Grammar's journey--teacherly reflections from Linda-Dianne Willis & Beryl Exley.

Willis, Linda-Dianne ; Exley, Beryl

As we come to celebrate the twentieth year of ALEA's practically orientated journal, we offer teacherly reflections on grammar's journey, both in terms of content and pedagogical practice. Having both been educated in Queensland across a comparable time period, our teaching careers have been influenced by similar curricula and policy documents. It is perhaps not surprising that our careers have taken similar, even intersecting, paths. Through metalogue (written conversation), our individual and common experiences are revealed which may resonate with the experiences of some readers or, in contrast, serve to explain why readers' experiences may be somewhat different. Yet, it is hoped that our exchange may generate fertile professional discussions about the affordances and challenges of grammar teaching and learning to successfully negotiate the journey ahead.

Linda:

Beryl, what are some of your earliest memories of grammar?

Beryl:

I don't actually recall grammar being a regular part of my primary education experience. I attended Alexandra Hills State School in the Redland Shire in South East Queensland in the 1970s and now realise I was a product of the 'language experience' approach. I remember one English assignment undertaken in upper primary being part of the committee that produced the school 'recipe book', a common fund-raising project at the time. We wrote request letters to media personalities, sporting stars and community members to secure their contributions for this publication. In this same classroom, I recall copying simple sentences from the chalk board to make complex sentences but it seems my year seven teacher, Mr Simmons, was somewhat alone in that he drilled and skilled us on this aspect of written grammar. What about you Linda? What are you earliest memories of grammar teaching?

Linda:

I can relate to your experiences. Having started primary school in the late 1960s, I was influenced by a drill and skill approach but feel I missed the kind of formal grammar lessons that marked the previous decade. I can recall grammar being taught in decontextualised ways including handwriting lessons where parts of speech were labelled arbitrarily according to rules without attention to text context, purpose or audience. As you know, I also have a connection with Alexandra Hills State School, having begun my teaching career there in 1981. When I started, I continued the work of teachers from the middle of the previous decade when you attended the school, becoming an exponent of the language experience approach. As an infant school teacher, I remember using the sentence patterns in an oral language program, where children were provided a sentence starter for which they each needed to say or write a different ending. Student responses were compiled into class books. The predictability of patterning along with frequent practice was considered to encourage speaking, listening, reading and writing development. This immersion in language promoted freedom of expression based on individual and shared student experiences. It was thought the necessary knowledge and skills to understand, analyse and write texts would become as 'natural' to them as through the process of osmosis. This emphasis did not focus on naming how different aspects of the language worked or the 'metalanguage' nor do I recall my teacher education experiences preparing me to teach otherwise.

Beryl:

Similarly, when I began my teaching career in 1987, I had no experience of grammar teaching as having any other pedagogical practices apart from using the synthetic texts of blackline masters. After a short stint working for Education Queensland, I moved into the Independent School sector where I taught for a decade. It was during this time that I realised I lacked a well-crafted metalanguage for teaching grammar in the early years. This was made especially clear by the increasing number of students with language backgrounds other than English who rolled into my classes. Spurred on by my need to have a language to talk about language, and pedagogies that could engage little people, I attended some professional development around the new English Curriculum for Queensland in 1994. Affectionately known as the 'Rainbow Syllabus' because of the distinctly coloured volumes, the 1994 Department of Education's teal volume, English in Years 1 to 10 Queensland Syllabus Materials: A guide to genres in English (Department of Education, Queensland, 1994b) was an awakening, as was the red volume, English in Years 1 to 10 Queensland Syllabus Materials: A guide to analysing Texts in English (Department of Education, Queensland, 1994a). I saw the logic of genre pedagogy and was curious about the chart buried on page eighty-four of the Appendix, the one which contained the system of register and new terms such as 'participants', 'processes' and 'circumstances'. I didn't realise it at the time, but this is the model of language conceived by Michael Halliday (1979) and known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL). I was also smitten with the overt push into critical literacy, especially in the early years; this option of having multiple reading positions and talking back to text seemed not only dynamic, but also a wonderful apprenticeship in a pedagogy of talk, and a pedagogy that recognised and valued diversity of experiences.

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Linda:

There is no doubt Queensland's 'Rainbow Syllabus' represented a watershed in terms of curriculum documents. I had returned to the classroom in 1995 after having my children.

I too embraced genre pedagogy with its common sense connection between contexts and texts and set about creating meaningful, authentic experiences for students to work collaboratively or alongside outside experts. My role became more dynamic as I taught using a combination of practices including modelling, direct teaching, guided instruction and peer tutoring. At about the same time, the literacy coach at Wondall Heights State School where I then worked introduced me to Freebody and Luke's (1990) Four Resources Model. This coincided with the introduction of a daily school-wide literacy block. Professional development focused on strategies for teaching comprehension more explicitly (text participant) and for using critical literacy to show how power relationships play out between groups of people (text analyst) (see Lemke, 1993). But upon reflection, I'd have to say that in building text user resources I focused more on the structure (macrolevel) than the linguistic features (micro-level) of texts.

Beryl:

Yes, the work that happens at a more delicate level, at the level of the clause, which was a fundamental part of the 1994 curriculum, was something I hadn't grasped at that time either. It wasn't until 2001 when I joined the executive of the Meanjin (Brisbane) Local Council of ALEA that monthly discussions to plan future professional development sessions for Brisbane-based ALEA members became times of intense professional learning for me. Two executive members in particular, Wendy Tunin and Kay Bishop, lit my fire for using the framework of SLF to engage young children as text analysts (Luke & Freebody, 1999) and for appreciating the grammar of visual design.

Linda:

And here again our paths crossed. Since 2005 my tertiary studies and working with you in different university roles as well as developing relationships with fellow ALEA members introduced me to the world of SFL. Developing a metalanguage for talking about grammar has not only enhanced my ability to teach preservice teachers studying English and literacy courses but also become a powerful tool for thinking about and using language generally. Given its value, I've wondered if you think that other teachers are reaping similar benefits through increased knowledge and understanding of the metalanguage of SFL as represented throughout the Australian Curriculum: English (hereafter ACE).

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Beryl:

I read the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority's (ACARA) ACE in 2012 with mixed reactions. I was stoked to see ACARA take what Derewianka (2012) terms 'a fairly radical step' with the form and function of grammar made available for classroom use (p. 127). The ACE most certainly introduced a new model of grammar, one that weaves traditional Latin-based grammar theory with SFL theory for multimodal text. However, evidence of the genesis of this new grammar is not overtly marked in the ACE, but rather hidden as 'Secret Squirrel Stuff' (Exley, 2014). Myhill (2014) hypothesised that a similar strategy was used in the United Kingdom to mediate between the politics of grammar as the mechanism to ensure 'verbal hygiene' compared with grammar as a 'dynamic description of language in use' (p. 116). And then there is the question about the pedagogies for taking this new grammar into the early years of schooling where children as young as five and six years have to be able to achieve the following content descriptions, for example:

* Identify the parts of a simple sentence that represent 'What's happening?', 'What state is being described?' and 'Who or what is involved?' and the surrounding circumstances (ACARA, 2015, ACELA 1451).

* Explore differences in words that represent people, places and things (nouns, including pronouns), happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as when, where and how (adverbs) (ACARA, 2015, ACELA1452).

Linda:

And given the number of Australian Curriculum documents released over the last few years, teachers may not have had the time and space to acquire a knowledge of content and processes around aspects such as transitivity, the system of appraisal and working with the design of multimodal text. Hence, they may not know just what they're looking at.

Beryl:

That's because the grammar of the ACE may look the same as in previous curriculum documents but it's not; it's a new grammar. I keep thinking how helpful it might have been if the curriculum writers were permitted to include a statement along the following lines: 'This curriculum adopts a radically new grammar: it takes traditional grammar terms and uses them through a functional approach and extends understandings of grammar to multimodal text'. Maybe our readers will derive some comfort in having it acknowledged that there is a lot of new grammar content in the ACE. Maybe a productive way forward is for teachers to embark upon conversations across year levels or, because of the spiralling nature of the curriculum, include groups of teachers from multiple year levels. I know I've appreciated having ongoing conversations since 2012 with you and my other grammar study buddies, Garry Collins and Marianne Schubert.

Linda:

These conversations could create 'safe' places for teachers to share their thinking, open up about their pedagogical practices and develop collaborations such as coteaching (for example, Willis, 2013) for learning from one another and trialling ideas. In talking about grammar's journey, our conversation has highlighted our personal grammar journeys. Perhaps an even better place to start talking about grammar is for teachers to use professional development time to reflect on their journeys.

Beryl:

I agree, reflecting on powerful experiences of grammar over the last ten, twenty, thirty or forty years can help teachers better understand not only their individual journeys but also the points of difference between their journeys and what this means for the adoption of new content and the exploration of new pedagogical practices. I guess my hope with this article is that this sharing of our journeys will stimulate conversations among different groups of teachers and through that process create the space for teachers to identify their strengths and areas they want to strengthen.

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To assist teachers to talk about and explore grammar, ALEA has produced two publications which may be of interest to teachers: Playing with grammar in the early years: Learning about language in the Australian Curriculum: English (Exley & Kervin, 2013) and Exploring with gramma in the primary years: Learning about language in the Australian Curriculum: English (Exley, Kervin, & Mantei, 2015).

References

ACARA. (2012). The Australian Curriculum: English Version 2.0. Retrieved May 21, 2012, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/download/f10

ACARA. (2014). The Australian Curriculum: English Version 7.5. Retrieved June 25, 2015, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/download/f10

Department of Education, Queensland. (1994a). English in years 1 to 10 Queensland syllabus materials: A guide to analysing texts in English. Brisbane, QLD: Government Printers.

Department of Education, Queensland. (1994b). English in years 1 to 10 Queensland syllabus materials: A guide to genre in English. Brisbane, QLD: Government Printers.

Derewianka, B. (2012). Knowledge about language in the Australian Curriculum: English. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 35(1), 127-146.

Exley, B. (2014). 'Secret Squirrel Business: The grammar of appraisal in the Australian Curriculum English'. Darwin Convention Centre, Northern Territory, 9 July 2014. Keynote Address.

Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), 7-16.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1979). Modes of meaning and modes of expression: types of grammatical structure, and their determination by different semantic functions. In D. Allerton, E. Carney, & D. Holdcroft (Eds.), Functional and content in linguistic analysis: Essays offers to William Haas (pp. 57-79). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lemke, J. (1993). Critical social literacy for the new century. English in Australia, 105, 9-11.

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). A map of possible practices: Further notes on the four resources model. Practically Primary, 4(2), 5-8.

Myhill, D. (2014). Linguistic development in children's writing: Changing classroom pedagogies. In K. Denham, & A. Lobeck (Eds.), Linguistics at school: Language awareness in primary and secondary education (pp. 106-122). London: Cambridge University Press.

Willis, L.-D. (2013). Parent-teacher engagement: A coteaching and cogenerative dialoguing approach. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

Linda Willis is Lecturer in Curriculum Studies and coordinates the Master of Teaching (Primary) Program at the University of Queensland. She taught in state and independent schools over three decades. She is the co-editor of Practical Literacy and a committee member of the Brisbane Meanjin Local Council of ALEA. Linda's publications may be viewed at UQ eSpace and QUT ePrints. Email: l.willis@uq.edu.au

Beryl Exley is an experienced classroom teacher who now lectures and researches in English curriculum and literacy education at the Queensland University of Technology. She has been the ALEA Publications Director since 2013, and prior to that was the ALEA Queensland State Director for eight years. Beryl's publications are available http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Exley,_Beryl.html. Email: b.exley@qut.edu.au