Engaging Grammar by Amy Benjamin (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2007) is conversational, practical, and has an audience of K-12 teachers. It seems that all the best stuff (that I've looked at, anyway) has this audience in mind. I was chatting with a couple of elementary school teachers this evening, though (who teach second and sixth grades), and when I asked them what they talk about regarding grammar, they said the same things...parts of speech, sentence construction, etc. So four years after the second graders learn it, they get it again in sixth grade, and if they wind up in my developmental classes, they get a version of it again in college. Clearly these are concepts that need to be reinforced throughout schooling, and books with a elementary/middle/high school audience are appropriate for college faculty if those faculty are teaching the same things.
What attracts me most to this book is the practicality of it. Theory is important, of course, but teaching ideas are what the busy instructor needs. Chapter 4, "Natural Expertise about Grammar," talks about the fact that native English speakers have innate knowledge about grammar (something reinforced by a variety of sources discussed on this very blog) and that, to get at this innate knowledge, we utilize the start of "Jabberwocky" (61):
"T'was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy was the borogrove,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
Now, I have to say that as a casual reader, this sort of thing makes my head spin (I try to translate it into actual words), but I have a newfound appreciation for it based on what is suggested (and expanded upon) in the chapter: asking students to identify the meaning of this passage, such as what parts of speech the different words are. The words are nonsense, of course, but students WILL be able to do it, which kind of blows my mind. I can't wait to try it out myself.
Benjamin also suggests in this chapter that we utilize metaphors that make sense to the students and that, by doing this, they'll be more apt to remember the concepts. I have used the house metaphor for essays (the different rooms being paragraphs, the doorways the transitions, the foundation the thesis, the roof the conclusion that makes sure the meaning doesn't get rained on by other ideas), but not for grammar. It makes sense, for example, to talk about adjectives as spices in cooking and coordinating conjunctions as the links in a chain (66). I also like the metaphor that Benjamin cites from Pamela Dykstra's Rhythms of Writing for the independent clause as a bicycle. The wheels (subject and verb) are key to a bicycle. All the other stuff is extra(adjectives, appositives, prepositional phrases, etc.) (67). She also says that a dependent clause is like a wagon, capable of work but only when hitched up to a vehicle (like a bicycle!) (68). I love it. Simple, yet effective.
The final nugget of wisdom that I liked was having students add tag questions to test whether they have a complete sentence or not. For example,
I can't sit at this computer and stare at the screen any longer, can I?
It sounds good, so it's a complete sentence. Something like,
Since I can't sit here any longer, can I?
...isn't going to make a whole lot of sense if the student thinks about it (71).
In Chapter 5, "Usage and Mechanics in Formal and Informal English," Benjamin talks a great deal about how critical audience and purpose are to student writing and correctness. She mentions Maxine Hairston's 1981 article called "Not all Errors Are Created Equal." She found that the most grievous errors to professionals in non-educational fields were those that resulted from the writer's inability to code-switch and "the use of nonstandard verb forms in irregular verbs (brung, brang), double negatives, subject-verb mismatch (he don't), and, of course, the despised use of ain't" (82).
This idea of getting students to understand the value of code-switching based on their purpose and audience, then, is basis for a reframing of the conversation about the rules from the negative to the positive. Don't use poor examples in class; use great ones. Show students what good writers do rather than punishing "bad" writing. Benjamin lists nine "Rules and Guidelines for Clear and Accurate Writing" which, despite its academic title (which is therefore perhaps a bit threatening to students), talks about rules in a way that would be easy to use as a guideline to teach students some of the basic rules for writing, like agreement and commas (83-5).
The Bottom Line:
The practicality of this book makes it worth the effort of perusal. I'll be using it to help guide my instruction. Get thyself to your local/virtual bookstore or library and check it out.
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