blog 7

For those of you who don't know, I. Love. Grammar. I really do. Diagramming and labeling and figuring out what word goes where... It's sort of like an exciting (I'll admit, nerdy) puzzle. And I was always under the impression that grammar was an integral part of my language arts curriculum.

Somehow, though, the idea that grammar doesn't make a person better at writing makes a lot of sense to me. A person speaks way before he/she ever learns to write, much less learns to abide by grammar and usage rules. It seems quite pointless to teach them. And, let's be quite honest: there aren't a world full of Allyson Gard's out there running around with a love for grammar; most kids HATE learning grammar and usage. It seems downright mean to put them through all that stress of memorizing and drills and worksheets to come to the point of "hmm...ok, and where did THAT get me? How am I using this in my writing?"

I have a friend here at Penn State who could probably tell you what nouns, verbs, adjectives, and MAYBE adverbs are. Linking verbs...a little fuzzy. Prepositions? Forget it. And diagram a sentence? You might as well be asking this person to read Mandarin Chinese. But this person's an English major. He/she analyzes literature, participates in class discussions, and writes papers that are quite insightful. With a little help in the editing department, this person's good to go. So why, if my friend can get through almost her whole college without knowing grammar and usage rules, should any of our future students?

"The real issue is how grammar should be taught, not whether it should be taught." (Williams 180) Like with ANYTHING teachers teach, how do we engage our students and also get them to learn at the same time? Of COURSE our future students are going to hate grammar drills; they're repetitive, require only memorization (which usually means they're not going to remember it for the long term), and quite frankly, they're BORING! Just like a professor lecturing for 50 or 75 minutes or even 2 hours and 45 minutes is dreadful for us, so are drills for our students. So we engage them! APPLY the knowledge. I like Williams' idea for engaging students in grammar and usage on page 190. He says to have them listen to other people speak and record their findings. Now that sounds a little more exciting than a worksheet.

I'm sure the grammar drills and the students' feelings of dread toward them in schools will continue, but I look forward to the day where kids get as excited about grammar as I do.