Grammar is apparently considered marginal, when it comes to the teaching of
writing. However, no writing theorist or teacher has been able to sidestep grammar. Grammar aims at identification and elimination of errors. Burt and Kiparksy (1972) classified errors in two categories: local and global. Local errors are errors with form, which are grammatical and mechanical in nature. Ferris (2002) classified errors in two categories such as treatable and untreatable. Treatable errors in this context are errors with grammar and mechanics, for which learners can be referred to manuals to underhand the cause of errors to eliminate those errors. Perhaps the reason grammar looms so large in the landscape of L2 writing is that egregious failures in grammatical appropriateness can undermine and destroy the
effectiveness of other elements (Mills, 1953). Grammar is not discursive, but no discourse emerges unless it is undergirded by grammar. Flouting grammar is at once audacity and ignorance, which warrants consequences. Grammar disciplines the structural patterns of a language, which are critically important, in that they carry the physical signs that are associated with meanings (Mahboob, 2010). Meanings, then, in a language are structure- dependent. This is more so for an L2 writer than an L1 writer, in that an L2 writer has to learn the structure of a language in order to learn that language.
As such, Matsuda (2012b) contends that grammar should be taught with
metalinguistic input. Metalinguistic inputs means contextualizing grammar with examples. This proposal warrants critical analysis. Teaching grammar with metalinguistic input is a discursive approach to addressing the issues with grammar. Thus, grammar leans more toward the production of language than the prescription about how to produce it. Grammar does not precede or supersede language; grammar, instead, is language. Language is rule governed, but the rules do not exist independent of a language. Teaching grammar, then, presupposes the creation of language through examples, illustrations, and explanations. Grammatical rules are not taught disembodied. These are contextualized. Grammar is, then, taught and absorbed in a naturalistic setting. Implementation of this proposal potentially
ensures that an L2 learner does not grapple with written and linguistic code (Raimes, 1985), but he subconsciously and simultaneously internalizes these.
While Matsuda (2012b) recommends that grammar be contextualized, the contexts of L2 writing are too diverse to have an identical pedagogical method. How English should be taught in the EFL contexts is often not determined by instructors, who may have been in the loop about the latest developments in L2 writing pedagogy. The socio-economic necessity and political considerations of an EFL context influence the policies and principles of teaching English, given “the role English plays in the country or region where it is being taught” (Ruecker, Shapiro, Johnson, & Tardy, 2014, p.401). Certainly, no two EFL contexts are socio-economically and politically alike. Despite these essential differences in EFL contexts, these are somehow homogeneous, and are irreducibly different from the ESL contexts. Williams (2003) contends that while an ESL context maintains “lingering reluctance to deal with grammar in any formal way”, and “many ESL writing textbooks include little, if any, attention to grammar” (p. 152), this trend is less apparent in an EFL context. This echoes the conclusion that writing, not grammar, is assigned more importance in ESL contexts than EFL contexts (Ruecker, Shapiro, Johnson, & Tardy, 2014).
Admittedly, then, L2 writers come from a grammar-dependent L2 learning environment. This may have prompted Leki (1992) to suggest that L2 learners should be taught grammar, for they are already used to learning English through grammar. Teaching through grammar is tantamount to teaching through their strength. But their strength in grammar, as implied by (Goldstein, 2004), may have helped them succeed in entrance or exit exams. A valid extrapolation as such is that they are incapable of transforming their skill in grammar into skill in composing, which is a complex process of drawing ideas and feelings together around a controlling mood or tone (Draper, 1969). While grammar requires
recognizing and memorizing, composing requires creativity and thinking. This considered, teaching and learning grammar is prophylactic against composing. Despite this negative correlation between grammar and composing, L2 writers demonstrate strong inclination toward organizing their knowledge of English by rules (Harris & Silva, 1993). This is hardly surprizing, for L2 writers are biased toward grammar.
Some teachers are biased toward grammar, too. Consequently, grammar is a complicated and controversial issue, which divides the world in two groups-“the
the same positivistic terms. Experimental research in the area has not resolved but
perpetuated the issue, which may have prompted Hartwell (1985) to claim that “seventy –five years of experimental research has for all practical purposes told us nothing” (p.106). But when it comes to writing, the anti-grammarians seem to have compelling evidence and argument. For example, Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer (1963) claim:
In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion could be stated in strong and
unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing. (P.37-38)
This endorses the conclusion of Truscott (1996) that grammar instruction is harmful for L2 writing. Grammar instruction may have had its own significance to foster language learning, but to foster one’s composing skills, it is marginally useful. Grammar is linguistic, but composing is metalinguistic. Grammar is formulaic and universal, but composing is habitual and individual. As such, learning to write qua learning grammar is apparently unlikely. Grammar and composing are two propositions apart.
The conclusion that grammar instruction is ineffective or counterproductive to
teaching writing is further corroborated by a three-year experiment in New Zealand by Elley, Barham, Lamb, and Wyllie (1979). They endeavored to discover the relative effectiveness of instruction in transformational grammar, traditional grammar, and no grammar with the high school students. They concluded that the formal study of grammar, whether transformational or traditional, improved neither writing quality nor control over surface correctness. The quality of composing is affected by surface correctness, but it is not contingent upon surface correctness. It is, instead, contingent upon joining bits of information into relationship, many of which have never existed until the composer transcribes them (Norstrand, 1979). The composer cannot transcribe them effectively and emphatically until he exploits what Elbow (1983) calls “first order” thinking, which is creativity and intuition. But grammar short- circuits that creative and intuitive aspect of language, in that it is prescriptive in nature. Crystal (2004) contends that while grammar study fascinated people for over 2000 years, since the time of the Ancient Greeks, it started to fall out of favor in the 1960s because of its qualified potential to generate language. This characteristic of grammar is critical both for L1 and L2 writing.
Despite that, grammar is popularly considered to precede L2 writing proficiency. What accounts for perpetuating this perception is that L2 composing process generally seems more laborious compared to that of an L1, and that L2 writers make more errors overall (Silva, 1992). Because this laborious process of composing in an L2 results in products spattered with errors, which are mechanical in nature, grammar appears to offer the solution. Resorting to grammar under such circumstances can result in two opposite directions:
Grammar is one aspect of writing that can be straightforwardly taught (Elbow, 1973), or there is no magic formula for teaching mechanics (Mills, 1953). Grammar, then, can be taught or cannot be taught. Writing, however, cannot be taught altogether. Writing, instead, is a learned skill, so writing instruction is nondirective and personal (Hyland, 2003). As well, it is
developmental. Grammar instruction is not attuned to these critical dimensions in the development of writing skill. Writing instruction is not potentially effective when these critical dimensions of writing are not addressed. L2 writers should be taught writing not beyond grammar as Ferris (2002) claims, but grammar must not be rendered central to teaching writing, for “grammar is writing’s surface” (Elbow, 1981, p.168).
Grammar, as well, is a unidirectional approach to teaching writing, but L2 writing instructional practices are multi-directional and multifaceted, which address social, affective, cognitive issues involving the writer, the writing process, the written text, and the context for writing (Zhu, 2010). Teaching L2 writers mandates that instructors make learners aware of all these issues that writing embodies, along with proving the learners with the appropriate schemata so that they can address those issues in their writing. Learning to write in an L2 requires both strategic and mechanical skills. They participate in a reciprocal process, which simultaneously asks for creativity and convention. But composing emerges from and revolves around creativity, in that skilled writers take care of the mechanics at the end (Zamel, 1983). For L2 writers, when grammar precedes creativity, it can imply that L2 writers are not skilled, or are incapable of being skilled. This is a deficit model of teaching writing. For L2 writers, grammar is marginally important for learning to write. It is the responsibility for L2 instructors to remind the learners that “ for most people, nothing helps their writing so much as learning to ignore grammar as they write” ( Elbow, 1981,p.169).
However persuasive the argument against grammar in teaching L1 writing in English is, for teaching L2 writing in English this stance is problematic. Frodesen and Holten (2003) claim that L2 writers do not have the same “felt-sense” of correctness nor intuitive grasp of the rules of grammar of English that their native counterparts do, which warrants instruction
in grammar for L2 writers in English. Ellis (2002) argues that focus on form is not only beneficial but also necessary for adult ESL learners. For L2 writers in English, writing does not emerge or exist independent of grammar. It is, then, hardly controversial that “overt and systematic instruction” (Frodesen & Holten, 2003, p. 144) in grammar can help ESL learners use their intuitions about language judiciously. Apparently, Truscott (1996) is controversial, who claims that instruction in grammar is harmful and that it should be abandoned altogether. Controversial as Truscott (1996) is, he is not altogether insular. L2 writing scholars agree that “traditional and disembodied grammar instruction” (Ferris &Hedgcock, 2005, p. 272) is not effective. What makes the centrality of grammar in teaching writing further problematic in ‘Written Correct Feedback’ (WCF) is the lack of consistency in research on this issue as well as the lack of consensus among writing instructors as to the modes WCF in grammar.
For example, Liu and Brown (2015) claim that the ongoing debate about the
effectiveness of WCF has produced 300 published papers, but not much consensus has been reached even on the most fundamental issues such as whether feedback is a good practice or not, or how feedback can be most productively applied to help students improve their writing. These papers are so inconsistent with each other in terms of data collection instruments, recruitment of participants, interpretation of data, target grammatical features, and the consideration of learning and teaching contexts that despite several decades of research activity in this area, “we are virtually at Squire One” (Ferris, 2004, p. 49). This may account for why ESL instructors, who were accused by Zamel (1985) of being inconsistent in their reactions to students’ writings, have not streamlined their practices in WCF involving grammar till date. Yet “we cannot dismiss error correction’s potential out-of-hand” (Ferris, 2004, p. 60) because various lines of research yield positive evidences of the potential of error correction in helping students improve writing, Nonetheless, given all these
inconsistencies the ways WCF is perceived, practiced, and researched, Ferris (2004) agrees with Truscott (1996) that these evidences of improvement because of error correction or WCF are only suggestive, not conclusive. Regarding error correction or grammar instruction in L2 writing, the field of L2 writing is polarized by two strands of ideas, information, arguments, and evidences. This implies that the debate or discussion that Truscott (1996) sparked involving grammar instruction or error correction is unresolved and ongoing.