Is there is too much emphasis on grammar at the expense of storytelling?

Are children taught too much grammar? Do they need to be taught grammar at all? This debate is never-ending. Yet, however we look at it, children need the tools to write. In other words, you can’t write if you don’t know how. To write clearly and concisely, you need to understand the fundamentals of writing. And that inevitably includes some grammar rules.

If you don’t know how to tell a story, no matter how good your grammatical knowledge, how are you going to write one?

Let’s talk about storytelling.

Storytelling is as old as time – a language before we could write. It’s how we have always made sense of the world, a unique and universal part of the human experience. Ancient cave paintings depicting scenes, indicate that humans were telling stories in some form or another, as a way of communicating, thousands of years ago.

Traditionally, people told stories orally: for entertainment; for educational or informative purposes; passed down, told, re-told, added to, changed here and there but with much the same message. Tales by firelight wove communities together, taught them how to make sense of the world, how to empathise with others. The valuable information they needed to survive or behave. Stories are part of human existence.

Storytelling came first. Writing came later.

Writing systems like cuneiform and hieroglyphics, developed by ancient civilisations like the Greeks and Egyptians, transformed the way people consumed stories. They allowed stories to reach wider audiences as well as preserving them. Of course, not everyone could read; therefore, traditional storytelling remained.

During the Middle Ages, travelling storytellers took news from town to town in the form of poetry, ballads and song, as well as stories. It wasn’t until the invention of the printing press that stories were truly revolutionised, and the written word began to emerge as an important tool.

Stories, now, are everywhere.

Newspapers, radio, television, film, video games, books, eBooks, social media. Stories surround us. So why is it then that children are finding it increasingly difficult to come up with story ideas of their own, let alone write them?

I would argue that in this digital age we are losing the ability to focus or concentrate for extended periods. All the information we receive comes in short, quick bursts, and it is constant; a never-ending stream of information to which the brain eventually becomes desensitised.

Is there such a thing as too much information?

When you read a longer text, such as a novel, you enter into a deeper state of focus, one where you’re able to shut out what is going on around you and lose yourself in whatever it is you’re reading. When scrolling, you don’t get that, and the brain is always alert, drip-fed and in a high dopamine state, therefore never switching off. It is like being on a constant high or on hyper alert.

Children who consume content in this way are never fully experiencing a story as it is meant to be consumed – in full, in its entirety: a beginning, middle and an end. Overwhelm of information surely can lead to overwhelm of what to do with it?

We don’t tell stories by firelight anymore.

Stories have always brought people together for a shared experience, but it no longer occurs in that way. Stories have almost become a tick list – must read that school reading book for homework. It is no wonder that children increasingly don’t enjoy reading – they just don’t experience stories in the way they were intended.

Storytelling is important because it helps us to make sense of the world.

Imagine being unable to tell the story of what happened to you during your day. There is a beginning, middle and end to all the stories we tell, but it is the ‘telling’ that must be learned.

Children learn this in several ways. Conversations with parents, friends, family, etc. about their weekend or a holiday. Listening to stories read by parents or teachers.

From this, they begin to recount the stories they’ve heard – being able to re-tell a story is an important part of the learning process. It leads to them making up their own versions and eventually, their own stories entirely. Everything has a beginning, middle and end, from getting up in the morning to going to bed, so understanding this is fundamental to learning storytelling. Helping children to put things in order can help them to understand this too.

Children need to learn the art of storytelling before they can write.

What about the writing then? It doesn’t translate that just because a child can tell a story, they will automatically become a good writer. Writing is a tool by which they can do this, and it is important to know how to do it.
However, how much do they need to know to be good at it? In my opinion, it is important not to overwhelm at too young an age. I agree with David Didau about the minimum amount of grammar everyone should know.

When is grammar useful, then?

Heavier grammar can be very useful when learning a second language, as you need to know many of the terms to understand how to speak, read and write the language. Surprisingly, when you teach English as a foreign language, you use a lot of grammatical terms that most native English speakers won’t have heard of. But it’s different learning in a second language – your native language learning begins when you’re in the womb and way before you utter your first word. You only start to learn the ins and outs of how it’s written once you get to school age.

There is a fine line, therefore, between giving children the tools to be able to write and swamping them with so much grammatical information that it becomes overwhelming and almost impossible to write anything for fear of getting it wrong.

Creativity should ultimately come first. Stifling that creativity with overly complicated sentences does not make for good writing.