Teaching grammar-composition
Beats teaching grammar in isolation

Grammar and composition skills must be taught together because

• Written language has different conventions than spoken language.

• Writers must provide through words information that speakers convey without words through vocal variety, gestures, and body language.

If we are to be successful at teaching writing, we be sure we teaching grammar in ways that carry over into the writing students are doing. That means teaching

• The right grammar topics

• At the right time

• To the right depth.

If that sounds to you like a rather tricky balancing act, you are absolutely right. It's easiest to begin by working on the time element.

Competence is the watershed

To figure out what kind of grammar instruction you need to give, sort your class roster into two groups:

• Students who are already competent expository writers.

• Students who are not yet competent expository writers.

Throw anybody you have a question about in with the not-yet-competent group.

Students can keep only a limited amount of material at in their conscious short-term memories. You can't go on teaching grammar and expecting the results to show up in students' writing until they write well enough to free up some gray cells.

Mixed class? Teach to the majority.

When you are using students' own writing as their "worksheets," you will find it relatively easy to give advanced students more challenging material while aiming your formal presentation for the majority.

Definition of competent writing

A competent piece of writing is

• Unified to make one clear point (its thesis)

• Organized clearly in support of that thesis.

• Developed with adequate detail to make readers think the thesis is plausible.

• Presented clearly enough that readers need not guess at the writer's meaning.

I consider a student competent when he or she meets all my criteria on three formal expository writing assignments in a row. That rules out flukes.

Not-yet-competent get basics

Instead of overloading the not-yet-competent writers by formal grammar instruction, support them with instruction in the basics of grammar and composition. You will need to teach a few lessons perhaps a couple dozen times.

Use short (5-10 minute) grammar lessons that

• Approach a topic from grammar, writing, and reading.

• Draw examples from students' textbooks and nonfiction reading materials rather than just from publisher-provided exercises.

• Use students' own writing as examples.

• Appeal to different learning modalities.

• Incorporate informal writing where feasible.

• Teach use of checklists for identifying common errors.

• Teach use of technology for finding errors.

Once students are in the competent group, you can shift your focus gradually from teaching basic grammar to more upscale grammar and to teaching writing techniques for composition fluency.