Along the same vein as my earlier post about what happens in a second-grade classroom regarding grammar instruction (http://sentence-level.blogspot.com/2012/03/writing-and-grammar-in-second-grade.html), I bring you another post that focuses on high school.
By now, I wasn't surprised to hear from Kirstin Peterson, 9th grade Advanced English teacher at East High School and Delrae Smith, current 5th grade teacher (who taught 10th grade for seventeen years) at the Esko schools, that a lot of what's done in their classrooms is similar to what we do in our writing classes in college: discuss the concepts, use the concepts in exercises/activities of some sort, and have the students apply those concepts to their own writing.
This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it's good to know that we're doing similar things to help provide continuity for the students and building support for the concepts, but on the other hand, it's a little demoralizing to know that what we do with grammar began at the very beginning of our students' schooling, and years later, in college, it frequently hasn't stuck.
I was curious about Ms. Peterson's thoughts about the student transition from high school into college. As college instructors, we have certain expectations for the students who come into our classes, and with the prevalence of developmental writing classes, we have to wonder why they aren't "getting it" (the grammar stuff) in high school. What are the limiting factors to their understanding the grammar instruction? The fatal flaw in that question is that it assumes that grammar is being talked about at all. Ms. Peterson noted that the students who take regular or special ed classes are still working on the comprehension level of reading and writing, which means that grammar instruction is a "bonus" that frequently doesn't get addressed. That's why, in college, we see students who don't see grammar as important, and those students may not have received specific grammar instruction since junior high.
I have two responses to this. First, I'm both surprised and not surprised that a majority of students aren't being taught formal grammar in high school. I'm not surprised because I've seen the evidence in my classes, but I'm surprised because it seems so integral to the process of meaning-making, of understanding language. Second, and to that same end, my research has shown that the most effective way of instructing grammar is to make it a part of the conversation, teaching students at all levels that it is a tool that effects the message they are sending to their readers.
I recognize that reading comprehension is important, but it seems that there could also be some discussion about the types of words the students see, the length of sentences and the effect of that length, and the language that is used and how the reader views that language. After all, those sorts of questions are the start of a grass-roots learning of grammar and audience consideration--and that's something I can build on in my college classes. As Mrs. Smith, the Esko teacher, noted, the greatest value of grammar is that it allows us to talk about language and that there's value in knowing how things work.
Not to throw another wrench in the works, but I was having an anectodal conversation with two other elementary school teachers, and the sixth grade teacher said that she had been attending some trainings on the new Minnesota standards. She told me that the new standards no longer focus on the formal essay; rather, they focus on paragraph-writing. The idea is that a formal essay is not a practical piece of writing--who writes an esssay in real life, anyway?--so it's not important to teach.
TIME OUT for a note: The math I do in my "real life" is no more complicated than long division, but I bet the Minnesota standards go a bit further than that.
TIME IN: If the Minnesota standards change so that they only require a high school graduate to be able to write a decent paragraph, I'm very afraid for the literacy of our population. Of course, I may have misunderstood the teacher I was talking to (perhaps she meant paragraph writing only in elementary school, not junior- or senior high school), but isn't the spirit the same, regardless? Shouldn't we be requiring more of our students, not less?
I would like to see the conversation start earlier with grammar: that it's the stuff of meaning-making and that it's not about technical correctness, but, rather, choices we (hopefully) consciously make to have a certain effect, whether we're writing an email or a creative story or a formal research paper.
Getting off the soap box now (I didn't even realize when I got on it!). The bottom line: just because a student has graduated from high school doesn't mean that they received specific instruction on grammar while in high school, but it's never too late to start.
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