The Importance Of Prescriptive Grammar Education

Author Bryan A. Garner, in his article “Making Peace in the Language Wars” (published in Garner’s Modern American Usage 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2009), seeks to negotiate a cease-fire between two fighting countries, the prescriptivists and the descriptivists, by dispelling myths about each of their camps. First and foremost, Garner outlines the war is happening between the lines of our favorite novels and poetry, and he describes what each camp stands for. Prescriptivists desire to instruct the world around them on how to use the language by enforcing, or at the very least informing the general public about the rules of grammar. They are sometimes described as conservative and are very concerned

“Authority and American Usage” written by David Foster Wallace, poses an argument about the English language, and the different beliefs of its usage. This essay was written in defense of Bryan A. Garner’s, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. His argument in “Authority and American Usage” is the difference the between prescriptivism perception and the descriptivism perception (Linguistic terms that could easily be made into smaller, more understandable words for people like me). Since the beginning of time, language has evolved. From biblical times, to Shakespearean times, to present day; the English language has been continuously changing since it’s birth and has no intentions on stopping.

George Orwell, in an essay from Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays titled “Politics and the English Language” (1950), argues that the English language, through a cyclical process of sloven language and foolish thought, has become “ugly and inaccurate.” He supports his argument by using expert opinion, metaphors, and historical context. Orwell’s purpose is to demonstrate the debasement of the English language in order to prompt writers to make a conscious change in their writing . He adopts an informal tone (“Look back throughout this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against”) for writers in a time of political turnover and rising superpowers.

The second level grammatical-rhetorical analysis aims to investigate the relationship between grammatical choice and rhetorical function in written English for science and technology. Discourse analysis as interaction represents the third level of language description. Most importantly, interactional analysis outlines the concept of interpretation of discourse by the reader or listener. Discourse analysis appears to have steadily moved from surface-level analysis to a deeper description of language use. However, in the context of language teaching for specific purposes, applied discourse analysis seems to represent a rather narrow description of language in use and is inadequate in its explanation. In order to introduce a thick description of language in use, it is necessary to combine socio-cultural and psycholinguistic aspects of text-construction and interpretation with linguistic insights to answer the question: why are specific discourse-genres written and used by the specialist communities the way they are? Genre analysis as an insightful description of English for specific purpose texts has become a useful and powerful tool to arrive at significant form-function correlations which can be utilized for a number of applied linguistic purposes.

As we look at principle three it instruct needs to ensure that learners also focus on form. Professor Ellis explains that the teacher can achieve this by focusing on inductive and deductive grammar lessons. It allows and make ELL students aware of explicit grammatical rule, it gives the learner specific practice on grammatical structure, and it gives them the opportunity to get corrective feedback. (Ellis, R, 2008)

I will start with a journey through a hellacious class focused around grammar. Coming into the WCSCC as a 12th grader, I was astonished at how little skill I had when it came to grammar. It still boggles my mind that it took twelve years of school before I met a teacher who really, really cared about how I composed my sentences. She wanted us to know what adjectives, prepositions, nouns, pronouns, and run on sentences were. However, she knew we didn’t. On the first day of class, she made the

While reading chapter six from Beyond Grammar Language, Power, and the Classroom, written by Mary R. Harmon and Marilyn J. Wilson, I began to realize how much we become caught up in the rules of the so-called Standard American English. It is sad because people are being judged on their dialect, which is a representation of who people are and where they are from. I have found myself correcting people that have a different dialect, or correcting people that say words that I have been told were not proper language, such as the word ain’t. Standard American English is something that is embedded in our brains at a young age and as we go through school; language is something teachers are constantly correcting children on. Reading about dialect has

David Foster Wallace’s essay regarding language and the usage of the English language in America captured my attention from the beginning. Through several gasps of humor and wording geared toward an audience of intellectual scholars, Wallace’s stance on language was raw and honest – nothing was held back that he thought important.

Harper’s concurrent grammar class had any hope of writing the research paper with any amount of ease. Every member of the junior class knew of an upperclassman who had received scores in the negative thousands on their rough drafts. Being a completive soul, I knew that I would be able to use the knowledge gleaned from the elective grammar class to fix any problems that may arise in my upcoming research paper.

George Orwell states that, “our civilization is decadent and our language…must inevitably share in the general collapse” (Orwell 2000, 1), when he argues for prescriptivism (though toned down from what was taught and accepted in his day). While Garner posits that, “describers, meanwhile, remind us that linguistic change is a fact of life – and conclude that it’s therefore not worth opposing” (Garner, Making Peace in the Language Wars 2008, 272). When David Foster Wallace discusses descriptivism, he makes a historical reference to, “Philip Gove’s now classic introduction to Webster’s Third [which] outlines this type of Descriptivism’s five basic edicts: ‘1 – Language changes constantly; 2 – change is normal; 3 – spoken language is the language; 4 – correctness rests upon usage; 5 – All usage is relative.’” (Wallace 2005, 83). Wallace himself argues against most of these edicts, proving himself to uphold his snootitude. Bryan A. Garner creates a list similar to that of Gove’s, while addressing the argument that “learning grammar may seem like an exercise in pedantry,” which is a point argued by many descriptivists:

Grammar is a huge part when applying for colleges, jobs, and etc. Not only is it a set of rules and component parts that combine to form sentences, but it’s a criteria needed to succeed in life. We’re living in an era where every word is being shortened, abbreviated, or simply misused in a sentence, which isn’t good writing in the business or social world. Good grammar includes of great ideas with clarity, precision, and professionalism.

It is not uncommon to say that grammar instruction plays an important role in language teaching. Regarding the status and importance of grammar teaching, a variety of opinions have been made. Batstone (1994) states that “language without grammar would be chaotic: countless words without the indispensable guidelines for how they can be ordered and modified” (p. 4). More vividly, Wang (2010) makes two similes. She compares grammar to the frame of a house, which is a decisive factor to ensure the solidness of it. Additionally, she regards grammar as a walking stick, whose function is to help and support students to learn English. Thus, the nature of grammar instruction manifests its own significance as it helps students

Larsen-Freeman (2001) as cited in Mart (2013), describes grammar as a system of meaningful structures and patterns that are governed by particular pragmatic constraints. This clearly indicates that grammar plays a crucial role in learning the target language. Grammar instruction is one of the most difficult issues that people have encountered in language learning and teaching. Therefore, the best way to overcome this issue is by

In the classroom relating to descriptive grammar learners can be encouraged to move away from a prescriptive approach to grammar by using a guided discovery in which they look for examples of variations in use in authentic texts. These examples can be compared to prescriptive rules in order to decide if they are useful or

He seeks to find underlying similarities across these “distinct” languages, to construct a general theory of a singular language. However, it seems as though he cannot be scientifically vindicated without the groundwork being laid down by many of the authors that he is critical of. Thus, it is particularly interesting that Chomsky seems to be so at odds with the idea of descriptivism. When Chomsky says, “Grammar should not be merely a record of the data of usage, but, rather, should offer an explanation for such data,” (587) he is acknowledging the usefulness, presumably to his own theories, of descriptive linguistics. He in fact recognizes the debt he owes when he says, “To me, it seems that [structural linguistics'] major achievement is to have provided a factual and a methodological basis that makes it possible to return to the problems that occupied the traditional universal grammarians...” (590) But he goes on to say, “On the other hand, it seems to me that the substantive contributions to the theory of language structure are few, and that, to a large extent, the concepts of modern linguistics constitute a retrogression as compared with universal grammar.” (590) Where the descriptivists see an end, Chomsky sees only the means, and is somewhat dismissive of them.