I appreciate all of you who offered insight in response to my question about grammar and the effectiveness of teaching it to improve writing.  
 
Scott, from the intriguing description of your teaching techniques, it is clear that an effective grammar lesson requires the instructor to understand grammar and involves creative pedagogy and dedication to follow-through.  I wonder if this might explain why some anti-grammarians "hope it fails."
 
Dave

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Scott Woods
Sent: Wed 2/11/2009 3:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sentence composing/grammar to improve writing


Dave, et al.,
 
I used Don and Jenny Killgallon's text Grammar for Middle School, among other things.  For each of thirteen sentence modifiers (opening adjective, delayed adjective, opening adverb, delayed adverb, absolute phrase, appositive phrase, prepositional phrase, participial phrase, gerund phrase, infinitive phrase, adjective clause, adverb clause, noun clause), the students first examine several example sentences drawn (as are all the examples) from authors popular with middle schoolers (J.R.R. Tolkein, Harper Lee, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hal Borland, Pat Conroy, J.K. Rowling, for example).  I have my students memorize these sentences long enough to recite them without looking.  I think this is a crucial step.  They then match examples of the construction with the sentences from which they were extracted.  They usually work in pair on this and write their answers on personal white boards.  They then write the sentences (five of them), properly reconstructed, from memory, on their white boards. Next, they unscramble a sentence to match the model of the original.  I have them write both the original, the unscrambled sentence, and their own imitation of the original on their whiteboards. After that, they do a sentence combining exercise where they write the original, the combined version, and their own original sentence on that model.  Then they imitate three example sentences by writing the example, the model provided, and their own imitation sentence.  The last practice is sentence expanding with three sentences, taking an example sentence and adding the modifier at the caret.  With each of the sentence modifier chapters, there is a creative writing exercise where the students either chose one of three given first sentences and add the rest of the first paragraph, trying to use the modifiers they have learned, or they are given an opening paragraph with missing modifiers to insert.  After they have completed a chapter, they have written the modifier, in a well-constructed sentence, somewhere around 25 times.  Each of these sentences was read by their teacher and immediately verified as correct, even good, or they were told how to make it better.  This is possible by having students hold up their whiteboards when they have written their sentences.  These exercises are spread out over about three days, about twenty minutes per day.
 
I have also used other materials with similar methods, mostly using imitation.  For example, I taught them to use tricolon, parallelism, chiasmus, antithesis, anaphora, and several other rhetorical devices. 
 
Scott Woods

--- On Wed, 2/11/09, David Kehe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


	From: David Kehe <[log in to unmask]>
	Subject: Re: Sentence composing/grammar to improve writing
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 11:02 AM
	
	
	Scott,
	 
	As you pointed out, there should be a way to measure the effectiveness of
	teaching grammar.  However, we also need to know what "teaching
	grammar" means.  I doubt that your student produced that great sentence in
	a story after you merely introduced that structure of participle phrases.  (You
	didn't "drill and kill," as Patty Lafayllve described, did you?) 
	Would you mind summarizing the steps that it took to help him internalize and
	then apply this?
	 
	Thanks,
	 
	Dave
	
	________________________________
	
	From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Scott Woods
	Sent: Wed 2/11/2009 6:40 AM
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Subject: Sentence composing/grammar to improve writing
	
	
	Dear List,
	I have been using using Don Killgallon's Grammar for Middle School: A
	Sentence-Composing Approach with my seventh grade classes.  Here's an
	example of a first sentence from a short story by one of my students, a native
	speaker of Arabic and not previously a very good writer:
	 
	His face pale, his shirt stained with blood, his pants tattered, his shoes
	ripped and dirty, the Roman soldier advanced toward the castle, stepping over
	the rotting bodies of the British, every step taking him closer to the
	enemy's territory, every step taking him closer to death. 
	 
	Prior to learning to use absolute phrases and participial phrases (as well as
	the other modifiers he learned) this student could not have written such a
	sentence.  He could not even really think about improving his style. Teaching
	students to consciously control sentence structure works, in my experience. 
	Incidentally, students universally enjoy it.
	 
	Why don't the studies which measure the effectiveness of teaching grammar
	look at the  specific constructions and sentence types taught and the changes in
	the frequency and effectiveness of their use?  Clause length and other such
	measures seem clumsy and not particularly useful as measures of writing skill if
	we are trying to improve student writing.  
	 
	Scott Woods
	
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