When Should We Teach Grammar?

I really wish I could show this textbook to the seventh grade teacher that I am shadowing right now. Having been in her classroom for six months and observing how she instructs her class every Tuesday and Thursday on grammar, I feel like this textbook would be a great benefit for her…and maybe the entire district. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Ms. B. goes over grammar lessons. She teaches out of a manual and reads line from line to teach the students. While I watch this happening, I notice that all the kids are almost comatose in their seats. After the mini-lesson, Mrs. B. instructs them to go through their workbooks and they guess on all the answers. They are not interested in learning about grammar, because she is not applying the lesson to anything. They are simply going through the motions of “skill and drill” at a seventh grade level, and then moving on the next day. Grammar is not being incorporated with their writing and reading which is obviously essential considering that Weaver is basing a lot the book off of that specific belief.

In Chapter 3, Weaver explains why and how grammar should be positive, productive, and practical. She lists twelve concepts and discusses them briefly. While I was reading, I realized that Ms. B. is actually damaging her students according to Weaver’s beliefs. The “skill and drill” is not helping them become successful writers. In fact, she is actually on the verge of damaging their ability to grow into exceptional writers. For example, #6 states that Grammar conventions taught in isolation seldom transfer to writing. This is exactly what she is doing. They are not applying any of the grammar lessons or rules on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday which are their writing days. Furthermore, Weaver states that few grammatical terms are actually needed to discuss writing. She writes that most students will turn a deaf ear to the details of pronoun cases, noun subcategories, and vagaries of different “kinds” of nouns (27).

Each student in the lower level classes are doing just this…they are not paying attention in class, because they are not interested in the subject matter. If grammar was being taught with writing, the students may not exactly know they are learning different grammatical terms as well as how to properly take apart of sentence or even write a sentence the correct way. Now I am not bashing Ms. B’s teaching style. I respect her and her ability to teach different types of writing and poetry to students who are only twelve years old. I am simply critiquing the way she presents her grammatical lessons. I believe that if we would follow most of Weaver’s rules for teaching grammar that not only would the testing scores increase, but the children’s interest in writing and reading would sky rocket.

Wonderful Articles!

I found each article to be interesting in its own way. It caused me to really think about the English language and think about how we can define the English language correctly. Below are a few points that I thought were well put!

1) I think it is funny how many Americans say, "Speak English. You're in America." However, A Brief History of English clearly states that there are so many different types of English language. Roberts gave an example by pointing out that a person from Alabama and a person from Iowa are from the same country, but when they are placed in a room together it is difficult for them to understand what the other person is trying to say. The slang and jargon are so different depending on what part of the country you are in!
2) Making English Grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. GREAT! :) I really enjoyed reading this, because I have always thought it was true. I never really saw the true relationship between English and Latin. I was just always told they were similar. No one ever explained how they were similar though. It was wonderful to finally read a passage where someone shared their same opinion as me!
3) I thought it was funny to think about what the true definition of a sentence is. There is such a broad definition of a sentence --- it has to have a subject, predicate, ect. Although Bryson states that most people write sentences that only contain one word: "What?" "How?" "Wow!" Are they really sentences? Can we define those as sentences? It was great to think about those questions and I believe that yes, they are sentences. We shorten our language up and create sentences in half the time that is needed. For example, "Do you want to come out with me tonight." "Yeah. Where?" I just responded with "Yeah. Where?" The "correct way" to respond would maybe be..."Yes. Where are you going out to tonight?"
4) I thought Scott Leheigh's article was very funny, but true! I enjoyed reading the article, because it made me think of how I talk with different people. "Awesome is the all-purpose one-stop-shopping word that pretty much eliminates the need for any further verbal communication." How true is this statement? If I am texting someone or even talking to someone face-to-face, by just saying the word awesome...it ends the conversation 90% of the time! It's a great way to end discussions you don't want to be in either! :)
5) "Television erodes vocabulary not only through its own least-common-denomonator language, but by supplanting that greater builder of vocabulary and knowledge, reading." I could not agree more with this sentence! Children watch television way too much. I rarely find a child picking up and book and reading. I have been in a 7th grade Language Arts classroom for the past year and have found that kids do not read the books assigned to them. They would rather watch the movie or sparknote them! (I found it odd that they even knew what sparknotes was at such a young age!) I believe that children do not understand the possibilities with reading. They do not know the world that lies inside a novel. It would be a tragedy if our youth would lose the power to open up a book and ENJOY it just for the fun of reading and not because they were told to read!