High School Students’ Awareness of Structural Relationships in English

Abstract

TRADITIONAL English grammar occupies one of the largest blocks of time in the high school English curriculum. Through the years, it has been both praised and blamed for its alleged contribution to students' learning more precise use of language in writing and speaking. Most of the attitudes expressed have been based on per sonal opinion or prejudice rather than evidence related to pupil achievement. Many research studies have indicated that a knowledge of tradi tional grammar has little measureable effect on the expression of ideas accurately in writing or speaking.2 Yet, teaching of traditional grammar has continued. In recent years, its value has been questioned with regard to its accuracy in describ ing the English language. This reconsideration of traditional grammar has been fostered by the cognizance that its system and terminology may be unrelated to the English language as it is used. Recent concern about the teaching of grammar has been dramatized by the controversy over structural linguistics and the question as to which grammar should be taught.3 Many articles on this subject are speculative;4 a few have presented objective evidence and analyzed ideas tried in the classroom.5 The latter group of studies report findings favoring the use of a structural approach to language study and have advocated abandon ing conventional grammar to include structural approach. Little evidence is available to indicate the con tribution of traditional grammar to an awareness of the structure of the language. Such an under standing, surely, should be a reasonable objective of the study of English grammar. Since tradi tional grammar inadequately describes the struc ture of the language, according to the science of structural linguistics, conventional grammar study may not provide students with an under standing of the language's structure. Thus, it seems important to determine what students know about the structure of English as a result of their study of grammar as it is presently taught. Despite the shortcomings of traditional grammar as an accurate description of English, through its study students may have increased their awareness of the structure of English to a considerable degree. If this is the case, a change from traditional grammar to structural grammar would be difficult to justify on the basis of tradi tional grammar's failure to increase understand ing of the structure of English. However, if little or no increase in student's awareness of the structure of English has resulted from the study of traditional grammar, then some change, either in the type of grammar taught, in the methods used, or in some other factor, would seem dictated before this objective can be achieved. The present study was designed to obtain ob jective data about senior high school students' awareness of structural relationships in the Eng lish language. Two major questions were appar entais there a significant difference in students' awareness of structural relationships in English between the three grade levels of senior high school? Is there a significant difference between boys' and girls' awareness of structural relation ships in English?