ABSTRACT

This paper starts by reporting on the design and trialling of an informal, low-stakes test designed to assess the knowledge of grammar terms of pre-service primary school teachers following the UK’s National Curriculum, the results of which were used to inform the design of a series of optional grammar classes. The test proved surprisingly difficult to design, and the final version contains many flaws, some predictable and some less so. In this paper we describe the design process and illustrate the difficulties we encountered, using evidence from our contemporaneous discussions and notes, as well as qualitative feedback and selected results from student teachers’ test scores. We speculate on the extent to which the problems of our test reflect underlying issues with our understanding of the nature of declarative grammatical knowledge; these issues are likely to be relevant in all contexts where formal grammar is taught. We also draw out specific implications for the grammatical framework used in the English National Curriculum, and the associated tests of grammar, punctuation and spelling currently in use.

摘要

本文首先报告了一项非正式的、低风险的测试的设计和试验，该测试旨在评估英国国家课程后小学教师的语法术语知识，其结果用于为设计提供信息一系列可选的语法类。事实证明，测试设计出奇的困难，最终版本包含许多缺陷，有些是可以预测的，有些则不太可能。在本文中，我们描述了设计过程并说明了我们遇到的困难，使用来自我们同期讨论和笔记的证据，以及定性反馈和来自学生教师考试成绩的选定结果。我们推测我们测试的问题在多大程度上反映了我们对陈述性语法知识性质的理解的潜在问题；这些问题可能与教授正式语法的所有环境相关。我们还对英语国家课程中使用的语法框架以及当前使用的相关语法、标点符号和拼写测试提出了具体的含义。