Teaching grammar
from the writing teacher's perspective
To
hear some people talk, you'd think teaching grammar is all there
is to teaching writing.
(Those same people usually lump a myriad of writing mechanics like
punctuation, spelling, capitalization, usage,
and even formatting under the heading of grammar. They don't
belong there, of course, for the time being, we'll let them stay.)
Of course, there's more to writing than grammar even if
you add in all those other writing mechanics.
Limit what you teach thoroughly
What we must do before launching into teaching writing is to decide
what grammar rules and concepts are essential for students to know
to write competently. The list is
surprisingly short.
The list of essential knowledge required for correct punctuation
is even shorter.
Correct spelling and usage are a different matter.
There are as many "rules" as there are words and idioms.
Fortunately, most people use only a faction of the English language
words and idioms. All anyone really has to do is master the correct
use of the words and phrases he or she actually uses.
In effect, the instructional hodgepodge that goes by the name of
teaching grammar boils down two tasks:
-
Teaching students to apply the few
essential rules of grammar and punctuation every writer
must be able to apply when they write, and
-
Teaching students how to avoid
mistakes they personally make in spelling and usage.
For #1, you need to know what the essentials are. (I'll help you
there). Then you have to teach students those essentials.
Exercises are not teaching grammar
Teaching grammar essentials is the hard part. Having students read
a text, do exercises, or complete worksheets is not teaching,
but presenting. Some students will learn enough from the
presentation to use the information in their writing, but many will
not.
(My experience has been that fully half of college students did
not learn third grade grammar well enough to apply concepts like
sentence and subject.)
Part #2 of is mainly a matter of planning, organizing, and training
students in using a few simple tools and strategies. (I'll help
you get started.)
Setting things up initially is rather a nuisance, but once things
are set, you spend much less time correcting and grading.
Test grammar knowledge in writing
You won't know from looking at results of multiple choice tests
or fill-in the blank exercises whether your students understood
the grammar you taught. You won't know until you have them write.
If you use informal writing
activities, you can identify stumbling blocks before they get to
be wall-height.
If there is a problem, teach the material again. Keep
teaching the grammar material different ways until all students
master it.
Thoroughly teaching grammar
students need for writing dramatically decreases the number
of writing mechanics errors in their work. The time and effort you
need to spend on teaching and grading also decreases dramatically.
What's not to like?
created 11-Aug-2008; updated 18-Sep-2008
|