Using proper grammar in writing is important. If you want your
students to meet your standards of grammatical propriety, you
must phrase your standards so students can decide whether they
applied a particular rule correctly in a specific sentence in
their own writing.
Unfortunately, there are so many grammar rules, it is hard to
for teachers, let alone students, to know which are essential
for writing and which are proper grammar
topics for bubble tests.
Connors & Lunsford's errors list
An easy way to define essential grammar for writing is to use the
list of 20 student writing mistakes (other than spelling errors)
published by Connors
and Lunsford in 1988.
The researchers looked at writing samples from college students.
They identified the most common grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes,
and usage mistakes. Then they ranked those mistakes order of frequency.
The list
-
Identifies authentic writing problems in students'
writing.
-
Identifies specific rules of proper grammar.
-
Phrases rules so violations can be counted.
-
Identifies rules needed for clear written communication.
-
Identifies rules most teachers and employers are likely
to know and to expect high school graduates to follow.
You could adopt the grammar and punctuation items from the Connors
and Lunsford list as the rules of proper grammar that your students
must master.
However, you can simplify your work even more.
Sentence identification errors
When you examine the Connors and Lunsford list carefully, you will
find some common threads.
Three mistakes are what the English ed people call boundary
errors. They are errors that occur because writers do not know
what is a sentence and what is not a sentence. These boundary errors
are:
-
Using a sentence fragment
as if it were a whole sentence.
-
Running two sentences together as one, creating fused
sentences, which some teachers call a "run-on
sentence."
- Putting a comma between two sentences instead of making
two separate sentences, the infamous comma splice error.
You may not notice right away that avoiding two other errors
on the Connors and Lunsford list also requires understanding what
constitutes a sentence, which English texts sometimes call
a complete thought, thereby totally confusing students.
Students who do not recognize a complete sentence are likely
to:
If you teach students how to determine whether what they have
written is a sentence or not, you teach them how to eliminate
one quarter of the most common errors from their writing.
Pronoun problems
Three additional errors on the Connors and Lunsford list deal
with pronouns. The three errors are:
A writer zipping along composing a draft can easily make each
of those errors. I make them regularly myself. However, by applying
just one rule, I can catch most of those errors before anyone
sees them.
If you teach your students the rule governing pronoun reference
and help them learn to apply it to their own work, you will eliminate
another three of the 20 errors from student work. That rule is:
Are you keeping track? Teaching two rules of proper grammar eliminates
40% of common grammar and punctuation errors.
That's not too shabby, is it?
Applying proper grammar rules
The procedures for teaching grammar for writing that I describe
in these web pages are those I use in classes I teach.
My students asked for help to keep on developing
their ability to correct their own grammar errors after our course
together ended. The material I wrote for those students is now available to others an e-book:
Grammar Abusers Anonymous.
The book guides mature high school, college and adult students in learning how to
study grammar using their own error-riddled writing as practice exercises.
