Grammar: how to tame the unruly beast

Simon Buckland
A young child sat at a desk in a classroom writing

“Grammar, which knows how to control even kings”- ѴDZè

When you think of grammar, “rule” is probably the first word that pops into your mind. Certainly the traditional view of grammar is that it’s about the “rules of language”. Indeed, not so long ago, teaching a language meant just teaching grammatical rules, plus perhaps a few vocabulary lists. However, I’m going to suggest that there’s actually no such thing as a grammatical rule.

To show you what I mean, let’s take the comparative of adjectives: “bigger”, “smaller”, “more useful”, “more interesting”, etc. We might start with a simple rule: for adjectives with one syllable, add -er, and for adjectives with two or more syllables, use more + adjective.

But this doesn’t quite work: yes, we say “more useful”, but we also say “cleverer”, and “prettier”. OK then, suppose we modify the rule. Let’s also say that for two-syllable adjectives ending in -y or -er you add -er.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work either: we do say “cleverer”, but we also say “more sober” and “more proper”. And there are problems with some of the one-syllable adjectives too: we say “more real” and “more whole” rather than “realer” or “wholer”. If we modify the rule to fit these exceptions, it will be half a page long, and anyway, if we keep looking we’ll find yet more exceptions. This happens repeatedly in English grammar. Very often, rules seem so full of exceptions that they’re just not all that helpful.

And there’s another big problem with the “rule approach”: it doesn’t tell you what the structure is actually used for, even with something as obvious as the comparative of adjectives. You might assume that it’s used for comparing things: “My house is smaller than Mary’s”; “John is more attractive than Stephen”. But look at this: “The harder you work, the more money you make.” Or this: “London is getting more and more crowded.” Both sentences use comparative adjectives, but they’re not directly comparing two things.

What we’re actually looking at here is not a rule but several overlapping patterns, or paradigms to use the correct technical term:

  1. adjective + -er + than
  2. more + adjective + than
  3. parallel comparative adjectives: the + comparative adjective 1 … the + comparative adjective 2
  4. repeated comparative adjective: adjective + -er + and + adjective + -er/more and more + adjective

This picture is more accurate, but it looks abstract and technical. It’s a long way from what we actually teach these days and the way we teach it, which tends to be organized around learning objectives and measurable outcomes, such as: “By the end of this lesson (or module) my students should be able to compare their own possessions with someone else’s possessions”. So we’re not teaching our students to memorize a rule or even to manipulate a pattern; we’re teaching them to actually do something in the real world. And, of course, we’re teaching it at a level appropriate for the student’s level.

So, to come back to grammar, once we’ve established our overall lesson or module objective, here are some of the things we’re going to need to know.

  • What grammatical forms (patterns) can be used to express this objective?
  • Which ones are appropriate for the level of my students? Are there some that they should already know, or should I teach them in this lesson?
  • What do the forms look like in practice? What would be some good examples?

Existing grammar textbooks generally don’t provide all this information; in particular, they’re very vague about level. Often they don’t even put grammar structures into specific CEFR levels but into a range, e.g. A1/A2 or A2/B1, and none fully integrates grammar with overall learning objectives.

At app, we’ve set ourselves the goal of addressing these issues by developing a new type of grammar resource for English teachers and learners that:

  • Is based on the Global Scale of English with its precise gradation of developing learner proficiency
  • Is built on the Council of Europe language syllabuses, linking grammar to CEFR level and to language functions
  • Uses international teams of language experts to review the structures and assess their levels

We include grammar in the GSE Teacher Toolkit, and you can use it to:

  • Search for grammar structures either by GSE or CEFR level
  • Search for grammar structures by keyword or grammatical category/part of speech
  • Find out at which level a given grammar structure should be taught
  • Find out which grammar structures support a given learning objective
  • Find out which learning objectives are related to a given grammar structure
  • Get examples for any given grammar structure
  • Get free teaching materials for many of the grammar structures

Think of it as an open-access resource for anyone teaching English and designing a curriculum.

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  • A blonde woman sat at a computer with headphones on in a room with more computers and desks in background

    Computer-based language assessment: The future is here

    By David Booth

    Many people are surprised at the idea of a computer program marking an exam paper. However, computer-based testing already exists in many different formats and many different areas. Many tests or exams that form part of our daily life are taken on computers. If you’ve ever learned to drive, sat a citizenship test, done a training course at work, or completed a placement test for a language course, the odds are that you’ve already taken an automated test.

    Yet despite it being so common, there is still a lack of understanding when it comes to computer-based language assessment and how a computer can evaluate productive skills like speaking and writing.

    Computer-based testing: a closer look

    A common issue is that people have different ideas of what these tests entail. Computers can fulfill several essential roles in the testing process, but these often go unacknowledged. For example, a variety of test questions are needed to administer an exam, along with relevant data, and computers are used to store both the questions and the data. When it comes to creating randomized exams, computer software is used to select the exam questions, based on this data.

    Computers can make complex calculations far more quickly and accurately than humans. This means that processes that previously took a long time are completed in days, rather than weeks.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is now capable of grading exam papers, for example. This means a shorter wait for exam results. In , candidates receive their results in an average of two days rather than waiting weeks for an examiner to mark their paper by hand.

    The benefits for students and teachers

    People take exams to prove their skills and abilities. Depending on their goals, the right result can open the door to many new opportunities, whether that is simply moving on to the next stage of a course, or something as life-changing as allowing you to take up your place on a university course in another country.

    A qualification can act as a passport to a better career or an enhanced education, and for that reason, it’s important that both students and teachers can have faith in their results.

    Computer programs have no inherent bias, which means that candidates can be confident that they will all be treated the same, regardless of their background, appearance or accent. , just one of app’s computer-based exams, offers students the chance to score additional points on the exam with innovative integrated test items.

    This integration means that the results are a far more accurate depiction of the candidate’s abilities and provide a truer reflection of their linguistic prowess.

    More than questions on a screen

    It’s not as easy as simply transferring the questions onto a computer screen. All that does is remove the need for pen and paper; this is a missed opportunity to harness the precision and speed of a computer, as well as its learning potential.

    Tests that have been fully digitized, such as PTE Academic, benefit from that automation; eliminating examiner bias, making the test fairer and calculating the results more quickly. Automated testing builds on the technological tradition of opening doors for the future – not closing them.

    How technology enhances language testing

    The development of automated testing technologies doesn’t merely make the examination process quicker and more accurate – it also gives us the chance to innovate. Speaking assessments are an excellent example of this.

    Previously, this part of a language exam involved an interview, led by an examiner, who asked questions and elicited answers. But now that we have the technological capability, using a computer offers students the chance to be tested on a much wider range of speaking skills, without worrying about the inherent bias of the examiner.

    Indeed, the use of a computer-based system facilitates integrated skills testing. Traditionally, language exams had separate papers focusing on the four skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing. But the more modern concept of language testing aims to assess these linguistic skills used together, just as they are in real-life situations.

    Afterwards, the various scores are categorized to allow learners an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, which helps both students and teachers identify areas which need improvement. This useful feedback is only possible because of the accuracy and detail of automated exam grading.

    The space race on paper

    Back in the 1960s, during the space race, computers were still a relatively new concept. Kathleen Johnson, one of the first African-American women to work for NASA as a scientist, was a mathematician with a reputation for doing incredibly complex manual calculations. Although computers had made the orbital calculations, the astronauts on the first space flight refused to fly until Kathleen had checked those calculations three times.

    This anecdote reminds us that - although computer technology is an inherent part of everyday life - now and then, we still need to check that their systems are working as they should. Human error still comes into play – after all, humans program these systems.

    PTE Academic – a fully digitized exam

    Every stage of PTE Academic, from registration to practice tests to results (both receiving and sharing them with institutions) happens online. It may come as a surprise to learn that the test itself is not taken online. Instead, students attend one of over 295 test centers to take the exam, which comes with the highest levels of data security.

    This means that each student can sit the exam in an environment designed for that purpose. It also allows the receiving institutions, such as universities and colleges, to be assured of the validity of the PTE Academic result.

    The future is here

    We created computers, but they have surpassed us in many areas – exam grading being a case in point. Computers can score more accurately and consistently than humans, and they don’t get tired late in the day, or become distracted by a candidate’s accent.

    The use of AI technology to grade student responses represents a giant leap forward in language testing, leading to fairer and more accurate student results. It also means more consistency in grading which benefits the institutions, such as universities, which rely on these scores to accurately reflect ability.

    And here at app, we are invested in staying at the cutting edge of assessment. Our test developers are incorporating AI solutions now, using its learning capacity to create algorithms and build programs that can assess speaking and writing skills accurately and quickly. We’re expanding the horizons of English language assessment for students, teachers and all the other professionals involved in each stage of the language learning journey.