Teacher Trainees’ Explicit Knowledge of Grammar and Primary Curriculum Requirements in England
CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
Case Study 1: Linda
Linda worked on nouns and adjectives, using elicitation routines that depended on meaning-related understandings of what words do, as the following exchange about adjective-noun combinations illustrates:
Linda: Did anyone say Bad Bill? We’ve got Simon and Bill – what kinds of words are they?
Pupil: They’re names.
Linda: They’re names, that’s right. Can we use another word?
Pupil: Freaky Fred.
Linda: Yes, but what sort of name is it?
Pupil: Nickname?
Linda: Yes, well the whole thing [pointing to Bad Bill] would be a nickname, wouldn’t it? What sort of....?
Pupil: A proper noun?
Linda: Yes, thank you very much. So, this bit here [pointing to the word ‘Bad’] is what kind of word?
Pupil: (indistinct noise)
Linda: And this word here is what we use to describe that noun. And when we describe a noun, there’s name for it. A describing
word is a ? Anyone remember from last week?
Pupil: An adverb?
Linda: Nearly, good try.
Pupil: An adjective?
Linda: Yes, it is. That’s an adjective…telling us what that is like, isn’t it. This person’s name is Simon and he’s…?
Pupil: Stupid.
This approach was typical in Linda’s lesson. The child who offered ‘adverb’ had possibly been exposed to explanations of adjectives and adverbs as describing words (adjectives describe nouns, adverbs describe verbs). Linda adopted an approach to explanation that she had seen and experienced in schools. This approach (adjective is the word to describe a noun) appeared to be inadequate, as the following episode illustrates, possibly because it led the pupils to use labels based on meaning rather than word class.
Subsequently, Linda elicited examples of words that described a pirate, but then avoided use of the term ‘adjective’. Children responded with appropriate examples like ‘spooky, deadly and dangerous’ but also with the phrase ‘likes sharks’. Linda then said:
What I want is a list of words that just describe what he was like.
Then, pupils replied with words like ‘bad, cold-blooded, yellow-teethed’. In the stimulated recall interview, Linda realized that the explanation ‘words that describe’ in place of the term ‘adjective’ had been inadequate when she was faced with responses of the type ‘likes sharks’.
On reflection, Linda realized that she had been imprecise in calling for ‘describing words’ and this had led to a free-for-all of ideas about the pirate rather than a focused discussion. One child’s response was, quite understandably, a semantic one, recalling an attribute of the pirate (likes sharks) rather than adhering to the identification of adjectives.
Linda remarked upon the level of awareness encountered in her pupils (7-9 years) who possibly had more experience than she did of talking about language:
We were doing about the position of adjectives before nouns; ‘One of the girls, she’s special needs really ...she was the only one who saw polar bear as an adjective in front of a noun. I didn’t think anyone would get that. I didn’t think about it myself.
For a less able child to identify ‘polar’ as an adjective and ‘bear’ as a noun possibly results from grammar teaching brought about by the NLS. Children are beginning to talk about language in our classrooms using grammatical terminology. Interviews with ten PGCE trainees in 2000-2001 had identified that in some schools pupils were accustomed to using grammatical terms, especially those who had experienced the NLS since 1998.
Despite this, Linda had not yet achieved the confidence to use terms like adjectives, without referring to their descriptive function. She did not explore the extent to which pupils were ‘comfortable’ with the term ‘adjective’ but asked them to supply describing words (an NLS definition). Had she checked children’s familiarity with the term ‘adjective’ and made explicit that she wanted the pupils to suggest adjectives, she might have encountered less confusion. She admitted to anxiety about terminology in the SRI:
I have the occasional panic when people start talking about prepositions, or complex and compound sentences, but this is just a matter of remembering the vocabulary.
She had developed strategies to prepare for the classroom although she reflected critically on her approach:
Looking back at my plans I think the grammar part is bit of a bolt-on.
She would have welcomed more formal pre-teaching practice inputs on tasks that involved the elicitation of adjectives (or other parts of speech), for example, the use of prompts or phrase completion tasks e.g. Pirates are _______ . Perhaps her self-criticism stemmed from concerns about the formal nature of NLS sentence objectives, which she had tried to address, without being confident about using grammatical terminology. The lesson, however, was generally successful especially when she drew on learners’ curiosity and enthusiasm about pirates. She elicited interesting and appropriate language and tutor observation reported that she was able to build on this to scaffold the children’s own writing.
