by: John Gund
Responses are due by Wednesday, Nov. 10th, at class time (because it was published late by instructor).
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In the article “Grammar Instruction: What Teachers Say” author Brenda Arnett Petruzzella illustrates differing opinions on how grammar should (if at all) be taught especially in regards to the difference between college and high school. The first section of the article is about differing attitudes towards teaching grammar. Petruzzella begins by writing about her years of experience in being taught grammar, only to realize in college the idea that it might not be worth it. According to Petruzzella, there is debatable agreement that grammar doesn’t actually improve writing skills. That being said, the author claims that many teachers dislike teaching grammar as much as students hate learning it. As a teacher, Petruzzella tried multiple methods in teaching grammar that would be beneficial to her students, and individual discussion about their papers appeared to be the most effective. However, this method was found very time consuming and no critical consensus of scholars seemed to agree on the “best” method of teaching grammar. One problem that Petruzzella encountered was that teachers who had no systematic grammar instruction were in educational settings that required them to teach formal grammar.
The second section contains the debate between the findings of researchers vs. classroom teachers in how grammar should be taught. Petruzzella personally asked many teachers that she knew about their opinions on teaching grammar. She found that the majority of them agreed that there was a need for some grammar instruction, but she also concluded that one of the major problems of teaching grammar is that there is little consensus as to what the definition of grammar is. In this section Petruzzella then transitions to the opinions of six teachers to illustrate various opinions in teaching grammar.
The third section begins with a teacher who teaches grammar in the terms of writing skills. Another teacher felt similarly, and argues that you can’t teach writing without grammar, and believes firmly in personal conferences for every assignment. Another teacher felt that grammar should not be taught in drills, but rather in applicational practice. The fourth teacher’s opinion prefers teaching grammar within the context of personal assignments. The fifth teacher felt that the major controversy about teaching grammar was about how much to teach. The final teacher’s opinion given believes that a certain level of grammar education is needed for effective writing is needed.
The fourth section discusses the aforementioned teacher’s opinions on teaching grammar. Petruzzella finds that no matter what you consider grammar skills to be, a certain level of grammar knowledge is essential to good writing. However, perhaps teaching grammar should come after teaching writing rather than drills. It would appear that the best way to teach grammar is within the context of individual students’ writing. Petruzzella’s conclusion argued that teaching grammar through the context of writing is the most effective method. There are different methods to this concept, but the basic idea remains the same.
Personally, I agree that it is very effective to teach grammar within the context of personal papers. That being said it requires a lot of time and effort to succeed in that method. I still believe that grammar drills can still serve a useful purpose, but they should be taught with more context in mind than just mindless memorization. For a teacher it can be hard to give constructive and individual instruction to large classes. On the whole I felt that this was a very excellent article and did a good job of presenting some different opinions on such a vast topic.
The article was very relevant to me because my project topic focuses on whether or not grammar should be integrated into existing English courses. I think I could have used this as one of my articles.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Petruzzella that at least some grammar should be taught along with writing. Of course, there's still that question of how much grammar. I feel that the subject should be taught to every age group, at every grade level, grade school through college. This way, it's consistent and people don't simply forget the rules as they age. The difficulty and variety of what is being taught could also be increased as the grade levels get higher. The article adds to this already vast debate.
I believe it would be more effective to teach grammar w/i the context of the individual's writing. It is easier to remember what goes where when actually writing it out and doing exercises. Just looking at a list and memorizing definitions of grammar terms, especially in high school and college, doesn't seem to work as good s it did in elementary school with one's spelling test.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this article. Writing is the external expression of grammatical knowledge, and it is necessary to establish its connection with grammatical terms in the classroom. Students who use grammar incorrectly are more likely to be misunderstood by an instructor, while students who understand grammatical terms have the ability to better manipulate the language. Grammatical and mechanical knowledge of the language, therefore, should increase the writing skills of a person; however, without the context of those terms, conferences with students would be useless. The knowledge of grammar and its associated terms provides a common means for academic discourse between the instructor and the student.
ReplyDeleteAs this article suggests, there are multiple, effective means for instituting grammatical instruction within the classroom. In my future classroom, I plan on using brief instructions that are directly applied to writing assignments and indirectly discussed in literature. Although grammar is essential to clear communication, it is too often, in my opinion, taught as an isolated and alien topic, unconnected with the written or spoken word. It is simply taught through workbook drills and memorized adages. Students will not be able to incorporate grammar into other, realistic settings unless they are taught how to do so. Instructors should not only teach grammatical terms but stress the importance of these terms throughout other areas of studies.
I feel that this discussion of 'what method is best' comes up in more subjects than just grammar. I believe that it is not how we teach; but what our students best respond to throughout the course of instruction. The methods used to teach grammar, just like any other subject, should be based around what students are best able to learn through. Within my high school grammar class alone, there were several students that were able to learn through the drills and repetition methods; yet others learned best through their own writing critiques. I think that teachers should do whatever best suites their classroom environment of learning, especially in a high school setting. I say especially in a high school setting, because high school English classes are where both writing and grammar intensive strategies take place. Teachers will be able to present grammar instruction through either drills, videos, simple lecture format or any format of their choosing. On the other hand, they will still be able to critique through the writing of the student.
ReplyDeleteIf teachers are unable to independently work with what is best for each individual student, I feel that it is then the responsibility of the teacher to utilize what works best for the majority of his/her students.
I think teachers are always going to have disagreements when it comes to teaching grammar. No one likes to teach grammar and no one likes learning grammar, so who ever gets stuck to teach it is always going to have problems. Teachers need to adapt their teaching to the students needs. I think it is always more effective teaching something in context, students will pay attention more and learn it easier and better.
ReplyDeleteI think grammar should be taught along with writing papers. This would make it easier for students to incorporate proper grammar in his or her paper. I feel that students would be less likely to put proper grammar in papers if it was taught seperately.
ReplyDeleteI agree with John, I feel that teaching grammar and grammar drills can be very effective in further educational tools. It is only helpful to know rules and laws instead of looking them up each time you have to write a paper. Plus incorporating grammar can only lead to better writing.
ReplyDeleteGrammar definitely should be taught as well as writing papers. Especially the way texting is taking off, the younger generation needs to have more emphasis on correct grammar or else they are going to start speaking with slang and improper grammar in general.
ReplyDeleteA person does not have to use perfect grammar to be a good writer. A person does need to know a lot of grammar in order to write in a way that makes sense. Grammar is essential to the English language. You can't have one without the other. Grammar tells us word order, what punctuation to use, and which word to use to express ourselves correctly. Grammar has to be taught in schools. Learning grammar only helps students it never harms them. Grammar should be integrated into every subject. Grammar is not just in writing but also in speech. In order to be thought of as educated one must sound educated, which means one must have good grammar. I don't see what the big deal is about learning grammar. There shouldn't even be a debate.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Petuzzella’s conclusion, I do believe that teaching grammar might be more effective through context of writing. I believe that I have learned more writing skills from corrections made to my papers and teacher’s making me rewrite them rather than just simply rewriting meaningless sentences and hiving me identify pronouns, ad-verbs, etc. It is essential to be able to identify these terms, but it more interesting when someone is criticizing your own work.
ReplyDeleteI think that grammar can be taught in many different ways. Writing can be a great way to learn. I think that many students do better when they write things out. I find this article interesting.
ReplyDeleteLearning grammar while writing is something that would make learning grammar easier since it will allow the students to applying it in their assignments at a young age and will allow them to develop and perfect it as they get older.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are learning how to work a problem for example in math, they tell you do practice and practice instead of just trying to memorize the steps. So the practice you do with writing, the better the writer will become. I think the best method is to practice writing it out, over and over.
ReplyDeleteI believe that grammar should be taught separately from writing. I think that a student learns the rules of grammar better when grammar is taught by itself. After a student learns grammar he/she can better apply it in their writing, having already learned it and understand the mechanics of the English language.
ReplyDeleteA others stated earlier in their post, I too believe that teachers should just focus on teaching grammar terms, and definitions, but they should be a little more a actually be writing the essays. From personal experience I know that just memorizing the terms won't be very effective, because when it came time for test I just remembered the term for that time period and didn't think anything else about it.
ReplyDelete