Teaching Grammar to Kids: Finding Effective Approaches

Better Reasons for Needing Grammar than "It's Good for You"

I work as an assistant teacher at a charter school in Springville, Utah, with seventh and eighth graders. The way that the students' schedules are set up means that the teacher I work with and I instruct these middle schoolers in math, English and history (both world and U.S.).

As part of our English curriculum we are responsible for teaching these students grammar. The school endorses a program called Shurley English which teaches the students through song and pneumonic devices and other catchy little jingles and whatnot the basics of English grammar. Does this work? I don't know. The students absolutely hate it (though that may not be strong enough a word) and their test scores do not necessarily improve from Day One of school to the Last Day of school. This school year (2007-2008) the teacher I work with has disavowed the teaching of grammar through Shurley English and began using worksheets out of a book of teaching grammar to high school students. She felt that this was "more on the kids' level, since Shurley English was clearly designed not for middle schoolers but kids in the first to fifth grade."

This has got me wondering if teaching grammar for the sake of teaching grammar is doing anything salutary for students. Research done by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has shown that "the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing" and the NCTE urged "the discontinuance of testing practices that encourage the teaching of grammar" (Mulroy 52-53).