Essay writing (2 pages)

The Grammar/Writing Study

by Roland J. Harris, Professor of English, London University

Problem

This study investigated the relative teaching usefulness of what might be loosely referred to in the United States as "formal grammar" and a "direct method" of instruction. Although previous investigators have focused on this problem, most of them have either restricted their data to objective test results or have conducted their studies over too short a period of time. Harris' research was based on frequency counts of actual writing done before and after a two-year period of instruction. The reader's attention is also directed to the manner in which Harris tried out his procedures in a three-month pilot experiment and validated his criteria of measurement before he undertook his regular experiment. The investigation compared two forms (or classes) of pupils in each of five London schools; ". . . one form had as nearly as possible the same general English work as the other, but with the one major difference that while one form studied and applied the terms of formal grammar in its composition work, the other used none of these terms and devoted the time saved to direct practice in writing." Although the investigator refers to the two groups of pupils as the "Grammar" and the "Non-Grammar" groups, actually grammar and composition were taught in each group. To prevent misunderstanding by American readers, the terms "Formal Grammar" and "Direct Method" will be used here to distinguish between the two groups.

The Formal Grammar group followed a logically organized program of traditional grammar instruction "through the parts of speech, with stress on the function of words"' and employed the traditional grammatical terminology in classroom teaching and in correcting compositions.

Direct Method group evidently used no textbook or grammatical terminology but considered the elements of "sentence building and structure" which came to the teachers' attention as they read the children's writing, treating common errors in the classroom and in compositions "by means of example and imitation, instead of by the abstraction and generalization of the approach through formal grammar—which did not itself, of course, exclude the use of examples." The time saved by not teaching formal grammar in the Direct Method group was devoted to additional composition work.

The textbook used in four of the schools was Humphreys and Roberts' Active English Course, Books 1 and 2 (London: University of London Press, 1939), and the text used in the remaining school was Allen and Mason's An English Grammar of Function, Book 1 (London: Edward Arnold and Company, 1939). The investigator conducted the research with a 2 pair of classes, 5th graders and freshman in high school. The classes contained between 22 and 24 boys and girls. As in the main experiment, the plan for each class was the same except that the one lesson each week devoted to formal grammar in the one class was spent on writing and functional grammar in the other. The work done by both groups included "practice in summarizing, in comprehension, in reading and composing verse, in composition, in silent reading, reading aloud and discussion."

The Formal Grammar group studied sentence-types, subjects and predicate, the parts of speech, and the idea of function, using Active English Course, Book 1, the same text used by four of the five schools in the main experiment.

The Direct Method group, instead of studying the grammar matters which the Formal Grammar Group did, wrote a story about the exploits of a boy separated from his parents during the war. Evidently the class worked out a common plan for the story but each pupil wrote his own version, doing a chapter each week. The teacher afforded instruction in planning the story, achieving inherent plausibility (even if not factual accuracy), maintaining suspense, and using details to suggest character and establish atmosphere.

No class or group instruction was given the Direct Method group in the imitation of sentence structures; but individuals were aided in rephrasing their sentences, and the results were "often brought to the attention of the class." When the pupils finally completed their stories, they exchanged them and evaluated them in committees of three, for suspense, characterization, and vividness of scenes. The investigator noted that the procedures used with the Direct Method group took as much but no more time than those used with the Formal Grammar group and that they elicited "not only enthusiasm but also a certain self-criticism and purposive modification of habits of writing." Two measures were administered to each group before and after 2 years of instruction. One was a short-answer formal grammar test, which required the identifying in sentences and naming from recall of the parts of speech, subject and direct object, phrase and clause, tense and mood, and the like. The students were also required to explain "in grammatical terms" what was wrong with a number of sentences. The Formal Grammar group showed much better progress than the Direct Method group on this measure.

The other measure was a composition. Both classes wrote a descriptive paper on "A Day in the Country" at the beginning and on "A Day at the Seaside" after two years of instruction, being afforded two 40-minute class periods for the writing each time. The compositions were checked for a list of common errors in writing (see below), and the number of errors were recorded for the first 500 words to the nearest end of a sentence. Instructors also graded compositions (out of 100) for “qualitative” aspects: creativity, clarity, lack of repetition and the ability to reduce unnecessary words.

A List of Common Errors in Writing

1. Certain errors in punctuation, notably-- omission of question mark: omission of full stop; omission of apostrophe for possession.

2. Failure to use capital letters at beginning of sentence or with in proper nouns.

3. Misuse of various parts of speech - wrong comparatives and superlatives; failure to give pronouns a clear antecedent (weak pronoun reference); mismanagement of conjunctions; misuse of object forms of pronouns.

4. Failure to give a verb to each clause.

5. Lack of agreement between verb and subject.

The differences between the averages of the Formal Grammar and Direct Method groups on the frequency count measures were all small, insignificant, and favoring the Direct Method group. In four of the schools, one teacher taught both classes, but in the Secondary Modern school the two classes were taught by different individuals. Though the investigator acknowledged that "no certainty exists that each teacher was absolutely impartial in his attitude to the teaching or abandonment of formal grammar, or indeed equally adept at the one approach as at the other." he judged that "all the teachers were willing to be convinced by evidence, desirous of finding out the truth about the matter in hand, competent and practised in the present grammar of the language." (No further attempt seems to have been made to estimate the probable effects of the teacher attitudes and skills on the outcome of the experiment.)

The investigator also reported "The general method of grammar teaching among the five teachers was surprisingly uniform"-grammatical form and terminology being "closely tied to function and meaning," but he did not describe any procedures used to observe or control the teaching in either group, none, that is, other than the teacher direction for the Formal Grammar groups implied by the textbooks, the formal grammar test, the List of Common Errors, and "the relevant sections of the Course of Study."

The teacher instructions for the Direct Method groups "excluded any reference to formal grammar and specified attention to practice in writing and imitating conventional forms and structures." The investigator also stated that the teachers were careful not to use the terminology of formal grammar when correcting the homework of the Direct Method pupils.

Each class met for five 40-minute periods per week and divided its work during four of the periods among the usual areas of reading, drama, poetry, and composition. The difference came in the fifth period, when one group emphasized formal grammar and the other focused on direct methods of instruction. (Details are given early in this summary, under "Problem.") The investigator described the difference further: "The work attempted in the [Direct Method] lesson was basically an extension of the usual composition practice [in Formal Grammar classes], but most teachers gave cohesion and interest to the work by engaging in a variety of longer projects such as the compilation of a diary, a form newspaper, an adventure story similar in general outline to the one discussed in the pilot experiment, or a book of hobbies." Thus some of the time released by omitting study of the terminology of formal grammar could be devoted to writing activity projects and to drawing illustrative sentences, points of usage, and paragraphs from the stories to teach the improvement of writing. A piece of continuous writing was also attempted in the Formal Grammar classes, but not much time was available for the project inasmuch as these classes were carefully following the integrated grammar and composition lessons in their textbooks.

Results

Improvements in Grammar Knowledge

The investigator reported the results of the pretest and post-test in formal grammar: "It is evident from these scores that good progress was made by the grammar forms [Formal Grammar classes] in learning not only the terms of formal grammar, but how to apply these, for Test C contained questions requiring both recognition and use of the common grammatical terminology at the appropriate level." The gains of the Formal Grammar group were, of course, significantly higher on this test than the gains of the Direct Method group.

Scores on the Formal Grammar Test of 5th Graders

					Difference by points between the Formal Grammar Group’s score on the formal grammar test and the Direct Method Group’s score on the same grammar test
	Group	First Average	Second Average	Gain
School A	Formal	33.03	49.71	16.68	16.11
(Primary)	Direct	34.12	34.69	0.57
School B	Formal	36.33	66,62	30.29	26.97
(Primary)	Direct	34.88	38.20	3.32
School C	Formal	19.48	39.96	20.48	19.74
(High School.)	Direct	21.09	21.83	0.74
School D	Formal	15.84	32.84	17.00	15.50
(High School	Direct	22.71	24.21	1.50

Improvements in Error Reduction in Writing Samples of 5th Graders. Frequency counts for errors were made from essays written at the beginning and end of the two-year experiment. A similar analysis was conducted of essays written at three of the schools after nine months of instruction, "to check that things were proceeding according to plan." Although each class used the same topic for the final essay that it used for the first, other topics (but ones calling for the same mode of discourse) were employed for the intermediate composition. (The investigator did not report the topics used, but he indicated that the mode of discourse was narrative or descriptive in each case.)

Significant differences appeared much more clearly in the comparative analysis of the compositions written at the end of the two-year experiment. Of the 55 differences computed then, 11 were significant, and all 11 favored the Direct Method group. Of the 25 differences represented only six favored the Formal Grammar group, and none of those differences was significant.

	Average of Errors per 500 words On First Essay	Average of Errors per 500 words On First Essay (2 years later)
Formal Grammar Group	17.36	15.41
Direct Method Group	18.10	10.21

Qualitative Gains in Writing of 5th Graders.

Instructors also graded compositions (out of 100) for “qualitative” aspects: creativity, clarity, and style (the lack of repetition and the ability to reduce unnecessary words).

	Average score assigned by Instructor for First Essay (out of 100 points)	Average score assigned by Instructor for Second Essay (out of 100 points)
Formal Grammar Group	82	80
Direct Method Group	79	88

From these results the investigator concluded, among other things, that there was "the lack of effective tie between a relatively high grammatical score and improvement in the measured items (types of grammar errors) of the essay. The investigator also expressed dissatisfaction with the low levels of achievement of the Formal Grammar group on Test C, only one class having more than 50 percent of the answers correct. That low achievement, he wrote, "may be seen as a major factor throwing doubt on the advisability of studying formal grammar in the early part of the grade school.

Scores on the Formal Grammar Test of high school freshmen

					Difference by points between the Formal Grammar Group’s score on the formal grammar test and the Direct Method Group’s score on the same grammar test
	Group	First Average	Second Average	Gain
School A	Formal	41.03	58.71	15.78	12.08
(Primary)	Direct	40.81	43.01	3.70
School B	Formal	39.43	69.63	30.20	29.10
(Primary)	Direct	37.40	38.60	1.10
School C	Formal	67.16	81.30	14.14	19.74
(High School)	Direct	55.34	61.85	6.51
School D	Formal	70.12	88.32	18.20	15.01
(High School)	Direct	51.19	54.38	3.19

Improvements in Error Reduction in Writing Samples of high school freshmen

Frequency counts for errors were made from essays written at the beginning and end of the two-year experiment. A similar analysis was conducted of essays written at three of the schools after nine months of instruction, "to check that things were proceeding according to plan." Although each class used the same topic for the final essay that it used for the first, other topics (but ones calling for the same mode of discourse) were employed for the intermediate composition. (The investigator did not report the topics used, but he indicated that the mode of discourse was narrative or descriptive in each case.)

Significant differences appeared much more clearly in the comparative analysis of the compositions written at the end of the two-year experiment. Of the 55 differences computed then, 16 were significant, and all 13 favored the Direct Method group. Of the 29 differences represented only six favored the Formal Grammar group, and none of those differences was significant.

	Average of Errors per 500 words On First Essay	Average of Errors per 500 words On First Essay (2 years later)
Formal Grammar Group	7.36	8.41
Direct Method Group	8.10	6.21

Qualitative Gains in Writing of high school freshmen.

Instructors also graded compositions (out of 100) for “qualitative” aspects: creativity, clarity, and style (the lack of repetition and the ability to reduce unnecessary words).

	Average score assigned by Instructor for First Essay (out of 100 points)	Average score assigned by Instructor for Second Essay (out of 100 points)
Formal Grammar Group	84	86
Direct Method Group	87	93

Of the 5th graders, the researcher noted that his students were drawn from a range of schools and socioeconomic backgrounds, he also concluded that "The failure to profit from instruction in [traditional formal] grammar is thus not confined to any one educational environment or category of children" (of those he studied). In short, the investigator concluded, "It seems safe to infer that the study of English grammatical terminology had a negligible or even a relatively harmful effect upon the correctness of children's writing in the early part of the five Secondary Schools.

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