Teacher Trainees’ Explicit Knowledge of Grammar and Primary Curriculum Requirements in England
CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
Case Study 2: Harriet
Harriet taught differences between homophones in a contrastive way to 9-10 year olds, explaining ‘their’ as a possessive, then trying to explain ‘there’ (as in ‘there was’) and finally ‘they’re’. To explain ‘their’, she used the word possessive, and emphasized the ‘belonging aspect of that word’ to make the grammatical function clear to the pupils.
Harriet: Can anyone tell me what this one means [underlines their & nominates Mita]
Pupil: It belongs to you....
Harriet: Yeah, something belongs. Can you give me an example?
Pupil: Their ball.
During the stimulated recall activity, any imprecision in the above exchange was not discussed. However, Harriet felt that in future she would seek to draw on explicit knowledge of other possessive determiners. She had not sought to discover whether the pupils had used the term ‘possessive’ before and did not contrast ‘their’ with other possessives (my, your, her etc).
Her explanation of how ‘there’ is different to the other homophones demonstrated that meaning-related explanations could lead to confusion. She explained it in relation to position, over there, for example, but when an able pupil intervened Harriet had to think quickly, as this exchange demonstrates:
Harriet: Their ball. The ball belongs to them; it’s their ball. Good. Possessive. It means belonging. David?
Pupil: There…[pointing] …
Harriet: OK. Which one? This one [pointing to there]? Where would you…?
Pupil: If you want to say hmmm where the people come from, are from, where something is....
Harriet: It’s about place…. It’s over there.
Pupil: They’re from Woolworth’s.
Harriet: They’re from Wool Yeah ... [pauses, confused] …ooh perhaps you might be getting confused there …OK. This [pointing to ‘there’ on the board] is used to say something over there … It can be used to talk about time or it can be used to talk about place. There [taps board]. We’ll go into more detail in a minute.
Harriet had done considerable preparatory work, researching the grammar related to her lesson. Nevertheless, the exchange illustrated the danger of contrasting the homophones. Why had she chosen to teach this way? She explained that she had noted errors in pupils’ writing and cited a word-level objective (DfEE, 1998: 39) that pupils should be taught to distinguish common homophones. Supervised by school mentors who in turn are expected to deliver the NLS program, it is very difficult for trainees to challenge prescribed objectives. They simply do not have the freedom to vary or omit objectives in use in their training schools. Despite her confidence in and faithful adherence to NLS objectives, Harriet encountered difficulties. In the SRI, she was curious and confused about the classification of ‘there’, in the phrase ‘there is/was’. She reflected that a ‘parts of speech’ approach was not helpful. She had tried to research ‘there’ but not found any advice in grammar references nor in Grammar for Writing, a source of guidance and lesson plans issued by the government department responsible for the NLS (DfEE, 2000). When asked why she could not find help in Grammar for Writing, she said:
Because it’s done by different parts of speech.... And you can’t look up for a certain word (e.g. there) ...you’ve got to look under pronouns or.... And I can’t find it anywhere ... It’s one of those things I was pretty sure 1 knew how to teach it and then I got up and I thought I’m not actually that sure after all…
Harriet believed that direct explanations of ‘their, they’re and there’ would help pupils to improve their writing. She reflected that immediate improvement occurred but after a few days she again found similar errors in pupils’ free writing. She completed the SRI believing that one could concentrate too much on NLS objectives (and their sequence) and that lesson content should be determined by children’s language needs as they arose. She remained, on the other hand, confident about how she could address the task.
