Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
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National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) Conference 22–24 June
Despite being a member of NATE for a few years, this was my first visit to the annual conference.
The opening keynote was by Debra Myhill, Professor of Education at Exeter University, whose research lies in the inter-relationship between metalinguistic understanding and writing. The title of her keynote was: Creative Knowing: Bringing Grammar in from the Cold. This was of interest to me for a variety of reasons: firstly, as a literature specialist, I have always felt that grammar teaching is challenging. It is relatively easy to engage students in literature through narrative and character but more challenging to find fun ways to teach the differences between a defining and non-defining relative clause. Secondly, as something of a grammar pedant, I am constantly dismayed by the low literacy levels of some trainee teachers and recognise the important of grammar teaching in schools. As the mantra goes, all teachers are teachers of English.
Myhill began by outlining how grammar itself is contested and often regarded as a ‘dirty word’ in English teaching, stifling creativity. According to one academic, grammar is the skunk at the garden party of the language arts. Despite the emphasis on grammar in KS2 SATS, there is no evidence to suggest that teaching and testing grammar makes better writers. It is one thing to identify an adverbial phrase but another thing entirely to use it effectively in an essay or short story. The knowledge and understanding of grammar, she argued, is to help learners understand both their own work and that of others. It is a resource for shaping and crafting meaning in a text; however, grammatical metalanguage is not always familiar to teachers and grammar itself is conceptually complex. Having learned grammar myself firstly through studying French and Latin at school and then through working as a TEFL teacher and teaching A-level English Language, I can attest to this and recognise in many trainee English teachers their wariness and lack of confidence in teaching grammar.
The issue is further compounded, Myhill went on to say, by the conflict between the prescriptive model of grammar as advocated by the DfE (courtesy of Michael Gove) and the descriptive model used by academics. In short, the debate is between whether grammar should be used to guide the accuracy of writing or to describe what has been written. Debra cited the work of the famous linguistics academic, Michael Halliday, whose theory of ‘functional grammar’ defined it as a meaning-making resource, a gateway to the study of discourse. I endorse his (and Myhill’s view) that grammatical knowledge should be about providing choice to a writer, a way of both choosing the most effective language and syntax for a piece of writing as well as identifying the reasons behind the choices made by others. The teaching of grammar should emerge through the study of literature or writing rather than a dry exercise in feature-spotting.
Overall, an engaging and illuminating lecture which provided an excellent start to a very good day.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.