The Place of Grammar in Writing Instruction:

1
The Place of Grammar in Writing Instruction

• Past, Present, Future
• Edited by Susan Hunter and Ray Wallace

2
The Past

• From ancient Greek and Roman times, grammar
  helped writers achieve literary and stylistic
  fluency.
• Grammar was conceived of as a broad concept an
  empowering language art rather than drills and
  rules.
• After Civil War, grammar became connected with
  mechanical correctness.
• Advocate reconnecting grammar and writing,
  although authors differ in their recommendations.

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Ancient Greeks

• Perfected a program of language study including
  grammar, rhetoric, and logic (called trivium).
• Saw grammar and purposeful communication as
  inseparable.
• Required practice in writing and imitation of
  others.

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Current Application Classical Rhetoric for the
Modern Student

• Edward P. J. Corbett No one can begin to
  develop a style until he or she has a basic
  competence in the grammar of the language.
• Educational Goals
• Help students develop a range of styles.
• Stretch students beyond their own natural
  abilities.
• Help students pay attention to the way words are
  taken apart and put together.

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Suggested Assignments

• Close, grammatical analysis of anothers prose.
• Sentence-level analysis (number of words in
  sentence, number of sentences in paragraph, types
  of sentences, longest and shortest sentence,
  etc.).
• Paraphrasing, imitating, and transcribing
  admirable passages.

6
Frederick Douglass

• Frederick Douglasss master forbade his wife from
  teaching Douglass to read, saying, Learning will
  spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns
  to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be
  a slave.
• Learning grammar was a way of gaining power.

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Grammar as Empowerment

• Language works politically For Douglass, his
  skill in reading was accompanied by awareness of
  social politics.
• Control of language means control of power.
• Grammar not specialized study of language
  structure, but way to gain freedom and sustain
  self as human being.

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Current Applications

• Validates grammar instruction aimed at empowering
  students instead of retaining the teachers power
  over students.
• Teachers should help students want to join the
  club of writers. (Focus on errors is more
  exclusive than inclusive.)
• Motivate students by emphasizing the ends of
  language instead of the parts.

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Late 19th-Century Usage Handbooks

• Composition became driven by an obsession with
  mechanical correctness in the late 19th century.
  
• The period is marked by urbanization and emergent
  dominance of capitalism.
• During this time, composition courses also moved
  from oral recitation to student writing.

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Bad English

• Because of the vast cultural change, the upper
  middle class was afraid of losing social prestige
  and power.
• Emphasis on grammatical correctness
  re-established class distinctions.
• Authors of grammar handbooks used tropes of
  religion and morality.

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William Mathews Words Their Use and Abuse
(1876)

• Even slang words, after long knocking, will
  often gain admission into a language, like
  pardoned outlaws received into the body of
  respectable citizens (332).
• The corrupter of a language stabs straight at
  the heart of his country. He commits a crime
  against every individual of a nation, for he
  poisons a stream from which all must drink
  (91).
• Calls grammatical mistakes monstrosities and
  abuse.

12
Contemporary Application

• How much do todays composition textbooks also
  attempt to maintain the cultural order?
• What groups of people might we be trying to
  silence by our emphasis on correctness?

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The Present

• Empirical research shows that teaching grammar
  does not improve writing.
• Grammar is still important in American culture.
• Is grammar actually ineffective or the way it has
  been taught?
• What aspects of grammar instruction should we
  keep?

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Difficulties and Contradictions

• Varying definitions of grammar.
• English instructor inconsistencies.
• Campus-wide inconsistencies.
• Process eventually has to become a product.
• Source of correct use.

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Benefits of Teaching Grammar

• Gives teachers and writers common vocabulary for
  talking about writing.
• Gives students variety of options to use when
  writing.
• Helps students understand the reasons for textual
  choices.

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Teaching Recommendations

• Teach only the most common mistakes, such as
  punctuation, irregular verbs and pronouns
  (Connors and Lunsford).
• Teach obvious examples of punctuation rather than
  all possible uses.
• Teaching grammar ismost effective in one-on-one
  instruction when working on specific
  assignment.

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Top 10 Grammar Exercises

• Read papers on tape recorder.
• Move elements in sentence.
• Combine facts in one sentence.
• Write abstracts or summaries.
• Model revision strategies.

• Supply class with written feedback after papers
  have been evaluated.
• Use editing simulation.
• Require significant revisions.
• Publish writing.
• Wall editing.

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The Future

• Understand grammar as an aspect of invention.
• Change the nature of grammar instruction.
• Become aware of the potential of
  computer-assisted instruction.
• Consider radical changes to curriculum.

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Grammar and Invention

• Grammar articulates relationships among ideas.
• In traditional understanding of invention,
  content is discovered independently of form.
• Stylistic form helps a writer generate content.
  The structural devices themselves help writers
  discover new ideas.

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Example Cumulative Sentence

• Write a sentence.
• Add a noun cluster.
• Add an absolute (a noun and some kind of
  modifier).
• Add a prepositional phrase.

• He dipped his hands in the bichloride solution
  and shook them,
• a quick shake
• fingers down
• like the fingers of a pianist above the keys.
• -- Sinclair Lewis

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Implications of Argument

• The formal pattern directs the thought, so people
  generate ideas they otherwise wouldnt without
  the structural guidance.
• Helps students elaborate ideas.
• The imitation allows students to learn grammar
  and punctuation implicitly.
• Demonstrates importance of realigning grammar and
  invention.

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Teaching Grammar Differently

• Need new way of viewing grammar. It is often
  taught and learned negatively.
• Students learn when interested and involved.
  Connect grammar to their own writing.
• Redefine as progression from unconscious to
  conscious grammar. Have students utilize their
  unconscious knowledge to develop patterns in
  interactive tasks.

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Learning Preferences and Grammar

• Relationship between learning preferences and
  grammar
• Intuitive Appreciates theoretical aspects.
• Sensing Appreciates linear, descriptive
  patterns.
• Thinking Needs logical reasons to learn.
• Feeling Needs positive responses to what is
  learned.
• Most English majors are IF, so they need a global
  approach that includes positive experiences.

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Computer-Assisted Grammar Instruction

• Todays grammar software consists of grammatical
  drill exercises and text checkers.
• Electronic workbooks.

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Software Limitations

• Programs only as good as programmers. Often only
  search for specific patterns.
• Do not understand authors intent or rhetorical
  situation.
• Do not understand metaphor, paradox or ambiguity.
  
• Tightly-controlled boundaries.

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Future Potential

• Future programs may utilize developments in the
  field of artificial intelligence, determining
  grammatical options by understanding intent,
  audience, context, level of formality, and
  rhetorical situation.
• To prepare, teachers must be familiar in computer
  classrooms.

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Radical Curriculum Changes

• One authors suggestions
• Eliminate first-year composition courses.
• Expand writing in the disciplines.
• Strengthen writing center.
• These changes would restore a writing context
  connected with the students intellectual
  interests.
• Collaboration of writing center is similar to
  writing situations in work world.

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Negatives

• Too eclectic. Authors varied quite a bit on
  their definitions of grammar and suggestions for
  teaching it.
• Repetitive. Almost every article reiterated that
  research has not shown benefits of teaching
  grammar.
• Glorification of grammar. In efforts to
  reinstate grammar in the classroom, some authors
  reverted to current-traditional approaches.

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Positives

• Placed teaching of grammar in historical context,
  so we can see that teaching it has not always
  been ineffective.
• Emphasized teaching grammar as way to empower
  students, rather than as a list of rules.
• Provided creative ways to teach grammar instead
  of solely relying on workbook-style exercises.