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.
Of course, there's more to writing than grammar even if
you add in all those other writing
mechanics that aren't grammar.
Good writing teachers draw a distinction between
Teaching the two kinds of content is about as similar as teaching
art history and teaching a oil painting. Savvy writing teachers
know the difference.
Teach prewriting grammar well
A relatively few concepts and rules in grammar (and its cousin,
punctuation) should be taught before embarking on teaching writing
systematically. Those few items, however need to be taught thoroughly.
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 well enough to apply it in their own writing.
Even if you have not yet begun a program of teaching nonfiction
writing, you can evaluate how well you've taught grammar concepts
by using informal writing
as an assessment tool.
If students' responses to your informal prompts show they didn't
understood what you thought you were teaching, 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.
Another area of writing mechanics you can teach before you begin
teaching writing is usage. Many
usage conventions are the same in oral and written English, so
you can drill on those before embarking on a writing program.
Exercises are not teaching grammar
Having
students read a text, do exercises, or complete worksheets is
not teaching, but presenting. Some students will
learn enough from a 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.
Assessing post-competence grammar
Competent writers need to learn enough grammar (and other writing
mechanics) so they can use reference materials to get answers
to their writing questions. The minimal grammar vocabulary they
need to learn to write competently will not suffice.
Competent writers can also benefit from activities that show
them alternative ways of crafting sentences. Sentence combining
activities (or sentence deconstruction activities, including diagramming)
can be useful.
Once students have achieved writing competence, you can go back
to teaching more of the grammar students need to know for standardized
tests, if you see that is necessary.
I suspect that learning to write creates an awareness of writing that allows students to learn by seeing what good writers do.
Published 11-Aug-2008; updated
15-Jun-2010