Research School Network: Is grammar knowledge the missing piece in the whole-school writing jigsaw? Grammar gives teachers a shared language to talk about good writing and help pupils improve it across subjects.

Grammar is a thorny topic for many secondary teachers. A lot of teachers weren’t taught grammar at school themselves, and it can feel like an Achilles’ heel – an area of vulnerability that is best avoided at all costs. Indeed, being put on the spot and asked to explain the difference between an adverb and a preposition by a curious Year 8 class is enough to bring most teachers out in a cold sweat.

Many teachers, both primary and secondary, also feel the way that grammar is taught and assessed in schools takes the wrong approach. Current methods favour naming and identification over using grammar as a tool to improve the way pupils communicate.

But without some grammar knowledge, it can be difficult to have productive conversations about writing. If we asked a group of teachers to identify features of an effective piece of writing, we might get comments like ​‘it’s well-structured’ or ​‘ideas flow together nicely’. These kinds of comments may be accurate, but they don’t give us anything concrete or explicit that pupils can replicate in their own writing.

Furthermore, having a shared language to talk about writing can make giving feedback simpler and more efficient. Being able to say to a pupil ​‘try using an adverb here’ is much easier than saying ​‘try using one of those words that expresses time, manner, or place’.

So how do we equip and empower teachers to confidently talk about the way language works without getting bogged down in complex theory and definitions?

There are three linguistic features that can help teachers improve pupils’ writing across the secondary curriculum: adverbials, nominalisation, and subordinating conjunctions.

While these can help improve writing in a generic sense, as the EEF’s Secondary Literacy Guidance Report reminds us, literacy skills are ​‘both general and subject-specific’. Therefore, any literacy approaches should support the unique ​‘habits of mind’ that exist in each discipline.

• Adverbials (sometimes called discourse markers) perform several functions. In general, they help writing to feel cohesive and well-structured. For example, signposting where ideas build upon each other or contrast with each other. They allow writers to express tentative thoughts where appropriate.

In English Literature, adverbials may be used to layer interpretations of a metaphor. In History, they may be used to sequence factors leading to an important historical event. In Science, they can be used to explain steps in an experiment.

• Nominalisation is the process of turning verbs and adjectives into nouns and noun phrases, and is a way to increase the formality of writing and give a sense of ​‘academic voice’.

In English, this might be using nouns like ambition or fragility to describe character qualities. In Science,
it might be nouns to describe processes such as ionisation or magnetic attraction.

• Subordinating conjunctions are used in different ways to create complex sentences. They are used to express a causal relationship, emphasise contrast, or consider multiple perspectives and ideas.
  

These are not just a tool to improve writing; they are also a way to deepen the way pupils’ think. Complex sentences allow us to think about and express complex ideas in a sophisticated, nuanced way.

As with so many things in education, striking a balance is key. We don’t need teachers to have a PhD in linguistics, but we do want them to feel confident in discussing the grammatical features of good writing.

Rather than grammar teaching encroaching upon subject teaching, grammatical knowledge makes explicit what good writing entails and provides a shared language to support pupils to replicate this in their own work.

Find out more by signing up for this webinar: Five principles for teaching grammar