Schools that report that teaching grammar improves student writing have a
systematic approach to grammar starting in the first or second grade and
culminating the seventh and eighth with the analysis of complex sentences
via diagrams.  The Calvert School in Baltimore, MD., is a prime example.
They claim that their students develop into superb writers.  I am
investigating the claim.  I think its clear that desultory instruction in
grammar does not do much good to anyone.  Still, doesn't it strike you as
counterintuitive that knowing the names and definitions of phenomena like
appositives should be of no help in mastering their use?  Is there any
other field where you can supposedly excel while referring to the tools of
your trade as whatchamacallits?


On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Geoff Layton wrote:

> At 01:44 PM 2/14/01 -0600, you wrote:
> >It seems to me that the neglect of the discipline of grammar tends to
> reduce speech and writing to > a collage of direct quotations, as in "He
> was all like 'Think 'different,'"'
> >instead of, "He suggested that I think in an unconventional manner.'
> >Grammar is the study of the rules by which we generate new statements of
> >our own.
>
> Let me respond as a former believer in the purity and sanctity of grammar,
> but one who has since undergone the baptism of fire in the secondary school
> classroom.
>
> I think the point that the most members of the list would make is that
> knowledge of the rules of grammar have no bearing on the ability of
> students to create meaning from language - either through writing or
> through reading.  For example, knowledge of the definition of an appositive
> does in no way guarantee that a student can use the form correctly.  (I
> didn't even know what it meant until I came across it in a grammar book
> after I started to teach grammar, and I've been speaking the King's English
> for over 50 years!)
>
> Therefore, the struggle is to find the means (a) to teach students how to
> grow in their ability to create meaning and (b) to convince the "powers
> that be" that this should be the goal rather than knowledge of the specific
> rules of grammar.
>
> In my classroom, I have begun to teach a structure of usage that seems to
> work.  Instead of making students identify grammar constructs, I show them
> how to use the tools of grammar to create meaning.  For example, they can
> use an infintive phrase to express "where" or "when" - and then, create a
> different kind of meaning in a different way using a dependent clause.  At
> no time does the student need to learn the definitions. Just so long as
> they know how to use them!
>
> Therefore, most people who have come to the same conclusion that I have are
> not neglectful of grammar discipline - just concerned that students study
> what they need to know to learn something really useful in life.
>
> Does this help?
>
> Geoff Layton
>
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