Grammar!

Grammar, sweet grammar, such a complicated topic (I think I just made a fragment!). I was relieved to see that some of the theorists share my concerns and reservations about grammar in the classroom. I've tried using grammar books and diagramming sentences and such, but truthfully that stuff makes little sense to me, yet I still have the ability to write in a coherent manner, as do my students. Now mind you, I do address grammatical issues with my students, but as it applies to their writing as opposed to the dry writing that haunts the dreaded grammar books.

To start with, I’d like to talk a little bit about Witte and Faigley’s study Coherence, Cohesion, and Writing Quality. One thing that stuck out to me in their research is the reference to “repetition”. For example, in response to a “high-rater paper” they note “that in the paragraph form the high-rated paper, behavior is repeated only one time. Yet the reader never questions that the paragraph is about changes in behavior” (198). Although I did not need to do research to take notice of this pattern in the writing of my high school students’, it is interesting to see that this is a common issue according to their study. Then of course, the lower-level papers in their study, just like my students, have a lot of repetition. Granted, this may technically not be a grammatical issue per se, but it applies to the strength of a student’s writing, vocabulary abilities and grammatical skills as well. If a student is consistently repeating himself in his writing, this suggests he does not have the ability to further develop his ideas and expand his thoughts on paper. The composition process, just like the language process, is organic so there are relations.

Now to be more specific about grammar, I’d like to reference the piece by Patrick Hartwell. One of the many things that stands out to me in his piece Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar is his reference to Herbert W. Seliger’s research which suggests “[h]e found no correlation between the ability to state the rule and the ability to apply it correctly, either with the native or non-native speaker” (119). This is a reference to a study conducted using non-native English speakers who understood a grammatical rule as a control group, but could not correctly apply the rule to their use of the language. This makes me think about my terrible foreign language skills. When I study language in school, Spanish for example, I learned the rules but am terrible at speaking the language; whereas, when I travel to other countries, and spend an extended period of time there, I pick up the language quickly. For example, one time I spent three months in Morocco. I studied a little Arabic prior to my arrival, but only learned the basic greetings and such, but with little formal training and spending three months there, I was able to haggle with a shop keeper over the price of a rug in Arabic or able to have a basic conversation with people on the streets. Language is organic; it is not a book, although we humans do attempt to record it. Just like people and animals, language evolves and it is very difficult to explain or teach why this happens. Now back to the grammar of it all.

In my classroom I do address grammar, but as it applies to my student’s writing. I don’t have them diagram sentences, but do use exercises like Hartwell references in his paper: “Most students, reading their writing aloud, will correct in essence all errors of spelling, grammar, and, by intonation, punctuation but usually without noticing that what they read departs from what they wrote” (121). I use this strategy with my students. I pull a student’s aside, who are struggling with their writing and ask them to read his writing to me while we both look over the paper. Then I will point out what they corrected orally and ask them to correct the grammatical errors that just corrected for me orally on the paper itself. I have many more techniques to discuss, but don’t intend to go into them here. None-the-less, I found these readings interesting because I disregard grammatical practices, but rarely open a dreary textbook to help my students improve their composition skills.