Research

Traditional Writing Instruction Isn't Working

The evidence is clear: traditional grammar instruction does not improve students' writing skills, nor is it effective at teaching the content that it is aimed at — mastery of standard English grammar sufficient for all forms of writing. For this reason, many educators have retreated from grammar instruction altogether. However, the last US Writing Report Card showed that less than 30% of US children in grades K -12 can write proficiently (Those data are from the 2011 NAEP assessment, which is the most recent test with available data. NAEP conducted a writing assessment again in 2017, but the results were never released).

COVID-19 has been linked to performance declines in Reading and Math, and some research has shown similar declines in writing shortly following disruptions to in-person learning.

The result is an even larger gap between students' writing abilities and what they need to do to be successful in education and their careers.

Sentence-Level Instruction and Practice Does Work

While traditional grammar instruction and many forms of traditional writing instruction have been proven ineffective, education researchers have started to reach a consensus on what makes up effective grammar and writing instruction.

"An alternative technique for teaching grammar that has been shown to produce excellent results in numerous studies—and that is incorporated into The Writing Revolution (TWR) activities—is sentence combining. Rather than breaking down a preexisting sentence, students create their own complex sentences by combining two or more simple sentences in a variety of ways. Perhaps they’ll use a conjunction, a pronoun, or an appositive or subordinate clause. Students often find this approach more engaging than diagramming, and it eliminates the need to devote mental energy to memorizing and remembering grammatical terms." — Judith C. Hochman & Natalie Wexler

"Before writing paragraphs — which is often now part of the kindergarten curriculum — children do need to practice writing great sentences. At every level, students benefit from clear feedback on their writing, and from seeing and trying to imitate what successful writing looks like, the so-called text models." — New York Times

"Students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise." — Education Week

"We know that grammar instruction that works includes teaching students strategies for revising and editing, providing targeted lessons on problems that students immediately apply to their own writing, and having students play with sentences like Legos, combining basic sentences into more complex ones. Often, surprisingly little formal grammar instruction is needed. Researcher Marcia Hurlow has shown that many errors “disappear” from student writing when students focus on their ideas and stop “trying to ‘sound correct.’” — The Atlantic

“. . . other instructional methods, such as sentence combining, provide an effective alternative to traditional grammar instruction, as this approach improves students’ writing quality while at the same time enhancing syntactic skills. In addition ... (Fern & Farnan, 2005) found that teaching students to focus on the function and practical application of grammar within the context of writing (versus teaching grammar as an independent activity) produced strong and positive effects on students’ writing. Overall, the findings on grammar instruction suggest that, although teaching grammar is important, alternative procedures, such as sentence combining, are more effective than traditional approaches for improving the quality of students’ writing.” — Carnegie Corporation of New York: Writing Next Report

Thinking Through Grammar Teaches Writing at the Sentence Level

Arthur Whimbey, a psychologist, author, and learning theorist, and Myra Linden, a veteran English teacher, author, and member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), rightly contended that it is not grammar that is ineffective, but rather the way that we teach grammar. Almost 20 years ago, Whimbey and Linden set out to find an effective way of teaching grammar. One that would not only teach English grammar but also show a generalization to students writing. They brought in other educators with first-hand experience in writing remediation, like Dr. Eugene Williams, a well-known public school and college administrator and researcher, and Hubert Dure, Dean of the Personalized Curriculum Institute of Malcolm X College.

The team consulted all available writing research at the time and continuously tested their practices with students in a wide range of settings, from middle schools to colleges across the US.

The Whimbey Writing Method

With the research supporting paraphrasing activities such as Sentence Combining in mind, Whimbey, Linden, and others wrote a series of writing improvement workbooks generally referred to as the Whimbey Writing Program.

Use of the Whimbey Writing Program led to great success for a number of schools, such as the Littleton Preparatory Charter School, whose principal, Nathan Crow, asserted:

"We have found the writing-improvement workbooks by Whimbey and Linden to be the best in the field. Our students’ writing has improved remarkably since we began to use the Whimbey Writing Program.

Using (The Whimbey Writing Program) and similar exercises with a wide range of students, we obtained gains of between 2.6 grade levels and 6.2 grade levels per year of instruction, as assessed by the Woodcock/Johnson Revised ‘writing sample’ test."

7^th Grade Students at the Littleton Preparatory Charter School:

Spring 1999 Language Total Score: 7.5 grade level
Spring 2000 Language Total Score: 10.1
Change (Gain) 2.6

The success of the Whimbey Writing Program encouraged Whimbey and Linden to tackle another problem that has been hanging over English and language arts teachers’ heads for years. That problem is teaching students correct grammar usage and the names of the parts of speech so that teachers and students have a common vocabulary to discuss writing. They named their solution to the problem the Prototype-Construction Approach to teaching grammar.

Piloting the Prototype-Construction Approach to English Grammar

Early versions of Prototype-Construction activities were tested by local educational assessment teams. Because of the overwhelming body of research showing that Sentence Combining activities improve writing skills, the question that was most interesting to the researchers was whether or not these activities improved reading skills, as some of the research had suggested. Prototype-Construction activities were implemented in two low-performing Chicago schools, first a high school and then an elementary school. Students at both sites experienced improvement in reading:

High School - Reading Comprehension as measured by the Chicago TAP test

Spring 1999 percentage of students reading at grade level or above school-wide 10.5%

Spring 2000 percentage of students reading at grade level or above school-wide 20%

Change (Gain) +9.5%

Linda Buczyna, an English teacher at that high school, commented:

"I find the program to be invaluable for meeting objectives in writing, reasoning, and proofreading. The lessons are well drafted, compact and to the point. They excel in guiding students to viewing language as a system that they can manipulate and master."

Elementary School - Reading Comprehension as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills

Spring 2000 percentage of students reading at grade level or above school-wide 24.7%

Spring 2001 percentage of students reading at grade level or above school-wide 38.1%

Change (Gain) +13.4%

The realized gains in reading in these studies combined with other research showing that the paraphrasing (Sentence Combining) activities used in the Prototype-Construction Approach improve writing skills illustrate the tremendous potential that the Prototype-Construction Approach holds for language arts programs.

Their decades-long pursuit of effective and accessible writing instruction culminated with the Thinking Through Grammar series, now delivered as a self-paced online program.

Case Study: Yuba City High School (CA, USA)

This study looked at the California High School Exit Exam results from Yuba City High School students over three years. All English teachers used Thinking Through Grammar textbooks in their English Language Arts Instruction. In year one, only 40% of students passed. By year three, nearly 80% of students passed the state exam.

Case Study: Malcolm X College Summer Program (IL, USA)

During a summer writing program for struggling 10th-grade students hosted by Malcolm X College in Chicago, IL, students gained an average of one year and three months in reading comprehension in just four weeks. The evaluation used different forms of the MAT-6 to collect pre/post-test data.

Case Study: Near North High School (IL, USA)

Near North High School in Chicago, IL, doubled their rate of students performing at or above grade level within one year of using Thinking Through Grammar as part of their daily Language Arts instruction. The school progressed from roughly 10% of students at or above grade level to 20% of students at or above grade level.

Master the Art and Science of Writing