Love and Marriage: Teaching Grammar as Writing

The question of whether or not to teach grammar constitutes a hot issue among English teachers in my district. We must cover all of the College and Career Ready Standards that apply to our students, and none of these standards explicitly mention any specific grammar rules; many have taken the omission as a release from this responsibility. This release feels welcomed, as students almost entirely dread grammar lessons and in fact many English teachers do not feel confident in their abilities to teach grammar. Those who do teach grammar lessons express exasperation for their colleagues, attributing their students’ writing deficiencies to those teachers who failed to aptly prepare them with diligent and regular grammar drills. Who is right? Should English teachers ignore grammar in their classrooms, or should they promote rote memorization of terms, definitions, and rules? 

This question represents the false dichotomy which polarizes instructional methods and in turn, hinders growth in student writing. We teachers must remember grammar’s function in order to parse out an effective approach to its instruction: to improve the potency of communication. If this is the case, then grammar surely must be represented in our classrooms. Rather than compartmentalizing grammar instruction, however, we should teach grammar within the context of student writing; this technique clearly illustrates the value of grammar rules for students in a personal and meaningful way.

This sounds highly impractical, doesn't it?  Messy? Impossible to plan for?  Many teachers prefer to run a tight ship, or at the very least, they prefer to know what they will be teaching before class begins.  The prospect of identifying and teaching to errors as they arise may sound intimidating.  Well, tough cookies. Think about what we are asking students to do, and you will understand intimidating. We ask students to write essays, when they have had relatively few experiences doing so. If this weren’t enough to turn students off, we parade grammar rules around them, shouting “Don’t do this! Don’t do that!” while rarely building a bridge between the infinite list of no-no’s and the actual sentences that they struggle to compose until after the grade has been assigned. Where is the motivation or the means to improve in this model?

Rather than simply pointing out errors in lieu of actual instruction, Mina P. Shaughnessy suggests that the teachers “try to explain why a certain word won’t work in a particular setting—to ponder over the student’s choice, demonstrating its semantic and syntactic limits or contrasting it with other words that do not create the same constraints” (76). This mode requires an active writing workshop, where students and teachers can engage in a free-flowing verbal dialog about a student’s past choices and about their options moving forward in the drafting process. This workshop model proves effective as it hyper-focuses grammar in the context of the student’s own writing, thereby characterizing it as a helpful tool for the student rather than as an arbitrary exercise.

I am determined to take off my boots and get in the mud with grammar instruction.  I know that operating the workshop of Shaughnessy’s vision will prove laborious and may sometimes feel too time consuming, but consider this: “Teaching grammar in isolation from writing—that is, teaching the grammar book instead of helping writers write—has been found again and again to have little if any positive effect on most students’ writing” (Weaver and Bush 14). If this is true, then the real waste of time is either removing grammar instruction altogether or presenting it to students in vacuum-packed parcels that seem completely separate from the issues they confront in their own writing.

What I must constantly bear in mind is that writing and grammar are inextricably bound, and therefore both must be taught, and must be taught simultaneously.  What teachers often mistake as a student who utterly lacks interest in improving their writing and their grasp on grammar is actually a student who has not been shown the crucial connection between the two. Once the teacher establishes this marriage, they can most effectively engender student growth.

Works Cited

Shaughnessy, Mina P. Errors and Expectations. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. (Excerpts)

Weaver, Constance, and Jonathan Bush. Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2008.