Dr. Oliver Farrar Emerson (1860-1927) was for many years a highly regarded professor of rhetoric and English philology at Cornell University. A specialist in medieval English literature, he wrote and edited several books, including The History of the English Language (1894) and A Middle English Reader (1905).
In a paper read before the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club in November 1896, Emerson spoke confidently of "a revival of the study of English grammar" in our schools. But he wasn't advocating any sort of "back-to-basics" approach--or what he called the "dry and deadening processes of memorizing rules and definitions, and the unreasoning application of set formulae."
What he had in mind was something "more accurate, more interesting, and more effective": a "newer grammatical teaching" grounded in current linguistic research and respectful of spoken as well as written English. And that required "teachers who are alive to the newest advances in linguistic science": The great cry of secondary school teachers is for more methods. After some experience in schools of all grades, I am more and more inclined to believe that more special knowledge is the principal need. At least if this be true of any subject in the curriculum, it is true of English. As you read Emerson's three-point plan for improving the teaching of grammar, consider what lessons might still be drawn from it today.
The Teaching of English Grammar (1896)
by Oliver Farrar Emerson
For some years I have been confident that a revival of the study of English grammar was certain to come. There are two reasons for my confidence. The first is the importance of the subject itself. The second is the fact that some years ago the pendulum of educational thought began to swing away from the teaching of grammar, and its return is as certain as the operation of natural law.
I recognize that the figure which I have just used is not perfect. The pendulum of educational progress obeys no merely physical law. It will not swing back to the same position occupied before. Nor can anyone be more heartily glad of this than I. What has been gained for the systematic teaching of composition and literature will not, I trust, be lost. Besides, the older grammatical teaching must give way to something more accurate, more interesting, and more effective. Let me try to point out some of the lines along which this newer grammatical teaching should proceed.
The Principles of Language
In the first place, English grammar should be taught with more reference to the nature of language and the principles of its development. That this has been done to any considerable extent in the past, no one who knows the subject intimately will seriously maintain. The teaching of English grammar has usually been little more than the presentation, in the least interesting form, of certain dogmatic statements laid down by various so-called grammarians--I will not take their names in vain, for I am sure they have been well-meaning, though often ignorant men. The basis for these dogmatic statements and rules, their relation to language as it exists and has existed, the reason for the discrepant dogmatisms of different treatises, have had too little consideration in grammatical study. In fine, the teaching of the grammar of our mother tongue has been almost, if not quite, untouched by the newer discussions and discoveries in the science of language.
The importance of considering language in its essential nature may be illustrated from the division of the parts of speech. The separation of the elements of language into parts of speech, as they are called, was originally based mainly on inflection. But in an analytical language like our own, the classification based on inflection is no longer exclusive, and the tendency is to make a somewhat new division based on function alone. Thus such “parts of speech” as the participle and the article have been set up. Yet division according to function, if fully carried out, would greatly multiply the categories, and this is disadvantageous on many accounts. The only feasible course seems to be to preserve the older classification based on inflection, in order to make clear the relation of English to its past history as well as to other languages. On the other hand, the importance of function should be emphasized, so that the student may appreciate the conventional, rather than essential, character of the division. Unfortunately, the grammarians have not only adopted various functional classifications, but have stated them categorically without the slightest hint of their conventional character. The result is confusion in the mind of the student in regard to both his own language and the foreign languages with which he comes in contact.
To illustrate by a concrete example, there is no greater confusion in grammatical categories, as they appear in most textbooks, than in those called adjectives and pronouns. There is naturally some reason for this. In many languages the terms adjective and pronoun are not exclusive divisions. Certain classes of pronouns, as demonstratives and indefinites, always have adjective as well as pronominal functions. Some indefinites also have adjective inflection. Besides, in English such pronouns have lost all trace of inflection, agreeing in this respect with adjectives. It is not strange, therefore, that there should be some confusion of ideas. It is strange that the grammarian, whose special business is to note essential distinctions, should separate English grammar from that of all other languages by classing demonstrative and indefinite pronouns under adjectives. No one would maintain for a moment that these classes of pronouns are any less pronominal than in the past.
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