Sorry I missed all of you in class today. I just couldn’t rationalize driving my daughter out in this questionable weather. For some reason people forget how to drive in the snow. MMMG group (Emily, Jacob, Joe, Eugene and Rob) I’ll send you a note about compiling our stuff.
I have actually seen with my own eyes 12 year olds excited about grammar. I know this sounds rare and straight out of “The Twilight Zone”, none the less it is true. The key is they learned grammar along with usage. Williams does a great job at distinguishing the difference between grammar and usage: “Grammar is how words fit together in patterns to communicate meaning, Usage is about the words we choose to communicate meaning” (171-2) I think that this distinction helps put teachers, students and parents in a position to understand what issues in writing really are, as well as to begin a discussion about where they come from. (My cooperating teacher uses the Kansas method of grammar instruction, she took a seminar on it)
The most important thing, though, that I gleaned from this chapter is that we need to focus on discussing usage issues. However in order to have a common language to discuss these issues by we need to have some type of grammar instruction. When going through the common usage mistakes I was racking my brain to remember what parts of speech Williams was talking about. If we taught grammar with usage in some type of context maybe we could improve writing. Who knows though.
Another thing I kept thinking about is our favorite linguistics class. It seems as if what we learned in there applies to teaching of grammar/usage. The problem is it was not taught in relation to teaching English. Maybe if it were in the grad program, or related specifically to the teaching of English it would have been more beneficial.
Here is a link relating to grammar www.grammarandmore.com . It has some tips, activities and articles on teaching usage and grammar.
