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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