Grammar

When you were in school, do you remember completing worksheets with instructions like this?

In the sentences which follow, underline the simple subject once and the simple predicate twice. Circle the direct object once and any indirect objects twice. Put round brackets around all adjectivial clauses and square brackets around adverbial clauses and draw arrows to indicate the nouns or verbs which these modify…

Perhaps you remember going to classes where teachers proudly hung posters like this one?

In short, you probably remember studying formal grammar. When I was in middle school, the formal study of grammar was commonplace and my classmates and I spent many hours dissecting sentences into their component parts. We did not do much actual writing per se, and we really didn’t integrate the lessons learned into our everyday communication; however, in this sort of laboratory environment, we could recognize a split infinitive or dangling preposition instantaneously.

This ability didn’t really help us become better writers.

Years later, when I began teaching, formal grammar study was clearly no longer fashionable. Instead, students were expected to learn grammar “in context”. Scholars have written literally thousands of pages devoted to this.

N.B. Yes, I do mean “literally”, not “figuratively”. There really are thousands of pages.

Essentially, learning grammar in context means de-emphasizing the “rules” and letting students decipher patterns through exposure to grammatical forms proper to the context. In other words, the “correct” use of standard English is appropriate for an academic essay, but not necessarily for a story or informal conversation.

Teaching, and learning, grammar in context was seen as the way to go by many for quite a number of years; however, in the last few years, some are questioning the necessity of learning grammar rules at all. This is the era of texts, “tweets” and “snapchats”:

U dont rilly cr bout grmmr do u??? #h8grmmr

Well, actually, I do. I still teach grammar to my students. Most of the time it is still done in context, but I do also break out mini-lessons from time-to-time where we examine, among other things, incomplete and run-on sentences, subject-verb agreement, the use of apostrophes, homonyms, and some of the other common errors that often occur in student writing. Believe it or not, in small doses, most of the students enjoy it. We emphasize that there won’t be grammar tests per se, but the students do try to apply the lessons learned into their own writing, and it does seem to make a difference. Further, IB students like to understand “why”. They like to know whythey did well on a test instead of good, and why we put the apostrophe at the end of the word when describing the boys’ basketball team. I don’t argue that any of this is vital to survival in the early 21^st century. I do believe, however, that the ability to communicate clearly and effectively is important, and that the intellectual exercise of analysing a set of grammatical structures and their applications, in moderation, is valuable. So we still try to put the apostrophes in the right places…

Patrick McCarthy

Human systems and economic activities	The study of how and why people construct organizations and systems; the ways in which people connect locally and globally; the distribution of power and authority.
Social organization and culture	The study of people, communities, cultures and societies in the ways in which individuals, groups and societies interact with each other.
Continuity and change through time	The study of the relationships between people and events through time; the past, its influences on the present and its implications for the future; people who have shaped the future through their actions.
Human and natural environments	The study of the distinctive features that give a place its identity; how people adapt to and alter their environment; how people experience and represent place; the impact of natural disasters on people and the built environment.
Resources and the environment	The interaction between people and the environment; the study of how humans allocate and manage resources; the positive and negative effects of this management; the impact of scientific and technological developments on the environment.

Living things	The study of the characteristics, systems and behaviours of humans and other animals, and of plants; the interactions and relationships between and among them, and with their environment.
Earth and space	The study of planet Earth and its position in the universe, particularly its relationship with the sun; the natural phenomena and systems that shape the planet and the distinctive features that identify it; the infinite and finite resources of the planet.
Materials and matter	The study of the properties, behaviours and uses of materials, both natural and human-made; the origins of human-made materials and how they are manipulated to suit a purpose.
Forces and energy	The study of energy, its origins, storage and transfer, and the work it can do; the study of forces; the application of scientific understanding through inventions and machines. (IBO, 2009)

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