I’ve been busily interviewing my English colleagues about grammar and how they approach the subject in their classes, which has been both affirming and surprising. One of my colleagues wisely asked me, though, if I thought about asking what the students think about grammar. What a novel idea! I’m now pondering what sort of information I’d want to get from students and how I can ask the questions to illicit the best responses.
In the meantime, I found an article called “How Do Students Feel About Grammar?: The Framework and Its Implications for Teaching and Learning” by Rachel Yarrow from the August 2007 issue of Changing English. In this article, Yarrow starts with something many of our students can relate to. She says that she was “…educated during the 1990s, the period that is now widely spoken of as ‘the time when nobody was taught any grammar’.” I wonder if we’re still in that period—I have many students populating my classes who say that they haven’t written essays before (or haven’t in a LONG time), much less learned formal grammatical constructions.
She goes on, however, to ponder the effectiveness in secondary schools of what’s called “Key Stage 3 Framework for Teaching English.” I initially had no idea what this was, but I was able to figure out that it’s England’s Department of Education’s guidelines and outcomes for teaching English in their elementary and secondary schools. In her words, “It is a very closely-typed document containing mammoth lists of objectives (more than 100 for each of Years 7, 8 and 9) covering a range of skills at Word level, Sentence level, Text level—writing, Text level—reading, and Speaking and Listening.” Sounds fun. (Sarcasm? You be the judge.)
Before returning to the Key Stage 3 Framework in her essay, Yarrow discusses the definition of “grammar,” noting that it has many different definitions. Some are looser, referring to how we understand sentences, and some include the rigidity and “correctness” that is often associated with grammar. Traditionally, the teaching of grammar is actually the teaching of Standard English, resulting in the now cliché “skill and drill.” This fell out of fashion when studies revealed that this teaching style didn’t result in better writing overall and could also teach students arbitrary “rules” (such as those no-no “rules” discussed in my previous posting). Yarrow comes to the triumphant conclusion that grammar should be taught in context and continually to make it meaningful, which isn’t news to a faithful reader of this blog.
Back to the Framework. She wonders how English departments have gone about meeting the objectives spelled out in the Framework. The first approach is what she calls “Objective Cramming,” or having a unit that tries to cover as many objectives as possible over the shortest period of time. A focus group that Yarrow held noted, not surprisingly, that the cramming made it hard for the students to remember the concepts discussed previously.
The second method is “Four Part Lessons.” In this method, each major lesson (class period) would begin with a discussion on a particular grammatical concept. So, students come into class, settle down right away (ahem, okay), and learn about subordination in ten minutes. A myriad of concerns quickly bubble to the surface with this one.
The third method includes “New Equipment and Methodology," things like mini-white boards, online “games,” cards, and other “sets” that can speak to different learning styles. Students like these different tools, but several years later, it became old, literally and figuratively. White boards became shot and new ones weren’t bought. Some of the sets were no longer useful.
The major effect from using Framework is that teachers are pressured to cover a lot in a small period of time, causing them to choose “easier” concepts to discuss, like apostrophes, and avoiding more major concepts, like clauses. The students suffer from this, creating a disjointed feeling. In her focus groups, students had a hard time discussing what it was about grammar that they found confusing, even if they had very recently discussed those concepts in class. Students also felt that grammar should not get in the way of writing and should only become an area of concern later on, when the story was done. Yarrow also noted that a student can do well on grammatical quizzes after discussing concepts, but when that student starts writing, those same concepts fall by the wayside. Finally, she notes something that we could all probably relate to: teachers often comment positively on the creative parts of a student’s writing (what students like about writing) and comment negatively on the grammar (what students dislike). This results in, at best, students having a bad attitude toward grammar and, at worst, students “playing it safe” and not making powerful rhetorical choices with their grammar for fear of getting it “wrong.”
Yarrow found that students actually enjoy doing the “skill and drill” exercises in class, sometimes even becoming competitive with each other about those exercises. I would suppose that this would be true because it’s a more objective view of grammar, a way of proving that they know the rules. The problem, though, is translating that knowledge from the exercises to their own writing.
An exercise that Yarrow used in one of her classrooms was interesting. She had a chocolate egg and asked her students to write a line that would persuade her to give them the egg. Students read their sentences out loud (like “I like chocolate” or “I’m a good student”) and were then asked to improve them. They discussed concepts like “using a rhetorical question, using more emotive adjectives, or changing to the second person,” all grammatical constructs (without calling them such), and she asked her students to rewrite the persuasive sentences using at least one of these constructs. She found that all the students, even those with the lowest ability, were able to improve their statements. She has also found that students improve their grammar when she is able to point out an error in their writing as they are doing the writing to get them to think about it.
Yarrow also makes a great statement that “As teachers...we continue to mark students’ grammar with a zealousness that is disproportionate to the amount of time we devote to teaching it, and so students (especially those of lower ability) become cautious and frustrated.” She also notes, however, that students can indeed enjoy learning about grammar when they see how learning about it makes their writing more powerful, yet another sentiment echoed by other postings on this blog. It’s getting affirmed over and over again, and I need to consider how to go about making students see the power of their grammatical choices.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Big NO-NO.
I learned about "no-no" rules in grammar when I was in junior high and a specific teacher (who was wonderful in many ways) gave us a list of grammatical "errors" that we were to entirely refrain from using in our writing. I don't remember how many items were on the list, but if memory serves, it was a LOT. I diligently avoided doing these things, of course, wanting an A in the class.
When I was in my first quarter of college, a teacher told us that we could not use a single "to be" verb in our essays. No, I'm not kidding...no "to be" verbs, and not just as an exercise in writing, but as a requirement for all of the essays we wrote (and though it wasn't an English class, there were lots of papers). I also learned from the same professor to never start a sentence with "however."
The author's of Grammar Alive! know these "No-no" rules all too well and seek to debunk the myths surrounding six of the major annoyances of English teachers and why we need to loosen up on these no-nos:
1. Sentence-ending prepositions: It's simply not a big deal, people. It arose out of a piece of eighteenth-century advice that one should not end a sentence with a weak word and grew into a hard-and-fast rule that, when adhered to, can sound downright foolish. In other instances, it actually cannot be adhered to when talking about phrasal verbs, such as those that go along with the verb "take," like "take after" and "take back." The authors note sentences that end with phrasal verbs, like "The dinosaurs died off" and "I hope a riot doesn't break out" cannot be altered (even though "off" and "out" look like prepositions).
But the best reason to break with this "rule"? Because Winston Churchill said so: "That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put!"
2. Split infinitives: C'mon now, guys and gals. This really isn't that big of a deal. The authors suggest that it's a fast-and-easy rule mostly because it's an easy "error" to spot. But if we didn't have split infinitives, we couldn't have classic phrases like "To boldly go where no man has gone before," and who wants to mess with Star Trek? Not me. That's bad mojo.
3. Using contractions in formal writing: Contractions increase the flow of writing and it's superficial to focus on that as an "error" when there are, if I may use a cliche, bigger fish to fry in student writing.
4. Beginning sentences with coordinating conjunctions: The truth about starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions isn't that it's wrong, but that it sends a certain message to the reader. That message is one of informality. Used in the right way, it can be effective to start a sentence with "and," "but," or "so." Teach the students proper sentence boundaries and the rhetorical message of the sentence-starting coordinating conjunction, not to avoid using it altogether.
5. Using "I" in formal writing: Really? This is a "no-no"? Again, using "I" has a rhetorical purpose and can be done effectively.
6. Using "you" in formal writing: As much as I can't believe "I" is a no-no, I am a firm believer in the "Always avoid 'You' in formal writing" no-no because it's often done far too much. Students pepper their writing with "YOU" rather than referring to themselves or the subjects that they're talking about (like teenagers or mathletes or fisherpeople), and the resulting writing becomes impersonal, even blaming. The authors suggest, though, that the use of "you" invites the readers in and speaks to their needs. I can (grudgingly) see that. This should be a conversation we should have in class about the rhetorical effect of "you" on the reader.
Besides the use of "you," I am irritated by the misuse of "it's" and "its." That's not an arbitrary rule that can be effectively broken, though--saying "Its cold out" is just wrong. It's not hard to do it correctly, either, so why is it such a prevalent problem? I can't abide misused words, but I'm willing to be more flexible with "you"...I guess.
When I was in my first quarter of college, a teacher told us that we could not use a single "to be" verb in our essays. No, I'm not kidding...no "to be" verbs, and not just as an exercise in writing, but as a requirement for all of the essays we wrote (and though it wasn't an English class, there were lots of papers). I also learned from the same professor to never start a sentence with "however."
The author's of Grammar Alive! know these "No-no" rules all too well and seek to debunk the myths surrounding six of the major annoyances of English teachers and why we need to loosen up on these no-nos:
1. Sentence-ending prepositions: It's simply not a big deal, people. It arose out of a piece of eighteenth-century advice that one should not end a sentence with a weak word and grew into a hard-and-fast rule that, when adhered to, can sound downright foolish. In other instances, it actually cannot be adhered to when talking about phrasal verbs, such as those that go along with the verb "take," like "take after" and "take back." The authors note sentences that end with phrasal verbs, like "The dinosaurs died off" and "I hope a riot doesn't break out" cannot be altered (even though "off" and "out" look like prepositions).
But the best reason to break with this "rule"? Because Winston Churchill said so: "That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put!"
2. Split infinitives: C'mon now, guys and gals. This really isn't that big of a deal. The authors suggest that it's a fast-and-easy rule mostly because it's an easy "error" to spot. But if we didn't have split infinitives, we couldn't have classic phrases like "To boldly go where no man has gone before," and who wants to mess with Star Trek? Not me. That's bad mojo.
3. Using contractions in formal writing: Contractions increase the flow of writing and it's superficial to focus on that as an "error" when there are, if I may use a cliche, bigger fish to fry in student writing.
4. Beginning sentences with coordinating conjunctions: The truth about starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions isn't that it's wrong, but that it sends a certain message to the reader. That message is one of informality. Used in the right way, it can be effective to start a sentence with "and," "but," or "so." Teach the students proper sentence boundaries and the rhetorical message of the sentence-starting coordinating conjunction, not to avoid using it altogether.
5. Using "I" in formal writing: Really? This is a "no-no"? Again, using "I" has a rhetorical purpose and can be done effectively.
6. Using "you" in formal writing: As much as I can't believe "I" is a no-no, I am a firm believer in the "Always avoid 'You' in formal writing" no-no because it's often done far too much. Students pepper their writing with "YOU" rather than referring to themselves or the subjects that they're talking about (like teenagers or mathletes or fisherpeople), and the resulting writing becomes impersonal, even blaming. The authors suggest, though, that the use of "you" invites the readers in and speaks to their needs. I can (grudgingly) see that. This should be a conversation we should have in class about the rhetorical effect of "you" on the reader.
Besides the use of "you," I am irritated by the misuse of "it's" and "its." That's not an arbitrary rule that can be effectively broken, though--saying "Its cold out" is just wrong. It's not hard to do it correctly, either, so why is it such a prevalent problem? I can't abide misused words, but I'm willing to be more flexible with "you"...I guess.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Known-New Principle
Dare I say that Chapter 4, "Flexing the Students' Sentence Sense," in Grammar Alive! is my favorite chapter so far? Yes, yes I do. It deals with several of the biggest issues I see in my students' writing: the understanding of sentence boundaries and varying the types of sentences used.
The key to all of this is to start with students' innate knowledge of the sentence. From there, we can start to talk about how to test their sentences for completeness, vary those sentences, and understand how an audience will react to the types of sentences they're reading.
The first golden nugget in this piece is to ask students to use a frame for sentences that they are concerned might be fragments. The frame suggested comes from Rei Noguchi, which is to put the questionable sentence after the phrase, "They refused to believe that..." For example, a student is questioning "Who got sunburned." When put after the frame, it makes no sense: "They refused to believe that who got sunburned." It's clear that "Who got sunburned" is not a sentence, and the students then have something to work with.
The authors also suggest that having student turn potential run-ons into a question helps show where the natural sentence breaks may be. For example, we have the run-on "That cow hasn't been milked, it's ready to go into the barn." This can be turned into a question: "That cow hasn't been milked, is it ready to go into the barn?" From here, we can talk about how one sentence is a statement, and one sentence is a question, so the sentence break is at the comma. (This might be a more useful exercise for non-comma splice run-ons because it's pretty obvious where the sentence break should be in a comma splice.)
It's also useful to discuss the rhetoric of a run-on and fragment, showing that these constructions have specific effects and that there are even situations in which run-ons and fragments are appropriate.
If you'd like to get your students to be more flexible in their sentence construction, there's nothing like good ol' fashioned sentence combining exercises. Studies show that the more exercises along these lines that students do, the more comfortable they get with making decisions about how sentences come together. There's nothing wrong with doing some sentence imitation, either, which can be done more spontaneously.
The Good Stuff: Rhetoric of the Sentence
The Best Part about this chapter talks about subjects and predicates in sentences. Why is it the best? Well, it's opened my eyes to a way to discuss sentences and how they work that I haven't previously thought about.
The idea is to first think about subjects in a piece of writing. Using random examples from literature, magazines, or even their own stuff, we can ask students to look for the subjects in the sentences. The idea is to note how, when a paragraph is cohesive, the subjects are similar. If there is an unconnected subject that shows up, that's probably going to be confusing for the reader.
When considering both the subjects and their predicates, note that usually the subject and other words that come early in the sentence are familiar, while the predicate offers new information (this is the "Known-New Principle" in the title of this post). Also, vital information has the tendency to fall later on in the sentence. These concepts show that as readers, we have basic expectations for sentences, even if we don't conciously think about the constructions. It bears repeating: we generally expect that familiar information will come first in the sentence, and then new information (that's vital) about that familiar subject will come later in that sentence. From there, we can switch things up to have a particular effect. For example, passive voice is traditionally seen as "bad," but it can be used to control the emphasis of ideas within a sentence (and paragraph). The same goes for the "cleft structure" (starting a sentence with "it" that then places stress on a word or phrase that comes later in the sentence, like, "It was midnight before I went to bed.") and the "there-transformation" ("There is nothing I like better in the world than macaroni and cheese.").
The bottom line? Students should be encourage to play with their sentences. Points are made (and delayed!) based on concious choices we make as writers. The key is helping students understand what a typical reader expects from sentences and the effect of straying from that expected sentence construction. That gives a whole lot of power to the writer, and when students may have felt defeated by previous attempts at understanding grammar, they need as much empowerment as they can get.
The key to all of this is to start with students' innate knowledge of the sentence. From there, we can start to talk about how to test their sentences for completeness, vary those sentences, and understand how an audience will react to the types of sentences they're reading.
The first golden nugget in this piece is to ask students to use a frame for sentences that they are concerned might be fragments. The frame suggested comes from Rei Noguchi, which is to put the questionable sentence after the phrase, "They refused to believe that..." For example, a student is questioning "Who got sunburned." When put after the frame, it makes no sense: "They refused to believe that who got sunburned." It's clear that "Who got sunburned" is not a sentence, and the students then have something to work with.
The authors also suggest that having student turn potential run-ons into a question helps show where the natural sentence breaks may be. For example, we have the run-on "That cow hasn't been milked, it's ready to go into the barn." This can be turned into a question: "That cow hasn't been milked, is it ready to go into the barn?" From here, we can talk about how one sentence is a statement, and one sentence is a question, so the sentence break is at the comma. (This might be a more useful exercise for non-comma splice run-ons because it's pretty obvious where the sentence break should be in a comma splice.)
It's also useful to discuss the rhetoric of a run-on and fragment, showing that these constructions have specific effects and that there are even situations in which run-ons and fragments are appropriate.
If you'd like to get your students to be more flexible in their sentence construction, there's nothing like good ol' fashioned sentence combining exercises. Studies show that the more exercises along these lines that students do, the more comfortable they get with making decisions about how sentences come together. There's nothing wrong with doing some sentence imitation, either, which can be done more spontaneously.
The Good Stuff: Rhetoric of the Sentence
The Best Part about this chapter talks about subjects and predicates in sentences. Why is it the best? Well, it's opened my eyes to a way to discuss sentences and how they work that I haven't previously thought about.
The idea is to first think about subjects in a piece of writing. Using random examples from literature, magazines, or even their own stuff, we can ask students to look for the subjects in the sentences. The idea is to note how, when a paragraph is cohesive, the subjects are similar. If there is an unconnected subject that shows up, that's probably going to be confusing for the reader.
When considering both the subjects and their predicates, note that usually the subject and other words that come early in the sentence are familiar, while the predicate offers new information (this is the "Known-New Principle" in the title of this post). Also, vital information has the tendency to fall later on in the sentence. These concepts show that as readers, we have basic expectations for sentences, even if we don't conciously think about the constructions. It bears repeating: we generally expect that familiar information will come first in the sentence, and then new information (that's vital) about that familiar subject will come later in that sentence. From there, we can switch things up to have a particular effect. For example, passive voice is traditionally seen as "bad," but it can be used to control the emphasis of ideas within a sentence (and paragraph). The same goes for the "cleft structure" (starting a sentence with "it" that then places stress on a word or phrase that comes later in the sentence, like, "It was midnight before I went to bed.") and the "there-transformation" ("There is nothing I like better in the world than macaroni and cheese.").
The bottom line? Students should be encourage to play with their sentences. Points are made (and delayed!) based on concious choices we make as writers. The key is helping students understand what a typical reader expects from sentences and the effect of straying from that expected sentence construction. That gives a whole lot of power to the writer, and when students may have felt defeated by previous attempts at understanding grammar, they need as much empowerment as they can get.
Friday, February 10, 2012
MPR to the Rescue
On February 2nd, Minnesota Public Radio aired a show called "The Grammar Geeks" on Kerri Miller's Midmorning show, featuring Merrill Perlman and Lisa McLendon (hear the full show: http://http//minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/02/midmorning2/). How convenient! This presented an opportunity for me to learn what the general populous is saying about grammar.
The first point that the guests made is that lots of people apply the overarching "rule," "If it sounds right to my ear, it must be right." This makes me think about the dreaded "pause" rule for commas. I tell ya, if I had a dime for every time a student told me that they "just put in a comma where there feels like there's a pause," I'd be able to purchase an iPad (oh iPad...how I wish you were mine).
They also discussed the comma splice (e.g. That horse has three legs, it gets around fine.). I always thought that the rule was pretty clear: a comma splice is two complete sentences separated out by a comma (where there should be a period or semicolon). Apparently, though, as would be true in the above horse example, if the sentences are heading in the same direction (you could put a "but" in there and the sentences would make sense together), it's not technically a comma splice, to which I say, "Mere semantics!" I will put my hand over my heart and swear most solemnly that my horse example is still a comma splice.
Also, did you know that some people were taught to spell "dilemma" as "dilemna"?? Wowsa.
Regarding semicolons: They explained the rules for semicolons (use instead of a period to connect two complete sentences that are related; use to separate out items in a list in which the items themselves have commas), and suggested that people are afraid of using semicolons. On an editorial note, I find that when I teach students the semicolon rules (specifically connecting two complete sentences), they start getting crazy with the semicolons in their writing. Sometimes I'll see four or five semicolons in a single paragraph, and then we have to have the conversation about variety. "A" for effort though, right?
They went on to discuss "fewer" and "less" (use "less" for things that can't be counted, like water; use "fewer" for things that can be counted) and one gentleman's irritation over the "Ten Items or Less" for express lanes at Target. The Grammar Geeks asserted, though, that because no one gets confused when "less" is used incorrectly on express lane signs, the distinction is becoming moot. This is an interesting point, actually--sure, there are rules that govern language usage, but are the rules really that important when meaning is in no way lost?
This was followed up by the Big Question: Why teach grammar at all? The Geeks said that it's important because we need a structure to learn language and to understand one another. There's a difference between teaching The Rules, though, and understanding the fluidity of language and the differences of audiences (gee, that sounds like something I've blogged about here before...).
They also discussed passive voice ("Mistakes were made.") Some people go crazy about passive voice and say that it should never be used, but I have to agree with the Grammar Geeks when they said that passive voice is fine when the action is more important than the actor. For example, the passive voice in the sentence "The thief was apprehended" might be okay because the whole point is that the bad guy got caught, so who caught them isn't quite as important. In the above "Mistakes were made" example, however, it's pretty important that we know who made the mistakes, so in this case, the passive voice is pretty annyoing. I like this idea and hadn't thought about this distinction before.
They also talked about the idea that grammar can be used to make people who don't effectively use standard written English feel bad--they'll be judged. This is also a concept I discussed in previous posts, and the Geeks reinforced the idea of of understanding your audience and, in writing in a professional setting, it's important for folks to know the rules for standard written English because it's generally agreed-upon. It sounds like I'm on the right track in my research and, on a side note, though I love reading, it's been nice to "listen" to research for a change of pace.
The first point that the guests made is that lots of people apply the overarching "rule," "If it sounds right to my ear, it must be right." This makes me think about the dreaded "pause" rule for commas. I tell ya, if I had a dime for every time a student told me that they "just put in a comma where there feels like there's a pause," I'd be able to purchase an iPad (oh iPad...how I wish you were mine).
They also discussed the comma splice (e.g. That horse has three legs, it gets around fine.). I always thought that the rule was pretty clear: a comma splice is two complete sentences separated out by a comma (where there should be a period or semicolon). Apparently, though, as would be true in the above horse example, if the sentences are heading in the same direction (you could put a "but" in there and the sentences would make sense together), it's not technically a comma splice, to which I say, "Mere semantics!" I will put my hand over my heart and swear most solemnly that my horse example is still a comma splice.
Also, did you know that some people were taught to spell "dilemma" as "dilemna"?? Wowsa.
Regarding semicolons: They explained the rules for semicolons (use instead of a period to connect two complete sentences that are related; use to separate out items in a list in which the items themselves have commas), and suggested that people are afraid of using semicolons. On an editorial note, I find that when I teach students the semicolon rules (specifically connecting two complete sentences), they start getting crazy with the semicolons in their writing. Sometimes I'll see four or five semicolons in a single paragraph, and then we have to have the conversation about variety. "A" for effort though, right?
They went on to discuss "fewer" and "less" (use "less" for things that can't be counted, like water; use "fewer" for things that can be counted) and one gentleman's irritation over the "Ten Items or Less" for express lanes at Target. The Grammar Geeks asserted, though, that because no one gets confused when "less" is used incorrectly on express lane signs, the distinction is becoming moot. This is an interesting point, actually--sure, there are rules that govern language usage, but are the rules really that important when meaning is in no way lost?
This was followed up by the Big Question: Why teach grammar at all? The Geeks said that it's important because we need a structure to learn language and to understand one another. There's a difference between teaching The Rules, though, and understanding the fluidity of language and the differences of audiences (gee, that sounds like something I've blogged about here before...).
They also discussed passive voice ("Mistakes were made.") Some people go crazy about passive voice and say that it should never be used, but I have to agree with the Grammar Geeks when they said that passive voice is fine when the action is more important than the actor. For example, the passive voice in the sentence "The thief was apprehended" might be okay because the whole point is that the bad guy got caught, so who caught them isn't quite as important. In the above "Mistakes were made" example, however, it's pretty important that we know who made the mistakes, so in this case, the passive voice is pretty annyoing. I like this idea and hadn't thought about this distinction before.
They also talked about the idea that grammar can be used to make people who don't effectively use standard written English feel bad--they'll be judged. This is also a concept I discussed in previous posts, and the Geeks reinforced the idea of of understanding your audience and, in writing in a professional setting, it's important for folks to know the rules for standard written English because it's generally agreed-upon. It sounds like I'm on the right track in my research and, on a side note, though I love reading, it's been nice to "listen" to research for a change of pace.
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