Teaching pupils grammar does not improve writing, research suggests

There is a mismatch between government policy and techniques proven to work in the classroom, academics have revealed.

As reported by Tes, the way that grammar is taught in schools shows a “significant” and “persistent” mismatch between government policy and academic evidence showing what works.

The report states that teaching pupils technical grammar terms actually does nothing to improve writing ability, despite the national curriculum placing strong emphasis on teaching traditional grammar.

Research was carried out by Dominic Wyse from the UCL Institute of Education and Carol Torgerson, of Durham University, who looked at evidence revealed by randomised controlled trials testing the effectiveness of teaching grammar.

The results found that current study concludes that current evidence from randomised controlled trials “does not support the widespread use of grammar teaching for improving writing among English-speaking children”.