The boredom or terror of grammar is the first association that comes to mind when many youngsters and adults think of English class. They shudder from the endless grammatical terms -- indefinite pronouns, intransitive verb, participle, gerund, adverbial phrase -- that must be memorized and used in labeling the words of sentences or taking sentences apart in diagrams:

Grammar study is not just an unhappy memory from the past like World War II or the McCarthy era. The most recent survey of writing instruction in America by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), published under the title Research in Written Composition, reports that "many elementary and secondary schools continue to make grammar a major component of their curricula" ( 1986).

For countless students, grammar is a confusing maze leading to tears, tedium, and the total rejection of English classes. The tragedy is that their negative feelings are fully justified.

Sometimes good medicine tastes vile, like fish oil to unclog arteries or barium for an intestinal x-ray. Sometimes useful exercise is tedious -- practicing scales for piano virtuosity, track work to win football games, and sit-ups for a trim waistline. But it does not follow that all unpleasant or tedious prescriptions are beneficial.

In 1963 the NCTE published its first comprehensive survey of research on the teaching of writing. After reviewing all available studies, the authors issued this unequivocal condemnation of grammar instruction:

. . . in view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in actual composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing . . .

The most recent NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) survey of research finds no reason to question this condemnation:

None of the studies reviewed for the present report provides any support for teaching grammar as a means of improving composition skills. If schools insist upon teaching the identification of parts of speech, the parsing or diagramming of sentences, or other concepts of traditional school grammar (as many still do), they cannot defend it as a means of improving the quality of writing.

The thoroughness with which the issue has been researched is seen from a study by Harris 1 entitled "An Experimental Inquiry into the Functions and Value of Formal Grammar in the Teaching of English, with Special Reference to the Teaching of Correct Written English to Children Aged Twelve to Fourteen." Papers written by a group of students who studied traditional grammar for two years were compared with papers from students who received no grammar instruction. The papers of students who studied grammar had more errors and less sentence complexity -- that is, they were worse -- than the papers from students who were not given grammar instruction. Ironically, the students who studied grammar did master the terminology and could apply it in analyzing sentences, but this did not have a positive effect on their actual writing. Other researchers studied stu dents ranging from elementary school to college level -- but always with basically the same negative outcome.

1       Throughout the text we refer by last name to educators whose ideas we cite. Their publications and other resources are listed in the bibliography.

Despite fifty years of research showing that learning the parts of speech and identifying them in sentences have no benefits, textbooks continue to feature grammar, as shown by a sample page from one of the best-selling kindergarten-through-eighth-grade language-arts series, Silver Burdett English. The page in is reprinted from an advertising brochure we picked up at the publisher's table while attending the 1989 convention of the Florida Council of Teachers of English. It is presented in the brochure as representative of the grammar lessons in the seventh-grade-level textbook from the series, as indicated by the statement above the page from the brochure.

Several reasons that grammar instruction has not been useful are illustrated by the lesson. To begin, the terminology involved, such as interrogative and indefinite pronouns, is often more complex than the actual sentences it is supposed to help clarify. Count the number of syllables in a random sample of words in this book or any other typical text. You will find most words have one or two syllables. A few have three. However, interrogative has five. Antecedent,infinitive, preposition, and adverbial each has four. Grammatical terms have been overgenerously endowed by their creator with syllables. Large dosages of polysyllabic terminology in teaching any subject produces cognitive overload, jams processing, and hinders learning.

Another problem is limited usage. The terminology of football can be confusing, and terms such as offside or man in motion stump the novice fan. But these terms are used over and over again at each game, so they eventually become familiar. In contrast, the terms interrogative and indefinite pronoun are not encountered over and over again in normally using language -- in reading magazines, newspapers, or novels ("Sweetheart, the way you whisper interrogative pronouns gives me shivers.") -- so the terms have no opportunity to take root in memory.

Furthermore, someone can point out a player offside and explain that it means the player is in front of the ball before the hike. Once seen, this is easy to recognize again. But the lesson on indefinite pronouns requires memorizing all twenty-four of the words presented in the box labeled "Indefinite Pronouns."

Worse yet, in contrast to seeing a man in motion, definitions of grammatical terms invariably involve other complexities and abstract concepts. In the lesson, the five interrogative pronouns are illustrated with sentences. The first sentence contains who and the last whom. Does the lesson explain when to use whom instead of who? Deciding which to use requires mastering an entirely different, comAll lessons in Books 7 and 8 have a predictable, manageable length for easy lesson planning. -- from Book 7 FIGURE 1. From "Silver-Burdett English K-8: Setting the New Standard" Brochure. Lexington, MA: Silver, Burdett, & Ginn, 1989. Reprinted with permission.

But the most devastating problem surfaces the very first time a student tries to use his knowledge from the lesson to write just one word -- the answer to Exercise 11. For Exercise 11 he must choose a word from the box labeled "Indefinite Pronouns" to fill the blank. Two words in the box are several and everybody. Will either of them fit the sentence in Exercise 11?

Does the lesson explain why everybody is a correct answer but several is not? Can the reason be that one word is singular and the other plural? No. Everybody and several both mean more than one person -logically they must both be plural. In fact, everybody is more people than several, so everybody must be "more" plural. Since everybody can be used in Exercise 11 but several cannot, should we conclude that only "very" plural pronouns are used with the verb was?

No, because another pronoun in the box, someone, is also a correct answer for Exercise 11. Someone is singular, excepting possibly Siamese twins. Apparently some singular pronouns can also be used with the verb was.

But we have traveled far beyond the lesson. Singular indefinite pronouns are not distinguished from plural indefinite pronouns in the lesson. In the box, the indefinite pronouns are neatly listed in alphabetical order, not grouped as singular and plural. There is no way to decide -- on the basis of the lesson -- which indefinite pronouns can be used with the verb was in Exercise 11.

When a student tries to do Exercises 11 to 25, he finds that there is no information in the lesson to help him decide which pronouns from the box can be placed in each blank. The lesson assumes students can properly use indefinite pronouns from language habits they bring to the lesson, and its sole accomplishment is having students memorize the group of words called "indefinite pronouns." It has nothing to do with the real writing ability involved in answering Exercises 11-25, ability developed through usage, not memorization of grammatical categories.

The reason that usage overrides grammar in learning English is seen in the answer to why everybody can be used with the verb was in Exercise 11. We have here a "special case," common in hybrid English which owes its richness for description at concrete and abstract levels to having borrowed the best from several languages and, for the same reason, fails to follow form like pure predictable Latin.

Everybody, although plural, is always used with a singular verb. One sometimes hears the explanation that everybody means the whole single group, so it is singular. But why then isn't all singular? All, the first word in the box of indefinite pronouns, is synonymous with everybody in the context of Exercise 11. ("All were in the corridor" means the same as "Everybody was in the corridor.") So the answer is not in logical grammar but common usage.

The common problem of special cases stemming from common usage is seen in amusing mistakes by toddlers, such as: "Doggie eated all his food." The past tense of eat is ate, not eated. This must be individually learned: There is no grammatical principle for going from eat to ate. It is one of the many irregular verbs which form a mountain of common usage confusion for anyone trying to learn English through formal grammar.

Generally, people learn a language through usage and employ it by habit. Children can speak proper sentences with subjects, verbs, and modifiers long before they come to school. Their inadequacies in writing arise primarily because spoken language -- especially when regional or ethnic dialects are involved -- differs from standard written English. Standard written English is the national (and even international) language of business, commerce, science, and academic knowledge, so we want children to graduate from American schools equipped to use it effectively. The best way to learn standard written English, research shows, is the same way spoken language is learned, through usage and habit, not through formal grammar.

Various types of grammar are tools for linguists in describing a language. But teaching a grammar of a language has not proved effective for teaching the language to most students.

Why does grammar continue to be taught? It is not because English teachers do not care about students, or worse, want to see them fail. People who become teachers tend to be sensitive men and women who care very much about helping others. The authors of this book have between them spent three-quarters of a century working in education and have never met a teacher who does not care deeply about helping students learn.

One reason is that a few common grammatical terms are a useful part of any educated person's vocabulary. Terms like noun, verb, subject, and predicate occur frequently enough in nontechnical discussions of language -- such as in newspaper or magazine articles and conversations-that they are worth learning. Also, terminology can be helpful in explaining language patterns to students and in correcting their errors. But experience shows that the terminology is best taught when the need for it arises in a usage lesson, as illustrated in Chapter 9.

While a little, properly dispensed grammar instruction is beneficial, we have been administering fatally large doses to many students because of a more basic problem.

Formal grammar instruction has persisted because truly effective alternatives for teaching writing have not been available until recently. When a society has a need to solve an important problem but no solution to meet the need, the situation is rife for superstition, alchemy, charlatanism, and other grabbing-at-straws methods. This is why George Washington was bled to death by doctors trying to cure his pneumonia. His physicians were not negligent or malicious in treating America's greatest hero of that glorious time, but they had no solid medical knowledge to draw on. Their limited science told them to take the worst possible action.

Yet even this cultural heritage does not keep us from making a similar mistake in language education -- teaching grammar -- because we are in the same situation as the physicians: The science of mass education is young; we lack understanding about many problems and, until recently, had no effective alternatives for teaching writing. A cynic like Twain could maintain that, no matter how refined our philosophy of science becomes, it may remain difficult to act knowledgeably lacking knowledge.