26 June 2006 (Grammar_notes.doc)
Grammar notes
Review of research
General consensus of research conducted in 60s and 70s is that study of traditional or
transformational grammar does not improve writing ability.
British are currently revisiting the issue.
Grammar and writing
Andrews, R., C. Torgerson, S. Beverton, A. Freeman, T. Locke, G. Low, A. Robinson, and
D. Zhu. 2006. The effect of grammar teaching on writing development. British Education
Research Journal 32 (1): 39-55.
Davis, W. 17 October 2002. The effects of a review in grammar and mechanics on the quality
of college students’ technical/business writing. ERIC CS 511 570.
Provides study showing usefulness of grammar instruction; however, the study suffers from serious
problems with methodology.
English Review Group. 1 November 2007. The effect of grammar teaching (syntax) in English
on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition. Available at
http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=230.
Halasek, K. 2005. An enriching methodology: Bakhtin’s “Dialogic Origin and Dialogic
Pedagogy of Grammar” and the teaching of writing. Written Communication 22: 355-362.
Hudson, R. 2001. Grammar teaching and writing skills: The research evidence. Syntax in the
Schools 17: 1-6. Available at http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/writing.htm.
Wyse, D. 2001. Grammar. For writing? A critical review of empirical evidence. British Journal
of Educational Studies 49 (4): 411-427.
Further reading
Hillocks, G. Jr. 1986. Research on written composition: New directions for teaching. Urbana,
IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.
Hillocks, G. Jr. and M. Smith. 1991. Grammar and usage. In J. Flood, J. Jensen, D. Lapp,
and J. Squire (eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (591603). New York: Macmillan.
Mellon, J. 1969. Transformational sentence combining. Research Report No. 10. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
O’Hare, F. 1973. Sentence combining: Improving student writing without formal grammar
instruction. Research Report No.15. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Saddler, B. and S. Graham. 2005. The effects of peer-assisted sentence combining
instruction on the writing performance of more and less skilled young writers. Journal of
Educational Psychology 97 (1): 43-54.
Weaver, C. 1996. Teaching grammar in context. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Review of grammar
Sentences = subject (NP) + predicate (VP)
Verbs phrases may be

finite (agree in number with the subject)
I am playing the guitar.

non-finite
Playing the guitar is fun.
Regular verbs have 5 forms:

V-base – present tense
I call you. You drink tea. We put the box in the study.

V-s – 3rd person, present tense (V-base + s)
She calls me.

V-ed1 – past (V-base + ed)
She called me.

V-ing – present participle (be + V-base + ing)
She is calling me.

V-ed2 (V-en) – past participle (have + V-base + ed)
She has called me. They have called me.
She had confessed to the crime but later recanted.
Seven sentence patterns:

SV

SVA

SVC

SVO

SVOO

SVOA

SVOC
Phrases consist of one or more words.

noun phrases

prepositional phrases

infinitive phrases (non-finite verb phrases)

participial phrases (non-finite verb phrases)
Clauses consist of a subject and finite verb.
The tall, dark stranger is my mother. (S V C)
I placed my webcam above my monitor. (S V O A)
I love to bowl. (S V O)
Playing the guitar is fun. (S V C)
Clauses are categorized as

independent (main) clauses
I ate breakfast. I walked to school.

dependent (subordinate) clauses – joined to independent clauses with a
subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun
After I ate breakfast…
Because I ate breakfast…
Clauses and phrases act as parts of speech.
What you see is what you get. (S V O)
He quit his job because it didn’t pay well. (S V O A)
Sentences may be categorized by the number and type of clauses that they contain:

Simple sentences – one independent clause
Biff is my son.

Compound sentences – two (or more) independent clauses
Biff is my son, and Buffy is my daughter.

Complex sentences – one independent clause and one (or more) dependent clauses
Although Biff graduated with honors, he wasn’t able to find a job.

Compound-complex sentences – two (or more) independent clauses and one (or
more ) dependent clauses
Although Buffy did not graduate with honors, she majored in technical
communication, so she found a job immediately.
Sentence combining
I provide links to a number of sentence combining exercises, including

relative clauses

appositives

participial phrases and absolutes
Searching for articles using Memorial Library
When searching for articles published in periodicals, you have two options:

using research resources (simultaneously searching a group of databases)
appropriate to a particular field of study

using a single database appropriate to a particular field of study; for example, The
ACM Digital Library