Reading CH. 10 and 11 in Lindemann reminds me of the part of teaching English that I loathe: grammar, spelling, punctuation. She bases many of her theories on the assumption that our learners are native speakers of English. She begins many of her sentences with "For native speakers of English....". Well, 90% of my students are ESL. While I think many of Lindemann's suggestion might work in a class of English speakers, for my purposes, I need something more intensive.

Lindemann advocates sentence combining to teach students how to combine two separate ideas. This could possibly work. However, disorganizing words and having my students make a sentence out of it would not work because their native language prescribes putting the noun before its describer. Naturally, that is what they gravitate to when writing in English. I have bigger issues to worry about with my students than to where to put a comma. Motivationally, I feel its a good day if I can get them to even write a paragraph in their journals I make them keep for a grade.

Last year I taught sentence diagramming from a teacher worksheet grammar book. Needless to say, it was tedious and boring, even for me. I agree with Lindemann when she states that students are not going to learn syntax by fixing sentences from a textbook. They need to fix their own sentences. I would have them read each other's work, but that's like the blind leading the blind: none of my 'intervention' students are aware of how to grammatically correct a sentence. In fact, I've seen 'corrections' that are worse than the original mistake.

Maybe I will be less jaded when I dont have to teach 11th graders who read at a 5th grade level, (no, they are not special education, and most of them were born here, its just lack of reading and discipline at home), I might enjoy teaching grammar, writing, and literature. I dont teach them how to write an essay, I spend my time teaching them to write a sentence.