teachertraining curricula. A prominent place in these is occupied by learning to teachgrammar and by knowledge about language structure. But there is much to do inclarifying how these requirements should be met. Our research looked only at ourown students, and at our own course processes, but the initiative may be of interestto others currently facing the opportunities and problems brought by new develop-ments.

We began from work we ordinarily do. Our experience as tutors is that studentteachers need to come at teaching grammar from two directions. There has to bea principled framework about the sort of knowledge grammar is. What is alsoneeded is the opportunity for reconsidering their knowledge about the formalstructures of language. In the training sessions available, we seek to meet bothneeds. We recall that grammar offers choices as well as rules. We counsel anapproach that recognises grammar as a part of what we bring as users of thelanguage to constructing and interpreting texts, yet does not regard it as the onlything that matters or as the sole component of effective use. We emphasise thedifferences that exist in grammars for varieties of English. We stress the opennessto understanding these differences that is necessary for work in multilingual andmultidialectal classrooms. The framework is accompanied by work at our own leveland by examples of teaching, and we have lively sessions. A key to moving forwardis that students’ work in sessions with us should be matched by their continuingattention to developing their own subject knowledge. Meanwhile, the complex taskawaiting them is that of learning on the job in practical teaching, continuing todevelop their own thinking about language, while learning to teach grammar aspart of everything else that they are learning about schools and classrooms andteaching.

The task may be especially complex in the area of grammar, where revising andextending their knowledge of language structure can represent a challenge fortrainees in English, for several reasons. Despite well-aired positions to the contrary,acquiring grammatical knowledge, at a level suf� cient for teaching, is not that easy.

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1358–684X/00/010007–15 Ó 2000 The editors of Changing English

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8 T. Burgess et al.

There is the formal nature of the knowledge, and a common dif� culty can be inknowing what you do not know, when half-remembered lessons from childhoodcan be more confusing than helpful. Grammar makes some sense, once you haveattained a picture of how the morphological and syntactic aspects of a languagesuch as English work together. But you need to know a fair bit before this happens,and you need the possibility of moving back and forth between speci� c features anda picture of grammar’s working as a whole, and a conscious framework ofdescription. Our students are con� dent users of language. They are skilled inreading and interpreting texts and in writing. Just for this reason, it can be dif� cultto turn aside in order to engage the formal aspects of language and daunting toattempt to achieve a knowledge of language structure that is commensurate withtheir abilities in use.

Our priority as tutors has been to support the deepening of subject knowledge.We offer examples of contemporary materials and of teaching strategies, but weemphasise the need for fundamental understandings. We argue for grammar asbroadly relevant to teaching English, not just a matter of constructing activities inclassrooms, important though that is. We spend a portion of our time in trainingsessions on setting out the levels and the categories of a traditional grammar,deriving these from the authoritative Quirk and Greenbaum study (Quirk et al.,1972). As particular areas, we focus on spelling and spelling rules, at the morpho-phonemic level, and, in syntax, on relations between word class and clausestructure. But we feel ourselves constrained by time and restricted by the fewopportunities for working at these issues on a continuing basis. What we sought lastyear was to extend the moves we make in training sessions by offering an ongoingencouragement for teaching grammar during practical teaching experience. We setout to bring together teacher training with possibilities for curriculum development,while at the same time building in research probes, to enhance our own understand-ing of the teacher training process.

We evolved the following package. The training process was modi� ed byintroducing a lesson exchange for all student teachers interested in exploring theteaching of grammar, with this arrangement grafted on to students’ practiceteaching in � rst schools. We invited students to send accounts of lessons andmaterials, and we co-ordinated the circulation. A learning group was offered at theInstitute, for grammar learning at our own level. We posed a long-term goal todevelop a course in grammar for schools, pooling the resources of staff andstudents. Then, our university-based sessions were used as usual to provide anintroduction to teaching grammar, and to help student teachers to identify wherethey felt their knowledge was insecure or strong. From the informal set of questionsthat motivated this process we gathered written answers providing data aboutsubject knowledge. We also gathered data about experience teaching grammar andabout how students’ views were developing, following practical teaching in their� rst schools.

We did not achieve all we had hoped for. But, taken as a whole, the initiative andthe data offer insight into the subject knowledge of a cohort of student teachers ofEnglish and the process of the training year. The work has reinforced our respectfor those presently making their way into English teaching, and has left us withsome interesting questions to ponder further. We report here on the two mainphases of the work and offer some re� ections.

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Teaching grammar 9

Enquiring into subject knowledge

We began by introducing grammar as a component in contemporary Englishteaching, alongside the other components of the subject that we cover in ourintroductory programme. Those who work in teacher training, or with studentteachers in school, will recognise the need to make these sessions active. We drewon previous experience, beginning with an exercise that we have used in other years.We added in, this time, an invitation to contribute to research on teaching grammarand a set of questions—included in Appendix 1—designed to set an orientation andto elicit students’ re� ections on subject knowledge.

In the exercise, we ask student teachers to write a letter, and offer them thefollowing setting. It is later in the year and you are launched on teaching practicein school, and you have been teaching Betsy Byars’s The Eighteenth Emergency toa year 7 class. The lessons have been going well. The class has had some gooddiscussions on the book’s central theme—the hero Mouse’s alienation of Hammer-man, the biggest boy in the school. Then you hit a snag. A parent telephones theHead to complain. The book’s theme is unsuitable. The setting is American.Bullying is not a proper subject for his daughter. The Head requires a letter ofexplanation to this outraged father.

The advantage of this exercise is that it introduces grammar as a topic, in thecourse of using language and in a manner where our students are in touch with theprocess of composing. Our students write the letter. We pose a question. What isit that you know about language that has enabled you to draft this letter and whichmight be worth teaching to children? Following this, we re� ect on the responses.

An initial point is that the letters usually have much in common. The sequencein most letters tends to run from book to children. The writers � rst defend thebook; then they reassure about the class. They tend to close with offers of a furthermeeting. The national curriculum may be invoked. There are indications ofprofessional judgement. In our discussions, models of such letters were madeexplicit. We re� ected on the need to offer contact, coupled with the underlyingreality of the institutional distance that is being maintained. We talked about theinstitutional knowledge involved in such a letter and about constraints on style andsequence. Then we opened up the issue of grammatical choices. There wereadverbial clauses of concession, acknowledging doubts before main clause came toanswer them. There were choices of modality. Pronouns also were carefullycontrolled. From here, it was a step to the more general principle that grammarworks as a level in the understandings that we bring to language and—asimportant—to re� ection on where this knowledge comes from and how it can beacquired.

We had raised the issue of the need for understanding grammar, and for students’working on their subject knowledge. We had also tried to keep grammaticalknowledge in its place—as part of wider understandings, concerning choice as wellas rules, knowledge that needs to be in touch with people’s intuitions as composersand readers. There is more we do, as we indicated earlier. We hold a later sessionon language structure. We offer examples of lessons. We introduce contemporarymaterials, such as the Cheshire Cats Guide (Cheshire County Council, 1997) andthe NATE Grammar Book (Bain & Bain, 1996). We monitor and share lessons. Asimportant, grammar recurs in sessions that we have on children’s writing and on

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10 T. Burgess et al.

spelling. At this initial stage, we looked for � rst and relatively undevelopedresponses to our questions, trying to prepare a ground that was thoughtful andrealistic.

The next step was to ask our students to discuss their own biographies aslanguage users. We asked them for their interests in language and where theseinterests came from. They talked about their prior experience and academic coursesand about the relevance of their own schooling to the tasks ahead. On thisoccasion, we also asked them for some personal estimates and self-evaluation.Which were the areas in which they saw themselves as needing to develop theirsubject knowledge? How did they estimate their own understanding of grammarand the structure of language, given national curriculum requirements? In whatparticular areas did they feel most con� dent, or less so? Following their discussions,each student wrote for us an individual submission on these questions, each fromtwo to four pages in length. We extracted patterns and a quantitative picture, andretained these writings as a starting point for case studies and more qualitativework.

TABLE 1. Student estimates of own understanding of grammar and the structure oflanguage (percentages for English and English and Drama Cohort)

Has basic knowledge from study of foreign languages or linguistics 32.6Has implicit knowledge, uncertain about terms 41.3Not very con� dent, but has implicit knowledge 26.1

N 5 96. Missing or unused data 5 4.

As will be apparent, we wanted to elicit our student teachers’ own estimates oftheir con� dence, with some attention paid to detailed areas. We did not seek tomake a comprehensive inventory. Knowledge of particular topics is well investi-gated and discussed in the QCA survey of serving teachers (SCAA/QCA, 1998). Thecentral � ndings there, which are of greater uncertainty amongst teachers over topicssuch as spelling and sentence structure, were ones we felt suf� ciently certain ofreplicating within our initial training population. We were interested in initialestimates. These were, of course, subjective, but there are degrees of subjectivity,and in this exercise our students’ characterisations of their subject knowledge restedon reasoned re� ection and on articulating a history as individual language learners.The information was intended to supply a starting point for longer-term discussionand exploration, in which there would be opportunities to work more � nely.

As is seen in Table 1, a little below a third of our total cohort felt they had areasonable working knowledge of a descriptive grammar, and cited knowledgebased in past experience. In some cases this included a study of linguistics, in othersa study of foreign languages in some depth, and in others an experience of teachingEnglish as a second language. Two-thirds felt less certain—or were more dif� dent—about making such a claim. Plainly, there were many differences between individu-als, and there were useful insights in the various discussions entered into in thewritten pieces. Many emphasised a security in handling written language andstressed the capacity to recognise well-formed constructions, drawing on implicitknowledge, as they put it, even if they did not always know the ‘terms’. Othersemphasised their lack of con� dence, but also often added that they felt noreservations about the implicit knowledge they possessed. While clearly general, this

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Teaching grammar 11

picture of a group of people who are in motion in their exploration of language � tsour intuitions as tutors.

We also focused students’ attention on particular areas, and in this followed thelist of items used in the QCA survey, based on national curriculum requirements.So we asked our students speci� cally about their con� dence at the different levels:words, sentence structure, text and discourse, spelling and language change. Onceagain, the differences � t our intuitions. They are shown in Table 2. While most feltcon� dent about spelling and recognising spelling errors, there was more doubtabout the ability to make connections between spelling rules and structural aspectsof the language. Even more felt hesitation about handling sentence structure.Meanwhile, notions of language change were new to many and consequently alsoformed an area of greater doubt.

TABLE 2. Student estimates of con� dence in particular areas of subject knowledge for teaching grammar(percentages for English and English and Drama Cohort)

Text and LanguageWords Sentences discourse Spelling change

More con� dent 62.6 46.1 73.9 58.9 41.6Less con� dent 8.8 20.2 6.8 12.2 29.2Con� dent with quali� cations 28.6 33.7 19.3 28.9 29.2

N 5 96. Missing data 5 7.

We probed the background knowledge and experience available in the cohort.Here the information we derived is based on fact and actual undertakings, not onestimates and representations. We give these tables in Appendix 2. The � ndingsabout prior degrees and course of study are striking. Although the majority of ourstudents were coming into English teaching against a background of degrees inliterature, the list gives insight into the varied range of courses of additional studyrelevant to language that had been taken and into relevant components within � rstdegrees. Approximately two-thirds of our students made references of this sort,from MAs in Arabic Studies to courses in phonetics or language acquisition oranalysis of discourse, and many others. A separate note is needed for prior workor other more informal experience related to language teaching. As can be seen inAppendix 2, this can include time in school, specialist tuition, editorial work ortime spent as a journalist, family responsibilities and so on. The scale of thisexperience is wide. It should be noted for its contribution, alongside more speci� caspects of subject knowledge.

Various other sets of data were gathered, including re� ections on the schoolingstudents themselves had followed and descriptions of their interests in language. Wealso asked them for their views, at this stage, of the areas of subject knowledge theywanted to develop. These data on priorities in developing subject knowledge havemost general relevance and are given in Table 3.

Grammar, then, was not neglected in the areas our student teachers were posingfor development. It represented an expertise that many were targeting. It is notsurprising, though, that aims of this kind were set within concerns for teachingbilingual pupils and for the intersection of language variation and culture. Indeed,it seems important for their future work in classrooms that concern for teaching

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12 T. Burgess et al.

TABLE 3. Priorities in developing their subject knowledge identi� ed by students

Priorities Times mentioned

Developing skills to meet the volume of children with little or no spoken English 23Accommodating bilingualism, how far to, and recognising, encouraging and making use 3

of mother tongueHow much, what and when in teaching grammar, how to introduce grammatical concepts 17Teaching Standard English, and how to make corrections where necessary 5How to encourage learning through talk 1The development and manipulation of language in multi-cultural classrooms 9Analysis of discourse and the study of media 2Applying specialist knowledge of teaching EFL and how this should be adapted to the 3

teaching of English (as mother tongue) settingThe teaching of literature 4Gearing lessons to all levels of ability and language background 5Approach to dialect and use to make of it in the English classroom 5How to reach good technical standards of English 4The teaching of punctuation 2How to empower students to use their own language creativity and still foreground 4

Standard EnglishEncouraging children’s con� dence that they have a ‘say’ in how language develops 1Developing my own writing skills 1Reading more literature—pre-C20, literature from other cultures 2

N 5 96.

grammar should be seen, as our student teachers seemed to see it, within a broadperspective, and in relation to a variety of other requirements for the teacher ofEnglish.

Teaching grammar during practical experience

Our students’ � rst practical teaching experience begins in earnest in mid-Novemberand ends in mid-February. This was the time-span for the second phase within thework we are reporting. For various reasons, the lesson exchange was not estab-lished until January, with a � rst mailing occurring pretty much on our students’return to school, following the holiday. In the event, the distribution of someseventeen lessons, in four mailings, in the period before half term, seemed to justifyits introduction, although the scale fell short of what we’d hoped for. We were ableto arrange two meetings of the learning group, one in December, on the last dayof term and another at the Easter half term. We had useful sessions on bothoccasions. The second session, on sentence structure, was especially interesting andwide-ranging. But while the wider structure we established—including aims toconstruct a course—played a part in energising the work, we were probably tooambitious in what we tried to do, a point to which we will return in our re� ections.

Where we were more successful was in forming a picture of the kinds of grammarteaching undertaken by our students and of the processes operating within thetraining year. It is a picture that contains both strengths and some weaknesses. Wederive it in part from lessons that were distributed and also from data that wegathered at half term, on the completion of the teaching practice in the � rst school.At this point, we asked students, on a voluntary basis, to write to us about how

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Teaching grammar 13

much teaching of grammar they had been able to do and to let us have re� ectionson this and on the place they presently saw for grammar teaching. Thirty-six repliedin detail, offering us a one-third sample of our total cohort. More replies wouldhave been desirable. But considering the volunteer nature of the responses, and thepressures bearing on this brief interlude between two schools, to have achieved thislevel of response was in itself evidence of the seriousness with which the issues werebeing taken.

We present the picture, given by these data, in Appendix 3. The table representsthe outcome of our working through responses to our questions, noting undertak-ings of different kinds and developing a classi� cation. It is a taking stock of workemerging, not a blueprint, nor a record achieved through prior planning. Such asummary in tabular form necessarily excludes detail and the power of the set ofstories we received. In our reporting here, we begin by describing more fully thekinds of work that had been undertaken. We want as our priority to seek to dosome justice to the hard-won progress, and to the growth of professional awareness,which lies behind the cells and classi� cation.

Different patterns of initiative and opportunity were apparent. Some work hadbeen occasional. These had sometimes been the personal experiments at which wehinted earlier. Or, a lesson was available, in an interval from other work. Or,something had come up in pupils’ written work. Or, a topic had been taken on,anticipated as being needed before half term by the regular teacher. Many suchlessons were reported by our students, and occurred across the different secondaryyears. The topics included verbs and adjectives, parts of speech or word classesmore generally, paragraphing, direct and indirect speech, speech marks, spellings,and issues loosely related to drafting and re-drafting.

Opportunities also arose for work across a longer period, and our studentteachers took up these possibilities in two main ways. They developed work directlyconcerned with language issues. Such work was usually linked to explorations ofwritten language, introducing different kinds of writing, or providing for enhance-ment of the pupils’ writing skills. Students also planned for grammar and forlanguage work within ongoing schemes of work—on novels and class readers, orpoetry. Both these forms of sustained work yielded interesting projects. Schemes ofwork on language, directly, ranged across the secondary years. As will be seen fromAppendix 3, they included introductions to Standard English and to dialect, andwork on writing of different kinds: investigating newspapers, work on skillsenhancement issuing in a magazine, a half term’s work built round the theme ofpersuasive and informative writing.

Other experience of language work was gained in assisting children with theirwriting, especially in helping with the drafting and re-drafting of written workarising in the context of ongoing schemes of work. All students had also gainedexperience in correcting pupils’ written work, as part of wider training in assess-ment. Much learning took place here, in making written comments or givingfeedback in class. To complete the picture, mention should also be made of post-16work in literature and language, with which some students were involved.

It was a minority, relatively, who had the opportunity for either form of longerproject mentioned earlier, perhaps where students had particular interests orparticular encouragement in school. For the majority, experience gained in teachinggrammar was occasional rather than sustained. It is also apparent that the work

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14 T. Burgess et al.

focused more on the � rst two years of secondary school than on the later years.There will be various reasons for this, familiar both to teacher trainers and tosecondary teachers. It may be that curriculum pressures, especially in years 9 and10, make for relatively restricted opportunities for more advanced work ongrammar and language study, for student teachers to experience and constrain thework available. We also have to ask, as teacher trainers, how far a next step forourselves might be seeking to co-ordinate work on language, in our own planningand in collaboration with subject mentors, across the schools within our trainingpartnership. These are questions that have preoccupied us subsequently. We touchon them lightly here.

For the moment, it is the creativity of student teachers in taking up the task ofteaching grammar that we choose to highlight, together with the questions that areforming for them in the course of practical teaching. We asked our students fortheir views on teaching grammar at this point in their course; and their re� ectionson the lessons they reported often touched on matters of principle. Reading theseaccounts, it is precisely the interim nature of these judgements that makes theminteresting. They are not the writer’s � nal word. The student teachers here had fourmonths earlier been re� ecting on their subject knowledge and picking out theteaching of grammar as important for them, alongside developing the skills to meetthe needs of children in multi-lingual classrooms. They write now from a differentplace.

Issues about subject knowledge remain. A number comment on their nervous-ness, especially in teaching grammar separately. They describe how they researchedtopics. They tell how they embarked on topics and stumbled into dif� culties.Apparently simple subjects dissolved in dust, often in problems that have kept thesages’ beards wagging down the ages. In a lesson on sentence structure, forexample, what elements are mandatory? Or, in a lesson on Standard English, howfar is it the case that this can be structurally de� ned, and what is the linguisticdescription? Starting on teaching grammar, you are learning as you go. Somequestioned a lack of time to do their own research. This seems an importantpoint to note, as pressures on PGCE courses and students multiply. ‘I have nothad enough time to do the reading,’ one writes, and she is not alone. ‘I havefound this quite frustrating in a way because until I have a sound knowledge ofgrammar myself, I will not feel very con� dent to teach a number of grammarlessons and explore different methods of helping students to learn grammar.’ Butbehind uncertainties, and occasional adverse recollections of grammar in their ownschooldays, there is also optimism and � re. For some, the sense of missinga framework themselves is precisely why they covet it for children. Another studentwrites for many, when she comments, ‘My own experience of grammar teaching,from a student’s point of view, was quite negative. However, in my ownteaching, I hope that this is something that I can overcome and learn at the sametime.’

The questions forming here mark out a growing professional judgement. Ourstudents write with clarity, but also with an openness that is welcome in thisdebate. Re� ecting on their teaching, many write with some conviction about theneed for grammar to be taught in context. They also see the contradiction that ifgrammar is suf� ciently important ‘perhaps it should be highlighted as a discretelesson’. They grasp the need for continuity. ‘Grammar is an ongoing issue that

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Teaching grammar 15

students face every time they write. Therefore the teaching of grammar shouldbe a regular thing rather than a lesson that happens once every three months.’‘How’ remains the open question, where it is easier to capture opinions that divergethan the subtle correspondences between them. ‘Through my teaching experienceI have found the teaching of grammar of the utmost importance, as long as itisn’t distanced and made into a separate “issue” or “lesson”’. Or alternatively,‘When I � rst started my placement, I thought that the teaching of grammar shouldbe undertaken in a more delicate or not-so-obvious way … However, havingobserved and taught these lessons, I think that pupils got on with the exercisesand responded to the work in a positive way.’ It would be fruitless to believe theseareas of debate concerning method should be settled in advance in trainingsessions. Precisely what is valuable—and sometimes moving—is the openness tolearning, bringing with it opportunities for the genuine development of professionalthinking.

As well as broad concerns with method, smaller, more pragmatic considerationsalso come from the experience of practical teaching. Delicate re� ections of this kindare also evidence of the different place that these student teachers are now reaching,later in the year. They write about avoiding ‘bitty’ lessons, with tasks that are tooshort. They comment on the same lesson with year 8 as with year 7, and on howthe year 8 lesson went better, since the pupils had more to bring. They write aboutsmall innovations: using the � rst � ve minutes of the lesson for work on words andde� nitions, or having a � ve-minute recapitulation at the end of lessons for a conceptencountered earlier. Some look at strategies for classes that have grown bored withskills, and see no reason for changing well-established points of view. In aninteresting comment, one student teacher contrasts a melancholy, disillusioned sixthform with the eagerness of year 7, and speculates on what is needed to maintainenthusiasm.

What is reiterated is the sense that children could do with knowledge of this kind.The comments on this are powerful for resting on real observations and markingout increasing depth and subtlety in thinking about children. Most return to theimportance of teaching grammar in this context. The advocacy, though, is morethan ritual and without the sonorous melody of the major statement. It isembedded. There is a more general transition here from focusing on teaching tofocusing on learning, with which as teacher trainers we are familiar. Perhapssomething more speci� c is involved. It may be that focusing on teaching grammarraises issues of pupil learning and their capacities sharply. One comment must servefor many.

I perceived a great need for the teaching of grammar at all levels at (the)school. I think this is probably due to the fact that there were so manychildren in the early stages of learning English as an additional language.Many of the children I taught had a much stronger command of oralEnglish than written English. Though they could express their ideas� uently in discussion, their writing was full of grammatical errors. Someof this I think may be due to the fact that many basic grammar conceptsare not taught at key stage three and four, though much is simply relatedto the stage of new language acquisition students are at. For those whodid not go to an English primary school some technical matters are not

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16 T. Burgess et al.

explained beyond being marked incorrect. Many of these children deservea chance of grasping some more of the rules of written English—withoutwhich they can’t do justice to the quality of their ideas. I found it hard toattend to the needs of the children—as I felt under pressure to coverground with the national curriculum. I also took some time to work outways to set up useful exercises.

It would be good to write half as well about such issues.

Comments and re� ections

The work we report on arose from our own momentum in exploring anddeveloping teacher training. We did not take account especially of moves afoot for‘auditing trainees’ subject knowledge’, as the newer language has it, nor of theemphasis on ‘technical terms’ that has arisen with the increasingly speci� c require-ments for teaching grammar and language structure. Clearly, though, our workbears on these discussions. One objective we had was to look for ways ofsupporting the development of subject knowledge, as well as auditing it andmonitoring it. Another was to confront the development of grammatical know-ledge, recognising that this may present particular dif� culties for student teacherswho necessarily do much of their learning as they go, notwithstanding the supportavailable within a training year and the encouragement and skill of their mentorsand tutors. In closing, we offer some comments on the lessons we took from theproject.

A principal re� ection is the challenge that remains in developing grammaticalknowledge for teacher training institutions and their partnership schools. While wedo not think we got it right in the initiative we attempted, we may have gotsomething right in focusing our research on the ways in which subject knowledgedevelops in practical teaching. What comes through strongly in our data is, in equalmeasure, the uneven distribution of opportunities for a sustained teaching ofgrammar and the unmistakable development of professional awareness in the � rstschool period of practical teaching. We perceive and partly know the skill in theschools that lies behind the energy of students’ writing and the openness of theirquestions, together with their own commitment. The question for us is how far thestructures of the training year can capitalise on this beginning and lead it furtherforward.

It may be easier to remedy unevenness than to deal effectively with the patternsof development amongst student teachers. One consequence of auditing studentteachers’ knowledge more closely must be to look at opportunities provided inpractical teaching, since it is what they have the chance to do in classrooms thatprovides the centre for students’ learning and re� ection. It is possible to envisagetracking this, in collaboration with partnership schools, and looking sensibly at thebalance of students’ programmes across the various areas of English teaching.Whether it is possible, in a similarly collaborative manner, to gear the pattern of thetraining year better to the growth of professionalism that occurs within it may beless easily solved. One can overemphasise the sense of wasted opportunity, but itsometimes seems as if we gather large numbers of intelligent people to initial

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training courses and as the year advances progressively deny them time to talk toeach other.

The framework we attempted was too ambitious, and it was probably toodependent on offering opportunities to interested students rather than disseminatingexpectations for all. It would be interesting to explore the possibilities for forms ofdistance learning, grafted on to the regular course patterns of training sessions andpractical teaching. But our hopes for learning groups and suchlike look, onre� ection, a little like the � gments of an unreconstructed past. Nor is a course theright model for an outcome, although there are alternatives that could be tempting.We intended to build in an undertaking that might be useful for the schools. Thispurpose might be better served by being more focused. More realistically achievablethan a course, a more speci� c venture could be singling out a limited number offeatures, and using these as a focus for developing materials and gaining practicalexperience in teaching.

It may seem easy just to note the calibre and energy of the trainee teachers in thisstudy; but it is worth dispelling the myths of low standards and abilities thatsometimes � gure in public debate. Our opening survey shows not only the range ofinterest and knowledge about language, individually and especially collectively, butalso sensible capacities to re� ect on the limits of subject knowledge and to posedirections for development. The record of students’ work in school is marked bytheir equally serious consideration of teaching and above all of the needs ofchildren.

Perhaps the main question that remains for us is one on which we have no data.What is the level of grammatical knowledge that is appropriate in teacher training?As teacher trainers, we are helped by the new national standards, which looktowards a level of practical competence backed by secure subject knowledge. Thereis a good chance of improving and developing coherence in the present framework.The dif� culty for grammar is that there is still uncertainty about the aims; andattempts to represent grammatical subject knowledge so often end up specifyingfeatures through technical terms, as if a glossary were really the end product ofgrammatical knowledge. Neither a glossary view of grammar nor reduction of it toa set of teaching items, nor identi� cation of grammar with teaching basic skills canbe appropriate. The aims must start with a view of children’s learning at the centre,and balance this with an equivalent concern for theoretical knowledge amongstteachers. In this, an integrated and detailed view of grammar’s working couldfunction alongside wider knowledge about language, to support pedagogy based onfundamental understandings. We have to go on learning how to help to make ithappen, but it is not an impossible goal for specialist English teachers, in a graduateprofession.

REFERENCES

BAIN, E. & BAIN, R. (1996) The Grammar Book. Finding Patterns, Making Sense (Shef� eld, NATE).CHESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL (1997) The Cheshire Cat’s Guide to English Grammar (Eds) J. SELBY and M. JONES,

with linguistic commentary by G. KEITH, available from Cheshire County Council Education Services.QUIRK, R., GREENBAUM, S., LEECH, G.N. & SVARTIK, J. (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English (London,

Longman).QUALIFICATIONS AND CURRICULUM AUTHORITY (QCA) (1998) The Grammar Papers (London, QCA).

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18 T. Burgess et al.

Appendix 1. Questions to student teachersWorking with children’s understandings about language—your interests, experience and knowledge

1. What have been your own interests in language—where have these interests come from?2. In your own biography as a speaker, and as reader and writer, what has been signi� cant about your experience?3. Are there areas of language where you have undertaken specialist studies? Which are they?4. Comment on insights into language or into children’s development as language users that you have gained from

wider experience—e.g. in work, as a parent, teaching EFL, literacy work, etc.5. What were strengths or weaknesses in your own schooling for preparing you to teach about language?6. Given expectations of teachers today to understand a whole range of language issues, do you see at this point

areas that you will want to develop through the year?7. How con� dent are you about your own understanding of grammar and of other aspects of the structure of

language?8. How would you rate your own knowledge for teaching about:

· words—word formation, origins, pre� xes and suf� xes, word classes; helping pupils to explore words,recognising errors;

· sentences—kinds of sentence, clauses, phrases, sentence structure; helping pupils to explore sentence structure,recognising errors;

· text and discourse—paragraphs, sequencing, cohesion, distinguishing different types of text;· spelling—common spelling patterns, links between word formation, grammar and spelling;· language change and language variety—development and borrowings, the history of Standard English,

dialects and bilingualism.

9. We are planning the development of a joint course for teaching grammar—to be constructed as a sharedundertaking between staff, you as student teachers and participating schools. Would you be interested inworking on this?

Appendix 2. Prior experience of student teachersPrior courses of study offering understandings about language (Numbers in Englishand English and Drama Cohort)

Courses Refs

As part of � rst degreeOld and Middle English 11Cultural Studies 2History of language 7Linguistic Philosophy 1Linguistics in � rst degree 7Afro-Caribbean Studies 1Discourse analysis in � rst degree 1Linguistics and translation 4Arabic and other MFL courses 5Drama and voice training 8Psychology of language acquisition, as part of � rst degree 5English and American studies 1Black Women’s writing 1Semiotics, and language 4

Further university studyPalaeography 1MA: Applied Linguistics 1Arabic Studies 1

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Other coursesTEFL training and experience 9SE Asian literature 1Creative writing courses and workshops 2Black Women’s & Lesbian Literature 1A level English Language 1Public speaking 1Graphology 1Hebrew Religious school 1Zulu and Thai short courses 1Phonetics 1Performance drama 1Training as a journalist 1Advocacy training 1

Total References 83

Tutorial Group Totals 96

Prior work, family or teaching experience and insights gained (A consolidated listdrawn from a range of experiences mentioned)

Experiences mentioned Insights gained

Tutoring for university entrance Student avoidance mechanisms

Social work with teenagers Teenage modes of dealing with low literacy skills,speci� c dif� culties of adolescents, need for stableadult relationships

Working in East End schools, as part of � rst Strengths and dif� culties of multi-lingualdegree classrooms

Teaching in a primary school on a regular basis Strengths and dif� culties of multi-lingualclassrooms

Teaching English to a Bengali family That it was easier acquiring spoken than writtenEnglish; gaps between the generations arisingover English

Helping infant family members, sons, daughters Early language acquisition, beginning reading,and siblings, cousins; insights as a parent growing up bilingual, observations of children’s

language development

Work in school on a regular basis, as support Disparity between oral and written skills; otherstaff, or regular classroom assistance school related insights such as need for

opportunity to use language, need forencouragement

Teaching ESD, EAL, EFL Preferring to speak your native language toEnglish, if there is a chance, children needingcon� dence and encouragement, languageproblems varying from person to person

Having lived in places where Standard language Standard/dialect issues can/usually do result inand dialect issues were important disputes, inter-generation tensions, peer con� icts

over ‘accent’

Preliminary school experience Various insights, including concern aboutspelling; helping SEN children through tappinginterests, social nature of language, importance ofa safe place to practise language skills

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20 T. Burgess et al.

Running a reading club after school Learning from fear of this, overcomingPublic speaking ‘impediments’

Writing for publication, working as a journalist, Attention to technical accuracy, getting to theediting experience point of a story, taking nothing for granted, being

explicit

Working with pre-schoolers Language as socialisation, role of repetition andmodelling, constructive praise better thancriticism

Working in a special needs school Language and socialisation, confrontationa lbehaviour of some children

N 5 96.

Appendix 3. Grammar teaching in school 1: a summary of work undertaken by 36students

Year 7 Year 8 Year 9 Year 10 Post-16

Schemes of Units on Standard History of Work on Persuasive and Work on stylisticswork on English and English, Standard knowledge about informative and grammar,language dialect, including English, formal language, writing, analysis whilst teaching Aissues and on work identifying and informal focusing on of registers, level language—written common non- writing language variety staged various texts andlanguage standard errors in construction of kinds of textsskills written language pupil texts considered

A unit on creative Work involved Work on languagewriting, involving drawing cartoons, in society, withvarious grammar whilst using particularexplorations nouns, adjectives, attention to gender

verbs, adverbs

Sustained work A fox-hunting Attention paid toon skills debate—paying grammar, whilstenhancement, attention to skills studying texts inissuing in a in adapting to A level literaturemagazine different registers

and styles

Sustained work onnewspapers,involving stylisticand grammaticalinsights

GRASP work,across a period,adapting textbookand worksheetexercises, also inliteracy and basicskills initiatives

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Occasional Fifteen or so Ten or so Six or so Six or solessons occasional lessons occasional occasional lessons occasional lessons

on adjectives, lessons on on present on common mis-verbs, tenses, prepositions, participles and spellings, wordsimiles, speech verbs, paragraphs, adjectives, classes, revisionmarks, parts of direct and indirect apostrophes, and re-draftingspeech, speech, speech spelling,paragraphs, direct marks headlines, formaland indirect and informalspeech writing

Lessons Work on topics Work included Some workwithin such as simile topics such as developed in theschemes of and metaphor, direct and indirect course of studyingwork on class alliteration, parts speech, Romeo and Julietreaders or of speech and uses punctuation (none reported aspoetry made of nouns, arising from class

verbs, adjectives novels or poetry)within a poem

Sustained Preparing Y7 for Individual work (1) Supportingwork on NC assessment with students student writingwriting (work on preparing GCSE on GCSE

beginnings, coursework (mature) courses.middles, endings,punctuation), (2) Supportingchoosing words student writing infor atmospheric A level literaturewriting, re-drafting andediting

Assessment, All students All students All students All students All studentsmonitoring gained experience gained experience gained experience gained experience gained experienceand feedback in correcting in correcting in correcting in correcting in correcting

pupils’ written pupils’ written pupils’ written pupils’ written pupils’ writtenwork, as part of work, as part of work, as part of work, as part of work, as part ofwider training wider training wider training wider training wider trainingin assessment in assessment in assessment in assessment in assessment

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