Grammar is most important/Basics must be learned first

For a long time now, I’ve been disturbed by the reality of the English language situation in Malaysia. The general inability to write among the general populace, not only among schoolchildren, but also among college and university students, and worst of all among teachers of the English language themselves, is truly widespread.
Could it be a lack of reading or a lack of practice? I know an English language teacher who reads voraciously but speaks and writes atrocious English. How do you explain that?
He is completely unaware of the rules of grammar. He would blissfully speak as he likes and those who know would be wincing in embarrassment. Whatever students’ work he had corrected must be corrected all over again.
I suspect the whole problem lies in the English language school syllabus and the way it is taught. I think we would be able to make people write well if we expanded the Literature component and forgot about teaching grammar, comprehension, vocabulary, and the works.
Just concentrate on Literature and writing. People are unable to write in English because they don’t think in the language. Lacking practice makes it very difficult to write. Once people start to read and write, everything will fall into place. They will understand sentence structure. No amount of grammar lessons will make people understand syntax.
The above are sentences/paragraphs taken from an article entitled “Expand Lit component” written by The Owl and published by THE STAR’S MIND OUR ENGLISH of July 6, 2006 which can be viewed in full at http://thestar.com.my/english/story.asp?file=/2006/7/6/lifefocus/14301799&sec=lifefocus
The above article has attracted comments from Mahid bin Masseluang, Labuan and myself which are published in THE STAR’S MIND OUR ENGLISH of July 14, 2006 and reproduced below:-
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Grammar is most important
In response to The Owl (July 6), I have a confession to make: I am a grammar freak! I believe with my every single brain cell that grammar is the most important aspect of teaching and learning a language.
Thus, it is a priority to get the grammar correct before we embark on teaching and improving the four skills in language.
However, lately, grammar is viewed with suspicion and always put aside compared to listening, speaking, reading and writing. It has become the modern Cinderella who has not two, but four evil sisters.
I can still recall vividly my school days back in the ’80s when grammar was given its due recognition as the building blocks to good speaking and writing.
We had our best times with subject-verb agreement and prepositions until the so-called communication English syllabus crept into the school curriculum in the early ’90s and the rest, as I would like to call it, is a sad story.
It is sad because communication English teaching does not give enough emphasis on grammar. Its proponents hope that grammar can be internalised, as if by magic, by the learner through learning in this way.
This is, of course, not the case. The graduates of this communication English syllabus are those who are to a certain extent able to communicate, but without good grammar. So, I share The Owl’s lament.
However, I do not agree with The Owl’s suggestion to forget “about the teaching of grammar, comprehension, vocabulary, the works”. How can we? Aren’t those the basics of good speech and writing?
I agree with the fact that language learning involves a lot of incidental learning – such as the use of Literature to promote good language – but some drilling on grammar and vocabulary is still required.
The same thing goes in schools and universities where communication English is taught without sufficient emphasis on grammar, but at the end of the day, we judge them on their ungrammatical utterances. How can we produce good communicators with good grammar if we do not teach them the basics? – Mahid bin Masseluang, Labuan

Basics must be learned first
I REFER to the article ‘Expand Lit component’ by The Owl (July 6).
Just concentrating on Literature and writing will, without any doubt, improve one’s grasp of the language, resulting in ease of expression (whether in proper English or not).
But a lack of a strong grammatical background will lead one nowhere as one may not understand the literary texts fully and also be unable to write proper sentences since one is not aware of what constitutes a correct sentence.
Grammatical rules are very important and schoolchildren should be taught and given exercises on it so that they know the rules to understanding and writing good English.
If a person does not know that a complete sentence must consist of a subject and a predicate which must have a verb, how can such a person be expected to write good English?
By keying in the word “dictionary” in any of the Internet search engines, one will be led to many free sites where grammatical rules are explained in detail, exercises are provided, and a channel is even available for discussion.
Should one be doubtful about the explanations, one can always discuss them with friends or seek clarification from one’s teacher (if one is still in school) or even write to Mind Our English for help (as so many have done).
Those who aim for quicker progress can seek assistance from professional bodies or tutors. – Kengt, Penang
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