Descriptive and prescriptive grammar in teaching English

ults: 4/2/2019 
Date published the article: 27/2/2019 
Abstract: This article aims to make it clear that it is not quite satisfactory if we 
attribute any language difference between authentic English and the English we are 
learning and teaching only to the informal style. By analyzing a number of examples, the 
writer assumes that many Vietnamese learners believe that English taught at school and 
English spoken by native English people share one and the same grammar. In fact, the 
English grammar we learn is just one type of grammar (prescriptive grammar) and native 
English people have their own grammar in communication (descriptive grammar). Based 
on some differences, the writer offers a number of pedagogical suggestions to deal with the 
differences between the two types of grammar in English. 
Keywords: satisfactory, attribute, authentic, learners, prescriptive grammar, 
descriptive grammar, pedagogical suggestions 
1. Introduction 
Since I learned English, long ago, 
and until now when I teach English I have 
always held an idea that language 
learning means grammar learning. 
Grammar is defined as the rules by which 
words change their forms and are 
combined into sentences (LDCE, 
2010:763). In other words, grammar rules 
are formulated and learners of a language 
should learn and use them in writing and 
speaking; if they follow the rules their 
language use is correct, if not, it is 
incorrect. However, I sometimes I 
wonder if the English grammar we learn 
and teach at school is exactly the 
* Dai Nam University 
grammar native English people use in real 
life. 
2. Food for thought 
In my teaching life, I have been 
exposed to several varieties of English: 
British English, American English, 
Australian English, Canadian English. 
However, the experiences below made 
me think of some pedagogical problems: 
The first case happened when a 
student asked me if he answered in a 
TOEFL test correctly when he selected 
the form of the objective case of the 
pronoun in the comparative structure (eg. 
She is older than I am / me). He told me 
he had read somewhere that in the 
Nghiên cứu trao đổi ● Research-Exchange of opinion 63 
comparative structures pronouns could be 
used either subjective or objective case, 
the latter is informal. Of course , at that 
time I told him that he was not wrong to 
say so, but that the former was the right 
choice, because in this situation than is a 
conjunction connecting two clauses. 
The second case was when a girl 
student came up with the question that in 
English grammar books, the word as is a 
conjunction meaning in the way that 
some one says or does, eg. Do as I say 
(LDCE, 2010:82), but sometimes she met 
with some sentences where the word like, 
a preposition, is used instead of as; for 
example, Nobody understands him like I 
do. It is explained that the 
conjunctions as and like have the same 
meaning when used in 
comparisons. Like is a little more 
informal than as (more formal: Nobody 
understands him as I do. 
(https://dictionary.cambridge.org/vi/gra
mmar/british-grammar/as-or-like). 
Another experience occurred 
when a student asked me if she could use 
coordinating conjunctions to begin 
English sentences. In other words, she 
was not sure if she could use the 
conjunctions for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so 
(FANBOYS) in writing to stand at the 
beginning of a sentence (eg. I am very 
smart. Yet I do not enjoy school.). Of 
course, my answer is ‘NO’ since the 
writing theory and English grammar rule 
stipulate that coordinating conjunctions 
are used to connect two independent 
clauses in English compound sentences. 
In initial position, only conjunctive 
adverbs such as moreover, besides, or 
linking phrases such as in addition, apart 
from that, can be used in the sentence. 
In spite of this, it goes without saying that 
in normal speech or writing, English 
people sometimes use coordinating 
conjunctions to begin sentences. The 
examples are: 
[1] *And let every other power 
know that this hemisphere intends 
to remain the master of its own 
house. [John F. Kennedy] 
[2] *But the truth is, these steps 
won’t make up for the seven 
million jobs that we’ve lost over 
the last two years. [Barack 
Obama]. 
The forth occurrence was when a third 
year student who was interested in word 
order in English sentences complained to 
me that in English grammar books he 
learned that adverbs and adverbial 
phrases can be put at the front, in the 
middle or at the end of a clause; the mid 
position is between the subject and the 
main verb. Some examples are: 
[3] Apples always taste best when 
you pick them straight off the tree. 
 [4] You can definitely never predict 
what will happen. (after a modal verb) 
When there is more than one verb, mid 
position means after the first auxiliary 
verb or after a modal verb: 
[5] The government 
has occasionally been forced to change 
its mind. (after the first auxiliary verb) 
However, in the sentences with 
infinitives, adverbs can stand after the 
particle to and before the infinitive, which 
is called split infinitive. Many linguists 
and grammarians who based English on 
Latin which had no such things criticized 
64 Nghiên cứu trao đổi ● Research-Exchange of opinion 
this usage, saying that it is incorrect to use 
adverbs in this way. The examples are: 
[6] She used to secretly admire 
him; 
[7] I would like the carpet to 
completely cover the floor. 
All those cases as I have cited 
above derive from my students, but I 
myself (and maybe you too), have 
encountered many situations when native 
English people sometimes use their 
language forms different from what we 
teach our students. One example is that 
when English people give opinions, they 
often say, for example, I’m wondering, 
I’m thinking even though in English 
grammar books, verbs of this type are 
taught not to be used in progress form. 
All these examples from my 
students and from my observation have 
induced me to think that the differences in 
these cases which are usually explained 
that they are used informally belong to 
one and the same grammar we learn and 
teach or they belong to another type of 
grammar. 
3. Discussion 
I believe there might have been 
more cases than those I have cited above. 
However, up to this point the question is 
whether all the differences in the cases 
derive from the informal style of 
language or something else. I wonder if 
you teachers of English have ever found 
yourselves in the same situations as mine 
and how you could have been able to 
explain or say something as I did that it is 
because this way is more informal than 
the other or when you could not explain 
you just said it’s because of grammar 
rules. 
The fact is that all of the cases 
mentioned above are some of the 
examples of descriptive grammar in 
English, not of the grammar we teach at 
school. Out of different types of grammar 
depending on different ways of 
describing and analyzing the structures 
and functions of language, such as 
traditional grammar, generative 
grammar, comparative grammar, 
universal grammar, etc. in any language 
there are these two distinctive types of 
grammar, descriptive grammar used by 
native speakers and prescriptive 
grammar by linguists and grammarians 
(prescriptive grammar). Both are 
concerned with rules - but in different 
ways. Specialists in descriptive grammar 
examine the rules or patterns that underlie 
the use of words, phrases, clauses, and 
sentences. In contrast, prescriptive 
grammarians (such as most editors and 
teachers) try to enforce rules about what 
they believe to be the correct uses of 
language (Richard Nordquist, 2008). In 
other words, descriptive grammar is 
concerned with patterns of words, 
describing how words are really used by 
native people in communication, without 
considering whether language use is 
correct or incorrect, whereas prescriptive 
grammar which formulates the rules for 
language learners to follow focuses on 
whether language use is correct or 
incorrect according to the rules. The first 
grammar is not taught in school, but 
inherited unconsciously in human 
community from generation to generation 
of native speakers. Meanwhile 
prescriptive grammar is taught at school; 
language learners should obey its rules as 
Nghiên cứu trao đổi ● Research-Exchange of opinion 65 
if they were patients, obeying the 
medication prescribed by the doctors. 
Along the lines of these 
perspectives, Kirvalidze (2013) posited 
that a descriptive grammar is a fully 
explicit grammar exhaustively describing 
the grammatical constructions of a 
language. It does not teach the rules of the 
language; it describes the rules that are 
already known. In other words, a 
descriptive grammar of language does not 
tell you how you should speak; it only 
describes your unconscious linguistic 
knowledge while a prescriptive grammar 
tells what rules you should know to speak 
the standard language. In English 
learning, prescriptive grammar rules are 
taught in school to fulfill language 
requirements. This type of grammar 
states explicitly the rules of the English 
language, lists the words and their 
pronunciations. It is often difficult for 
students and adult learners to learn 
English without being instructed. It is 
assumed that when the students already 
know English, they could be able to 
compare the grammar of the English 
language they know (prescriptive) with 
the grammar of the native speakers 
(descriptive). 
4. Conclusion 
Descriptive grammar and 
prescriptive grammar are two separate 
grammars. The first is used in real life, in 
the outside world and the second takes 
place inside schools; it is used by 
educated people. The language patterns in 
descriptive grammar are acquired by 
imitation (unconscious) and the rules in 
prescriptive grammar are to be obeyed by 
learning (conscious). We teachers cannot 
mix them together in language teaching. 
Generally, we should accept the 
similarities and realize differences 
between them. Therefore, we cannot base 
ourselves on prescriptive grammar rules 
to say that it is wrong or informal to write 
or say, for example: She is younger than 
me in English or Thông qua bài báo này 
cho thấy nhiều vấn đề về môi trường ngày 
càng trở nên trầm trọng in Vietnamese. 
When such cases happen, we should tell 
the students that we learners of English 
should write or speak in the way we learn 
from books. They should also know that 
teachers will evaluate their language 
competence and performance based on 
prescriptive grammar to define which is 
correct or incorrect. At the same time, we 
encourage our students to expose 
themselves to authentic English via real 
life texts so that they can learn the 
differences between descriptive and 
prescriptive grammar (inductive 
learning) by themselves. 
To conclude, if those cases under 
discussion are explained by saying that 
they are used informally, I fear that this 
way of explaining is confusing and 
misleading. Learners of English may 
conclude that they are learning the only 
grammar of English; they can only use the 
rules of this grammar (prescriptive 
grammar) to do everything with 
language, and that anything different (eg, 
I ain’t, much discussion, much chance, 
I’ve been wanting to, you and me can, etc) 
is incorrect or informal. In fact, in English 
speaking countries, these two grammars 
exist, one taught and learned in school 
and used in formal documents 
(prescriptive grammar), and the other 
66 Nghiên cứu trao đổi ● Research-Exchange of opinion 
used in real-life communication 
(descriptive grammar). I could hereby 
compare teaching grammar to our 
students in our working situations to 
teaching how to play a ball game. It is 
well-known that there are two games 
where a ball is kicked but they have 
different names, with different rules, 
soccer and football. We should decide on 
the game we are teaching to follow the 
rules. If we are playing soccer, we should 
focus only on soccer and apply its rules to 
decide on the fouls which the players 
make, not using the rules of football. 
Similarly, when we encounter some 
peculiarities in English, this strategy for 
distinguishing and explaining about their 
grammatical differences may work. 
5. Recommendation 
In grammar teaching, teachers 
should introduce briefly the differences 
between prescriptive grammar and 
descriptive grammar when possible so 
that students know when something is 
considered to be right or wrong or 
something should or should not be used 
(in speaking or writing, inside or outside 
school, etc). 
In teaching translation, teachers 
should tell the students to be aware of the 
differences between descriptive and 
prescriptive grammar in English and in 
Vietnamese so that they can choose 
proper strategies when translating (using 
prescriptive grammar rules) and 
interpreting (using descriptive or/and 
prescriptive grammar rules). An example 
of this is that when translating the above 
sentence in Vietnamese Thông qua bài 
báo này cho thấy nhiều vấn đề về môi 
trường ngày càng trở nên trầm trọng, the 
students should know how to choose the 
prescriptive grammar rules to use the 
structure Subject-Verb (Bài báo này cho 
thấy; Thông qua bài báo này, chúng ta 
thấy), not Prepositional phrase-Verb. 
In writing, teachers should guide 
the students to learn and apply only 
prescriptive grammar rules in writing in 
class and in language tests (TOEIC, 
IELTS, etc). Students are also told to use 
only prescriptive grammar in writing 
business and formal documents, such as 
contracts, business letters and academic 
writing (essays or research papers). 
In teaching reading, listening and 
speaking, we teachers should encourage 
our students to read extensively and 
collect peculiar examples (ie. descriptive 
grammar) as many as they can so that 
they can expand their knowledge, enrich 
their vocabulary and language patterns 
they find in authentic texts. By doing this, 
they can apply their findings in real life 
communication with English speaking 
people when they have a chance. 
References: 
1. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/vi/
grammar/british-grammar/as-or-
like 
2. https://news.collinselt.com/prescript
ive-vs-descriptive-approaches-to-
grammar/ 
3. https://www.thoughtco.com/types-
of-grammar-1689698 
4. Longman Dictionary of 
Contemporary English, 2010, 
Pearson Education Limited. 
5. Nino Kirvalidze (2013). Theoretical 
Course of English Grammar. Tbilisi, 
Ilia State University 
Author address: Dai Nam University 
Email: nghuongss@gmail.com