Geoff,
I was under the impression that not all grammarians believed that grammar
instruction will improve writing, and that many of those who were "consumed"
with the belief were reacting to the NCTE anti-grammar stance. I'm no expert,
but it seems to me that if we focus on grammar as a discrete skill that has
merits regardless of its effects on other skills under the English/Language Arts
umbrella, we will be better able to move forward in promoting the teaching of
grammar and in finding more effective ways to teach it.
I think your comments regarding "sentence stuffing" and "creating meaning"
are excellent; why, however, does it HAVE to be tied to writing? I guess I'm
feeling sort of "Edgar Allen Poe-ish" when I think of
"grammar-for-its-own-sake," but it seems a better point of view to me. At least
I don't have to defend it as writing process, which I know will get me in
trouble with the masses.
Paul
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 9:51
AM
Subject: Re: Grammar and Literature --
Help Please
I thought that the following comment needed a
response:
>I would also add, as I have said before, that the
improvement of writing
>skills is NOT the purpose of grammar
instruction, anyway. I just don't think that
>we've really focused on
the best reasons FOR teaching grammar yet -- let
>alone how best to
teach it.
So why, then, are many grammarians still consumed with the
belief that grammar can and will improve writing skills? Perhaps because it's
difficult to believe otherwise.
When I taught formal grammar, I lived
the frustrating truth of the research results about the futility of teaching
it. Then I hopefully tried sentence combining, and the students hated it! It's
like trying to second guess somebody else's writing, and there seems to be
very little opportunity to produce original student writing - just rewriting
somebody else's (boring?) writing.
Even after those experiences, I
still felt that grammar has a role in helping people write better, and that's
when I started to teach grammar as a tool for creating meaning. If students
are presented with the simplest of sentences - for example, "The baby cried."
- their unanimous and unambiguous conclusion is that the sentence, although
correct, is sorely lacking in meaning. Even the least capable student realized
that the sentence required a lot more information to be "interesting" - or, in
the language of the academy - "to create meaning."
This is the basis of
an approach that I call "sentence stuffing" - adding information to a basic
sentence to create meaning. As soon as I took this approach, every
student became an instant expert in dependent clauses. Not one student failed
to create a unique dependent clause to tell why the baby was crying. This same
approach - to create meaning rather than to reconstruct meaning (sentence
combining) or to ignore meaning (grammar disconnected from writing) - can be
used for every part of grammar imaginable.
The purpose of grammar,
then, really can be the improvement of writing skills, but like everything
else can be learned only with practice. The issue with drill and kill - or
"practice" - is not the process but rather the nature of the exercises
themselves. Practicing - or "drilling" - grammar is like practicing turning a
power tool on and off and never understanding what it's used for.
Drilling
the creation of meaning through writing dependent clauses (or any other
grammar tool), however, teaches not only the technique but also the
purpose.
In the example of the dependent clause used to explain why the
baby cried, the students could study dependent clauses all day long and never
know their purpose. "Sentence stuffing" is a method that starts with purpose
and then shows method, rather than starting with method and never even getting
to purpose.
The other beauty of this approach is that it can be used in
a class of students of widely varying abilities because each student is always
working at their own level. Also, for those teachers who do not want to
include formal grammar instruction - in other words, having students learn
names and definitions of grammatical constructions - it is never necessary for
students to learn that the technique they used to describe why the baby cried
is called a dependent clause. Or, conversely, if a more formal study of
grammar is desired, then students can learn more about about the nature of
exactly what it is that they have created.
Geoff Layton
PS: For
an example of grammar used well in literature, try the first 18 lines of the
Canterbury Tales - "When in April" etc. - perhaps the longest and most
graceful complex compound sentence ever created. Also, my prize for the best
overall use of rhetorical devices of all kinds goes to the Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass. I had students of very middling abilities
understanding literary apostrophes and creating their own filled with great
power and beauty after they read Douglass' apostrophe to the ships in the
Chesapeake Bay.
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