Chapter 6 Grammar

I found the Williams chapter on "Grammar and Writing" to be quite insighful. I find that grammar is one of the most challenging things to teach. Although it's not a part of the English high school curriculum guide, I make attempts to teach it because it's something that I feel students need to know. Williams explains how ineffective the traditional ways of teaching grammar are. I find this to be true from personal experience. I've tried the workbook exercises and have had students  identify the various parts of speech, but yet, many students are still unable to identify a noun or a verb in a sentence. The writing, at least from a grammatical standpoint, hasn't shown as much improvement as I'd like to see. Williams offers the suggestion of focusing more on usage problems. I think this is a helpful idea. Many of the students have common usage problems, so it would be helpful to focus on those. The specific examples he gives, such as pronoun usage, lie and lay, who and whom, and subordinating conjunctions and semantic content are all things I have reviewed in grammar lessons, but obviously, more attention needs to be spent on these challenges rather than reviewing drills on parts of speech. I will definitely consider many of Williams's suggestions when teaching grammar.