来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2021年2月8日
One unanticipated consequence of school closures and remote learning has been a focus on the teaching of grammar. While supporting their children with home learning, many parents have been confronted with their own lack of knowledge of the basics. What exactly is a fronted adverbial you may ask, or how do you spot a past continuous verb form?
学校关闭和远程学习的一个意想不到的后果是语法教学受到关注。在支持孩子在家学习的同时，许多家长都面临着自己缺乏基础语法知识的问题。你可能会问，什么是前置状语，或者如何识别动词过去进行时？
This can be a good thing as it surfaces many misunderstandings and confusions about grammar, which merit discussion. As a nation, we remain both divided and uncertain about what teaching grammar is for.
这可能是一件好事，因为它暴露了许多关于语法的误解和困惑，值得讨论。作为一个国家，我们对语法教学的目的存在分歧和不确定。
Much of this stems from the history of grammar in English schools over the past 50 years. In 1966, an international conference of English educators came to the conclusion that teaching grammar was pointless because there was no evidence that it benefited children’s writing. This was highly influential in forming a strong voice in the UK against the teaching of grammar, and the subject was largely dropped from English lessons throughout the 70s and 80s.
这在很大程度上源于过去50年英格兰学校的语法教学历史。1966年，一次国际英语教育家会议得出结论，语法教学是毫无意义的，因为没有证据表明它有利于儿童的写作。这在英国形成了反对语法教学的强烈声音，在70年代和80年代，语法在很大程度上从英语课程中消失了。
The introduction of a national curriculum in 1988 mandated the content of the English curriculum for the first time, and grammar was again a bone of contention. In fact, every one of the five versions of the national curriculum has included grammar, though to varying degrees. As a consequence, many parents today were themselves not taught grammar in their own schooling, which may account for some of the current anxiety. The latest version, without doubt, gives it the greatest emphasis, and this is amplified by the grammar, punctuation and spelling test for 11-year-olds. But no version of the national curriculum has ever been clear about the rationale for its inclusion – what is the point of teaching grammar?
1988年实行的国家课程第一次规定了英语课程的内容，语法再次成为争论的焦点。事实上，五个版本的国家课程都包含了语法，尽管程度不同。因此，如今许多家长在自己上学时没有学过语法，这可能是当前焦虑的部分原因。毫无疑问，最新版本是最重视语法的版本，而针对11岁孩子的语法、标点和拼写测试更是放大了这一点。但没有一个版本的国家课程清楚地说明了纳入语法的理由——语法教学的意义何在？
This absence of clarity is in part attributable to the distinction between implicit and explicit grammar knowledge. Children know about grammar, even if they are not taught grammar. All of us have a deep understanding of the grammar of our own language and use that understanding all the time to communicate, in speech or in writing. We would all know that to say “a red leather big handbag’” sounds wrong, and could alter it to “a big red leather handbag”, but few of us could explain the rules that govern adjectival order in English. It is implicit, not explicit, and so we cannot verbalise our understanding. This difference between implicit and explicit understanding is the source of one longstanding disagreement about grammar teaching: if we understand grammar naturally and implicitly, why do we need explicit knowledge of grammatical terminology? This is a fair question.
这种不明确的部分原因是隐性和显性语法知识之间的区别。孩子们知道语法，即使他们没有学过语法。我们所有人都对自己语言的语法有深刻的理解，并一直用这种理解来交流，无论是在口语还是在写作中。我们都知道，说“a-red-leather-big-handbag”听起来是错误的，可以把它改成“a-big-red-leather-handbag”，但很少有人能解释英语中形容词顺序的规则。它是隐含的，不是显性的，所以我们不能用语言表达我们的理解。这种内隐理解和外显理解之间的差异是语法教学长期存在分歧的根源：如果我们自然地和内隐地理解语法，为什么我们需要语法术语的外显知识？这是一个合理的问题。
One answer suggests that this explicit knowledge helps to develop understanding of how the language choices we make shape meaning. Writing is a craft – using phrases, sentences and paragraphs to make the text do what we want it to do. Of course, crafting a piece of writing is not just about grammar, but helping children to understand how grammatical choices affect the nuances of meaning demystifies the craft.
一种答案表明，这种明确的知识有助于理解我们的语言选择是如何形成意义的。写作是一种技能——用短语、句子和段落让文章达到我们想要的效果。当然，创作一篇文章不仅仅是关于语法，而是帮助孩子们理解语法选择如何影响意义的细微差别，从而揭开写作的神秘面纱。