Abstract

The teaching of grammar in education has long been a point of contention, particularly after the 1960s when grammar was removed from the curriculum due to research claiming that teaching traditional grammar did not improve writing skills (Hudson and Walmsley, 2001; Andrews et al., 2006). However, the Myhill et al. (2011) project pro-vides robust evidence that teaching ‘contextualised grammar’ (i.e., teaching grammar in context to writing and reading) can improve pupils’ written composition. Teaching contextualised grammar is a stance adopted in the 2014 iteration of the National Cur-riculum (NC). Hence, this research project evaluated the impact of the government’s initiative for teaching grammar and the value of the Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) test since its implementation.

The project involved a mixed methods approach with a) an analysis of 11 pupils’ GPS tests with a key stage 2 cohort in 2014 and an analysis of 18 pupils’ GPS tests with a key stage 4 cohort in 2024, b) an analysis of the pupils’ writing, and c) an interview with the 2014 teacher with a follow up interview in 2023. The study found that pupils were apt at answering questions correctly in the GPS test but made common errors in their writing, such as non-sentences and run-on sentences, demonstrating that pupils have sufficient declarative knowledge of grammar but are not necessarily able to apply this knowledge to their writing. The teacher had not noticed an improvement in pupils’ writing, though had noticed an improvement in pupils’ metalanguage and ability to dis-cuss their writing more technically, which was seen as a positive outcome. A greater frequency of run-on sentences was found in the 2024 cohort samples with age 15-16 year-old pupils and errors were more complex, showing that if these types of errors are not addressed at key stage 2 and high school, the complexity of the run-on sen-tences may escalate in later education. It was found that the NC and GPS test focus-ses heavily on grammatical terminology, which can lead to teaching for the test, and pupils are not given enough time to master basics such as constructing sentences and using punctuation appropriately. Teachers need more time in the classroom to focus on teaching contextualised grammar, basic punctuation and to be able provide pupils with opportunities to discover grammar and sentence structures through playing with language, as advocated by Myhill, Lines and Watson (2011).