Examining a Grammar Course: The Rationale and the Result

McQuade, Finlay

doi:10.2307/817403

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The McQuade (1980) study is another that has been referred to recently and although this is interesting because it is rooted in one teacher's practice, the teacher -who is also the researcher -admits that 'since there was no control group and none of the scientific rigour that characterises educational research, the results cannot be interpreted with certainty' (28). McQuade does provide some insights into the relationship between research and practice and also on the substantive issue.…”

Section: Individual Studies From the Ukmentioning

confidence: 97%

Grammar for Writing? A Critical Review of Empirical Evidence

Wyse

2001

British Journal of Educational Studies

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Governmental concerns about primary children's performance in writing in the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) have resulted in the 'Grammar for Writing' Initiative. This resource and the associated in-service training is intended to raise standards in the teaching of writing. The article reviews SATs reports, inspection reports and research evidence in order to address the question: to what extent can this development be justified by empirical evidence on the teaching of grammar? It is concluded that the initiative is not supported by research evidence and that changes will need to be made to English curriculum policy and pedagogy if children's writing is to further improve.

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Section: Individual Studies From the Ukmentioning

confidence: 97%

Grammar for Writing? A Critical Review of Empirical Evidence

Wyse

2001

British Journal of Educational Studies

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“…Studies in the UK (McCauley, 1947;Harris, 1962;McQuade, 1980;Mason et al, 1992;Mason & Mason, 1997) similarly failed to amount to a strong case for the benefits of grammar teaching. The studies by Mason and Mason feature some of the strongest advocacy for the benefits of their particular scheme but as Wyse (2001a) illustrated there are methodological problems with the research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Pupils' word choices and the teaching of grammar

Wyse

2006

Cambridge Journal of Education

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The idea that formal grammar teaching leads to improvements in school pupils' writing has been a popular one. However, the robust and extensive evidence base shows that this is not the case. Despite this, policy initiatives have continued to suggest that grammar teaching does improve pupils' writing: the Grammar for Writing resource is the most recent example in England. Educational analysis on the subject of grammar has moved from a focus on whether grammar teaching improves pupils' writing to reflection on the rational for teaching knowledge about language, and subsequently a focus on a wide range of language topics. The study reported in this paper analysed the way that eight children made word choices during the writing process. Theory is presented to support the idea that contextualized learning of grammar is significant. Five significant influences on word choices are reported. Strong links between text-level influences on word-choices and the use of unconventional language at sentence and word level were found. It is concluded that writing pedagogy should be re-evaluated in order to consider the balance between individualized support and support for groups during the writing process.

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“…Later studies by Warwick B. Elley et al (1976) and by McQuade (1980) do not invalidate this point. On the other hand, it is by no means clear that "application" of selected aspects of grammar cannot be done just as effectively, and a lot more efficiently, without detailed, explicit grammar study, as illustrated by Frank O'Hare's experiments in sentence combining (1973).…”

Section: The Researchmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Typically the research studies have not been fine-tuned enough to reveal that the study of grammar does have at least limited benefits for a few of us as writers. But even this more optimistic conclusion is called into question somewhat by a landmark study done by Findlay McQuade (1980). He taught an elective, junior-senior level Editorial Skills class that enrolled students who, it appears, were typically college-bound.…”

Section: The Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%