before students are likely to gain significant insight into how they and
other speakers and writers might unconsciously or deliberately use lan-
guage elements, patterns, and structures, or before they see a reason
to pay attention to these issues, they need first of all to become more
aware of language in general and how it varies, changes, and works in
their world. (p. 6)Andrews advocated what he called Language Exploration and Awareness, a
program for teaching grammar based on assignments designed to help students
consider how language works. One assignment, for example, asks students to
question elderly people, such as grandparents, about whether during their life-
times they have seen any changes in language.
The linguistic approach encourages students to observe how people use
language and then to explain and interpret their observations. We can easily
envision additional activities that engage students in this way, and several
are listed at the end of this chapter. The pervasive use of the wordlike,for ex-
ample, offers opportunities for students to observe their peers and to per-
form frequency counts to see how often the word is used in conversations
and whether usage differs by age, occupation, gender, ethnicity, or socio-
economic class. Use of the expressionsI feel badandI feel badlytend to
vary on the basis of education level. If students monitor conversations and
news broadcasts, they can explore the nature of the variation. Teaching stu-
dents the correct form and its grammatical basis takes only a few minutes,
but the experience they have as researchers studying people to determine
who uses which expression can make the lesson last a lifetime. It is hands-
on and relevant, which textbook exercises are not.
A potential shortcoming of the linguistic approach is that it typically con-
centrates on speech and can be criticized for ignoring writing. As a result, this
approach can be a hard sell in schools. It is important to recognize, however,
that listening to oral discourse and attending to its structural patterns is a neces-
sary first step in understanding and appreciating grammar. The linguistic ap-
proach can increase students’ awareness that grammar permeates their world
and, to a certain degree, defines it. An assignment on dialects, for example, can
be very effective in motivating students to attend to matters of form not only in
their speech but also in their writing.
A survey of popular language arts textbooks shows only a token recognition
of the linguistic approach to grammar instruction. Houghton Mifflin’sEnglish
(Rueda et al., 2001) offers a brief discussion of formal and informal language to
show students that we change the way we use language on the basis of context,
and it also has a brief discussion of cultural factors associated with language.
On the whole, however,Englishis based on a traditional approach to grammar.
TEACHING GRAMMAR 43