| Summary |
In an attempt to determine the best method of teaching grammar to college preparatory seniors in Junius H. Rose High School in Greenville, North Carolina, a comparative study was made by teaching two paired groups, one of which was instructed by a formal grammar approach and the other by a functional approach. The control group, using formal grammar study, made a comprehensive study of grammar through the phases of definition, recognition, and application of grammatical principles as developmental steps in communicating effectively, including sentence analysis, uses and structures of verbals and clauses, and different aspects of each part of speech. Special points of punctuation and usage were also studied. The experimental group, using a functional grammar approach, worked in a composition laboratory designed to make the student apply scientific construction and evaluation to his writing. The only grammatical principles studies were those which were found in examples of student writing. Specific errors were studied in order that they could be eradicated from the student's writing. Vocabulary study was made by requiring students to use a definite number of new words in each project, while the students in the formal grammer group were given word lists. In order to measure the knowledge of grammar of the students in the paired groups, the English section of the Essential High School Cotent Battery, Form A, was administered at the beginning of the project, and Form B was given after the first semester examinations. A comparison of the test results indicated that the control group using the formal approach made higher gains than did the functional grammar group in the areas of vocabulary and business terms, but the functional grammar group had significantly higher gains in the of language usage, capitalization and punctuation, and spelling. It was concluded that higher gains are made in vocabulary improvement when word lists are the chief means of study end when application of the use of such words is frequent. A functional approach should be highly effective in teaching the grammatical principles which apply to composition, as the students retain more knowledge of such principles when they have seen errors and examples in their own writing. |
