“See everything,
overlook a great deal,
correct a little.”
work of “Grammar Across the Disciplines LC"
presented by
Katrina Arndt
Russ Coward
Ed Freeman
John Travers
Deborah Uman
Deborah Vanderbilt
Introduction
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Goals for the group:
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Identify concerns in our classes
Review research about grammar
instruction
Identify useful strategies and plan to
implement them into our classes
Share information with the community
Common concerns:
Do ours match yours?
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Grammar
Fragments
Comma splices
Run-ons
Misplaced modifiers
Spelling
Apostrophes
Semi-colon
Verb tense
Subject/verb
agreement
Pronoun agreement
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Holistic
Nonsense
Lack of coherence
Register
Discourse competence
Clichés
Why are these concerns important?
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Students should know what a sentence is,
and they should have basic knowledge of
the building blocks of language
These problems impede the logic and
clarity of writing, and interrupt the flow of
reading
We teach these concepts often and
students use them frequently.
These can be status-marking errors.
Andrews, et. al., 2004
“There is no high quality evidence
that the teaching of grammar,
whether traditional or
generative/transformational, is worth
the time if the aim is the
improvement of the quality and/or
accuracy of written composition.”
George Hillocks, 1986
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Hillocks found that the teaching of
grammar as a method of improving
writing actually had negative
effects, perhaps mainly because it
replaced time that teachers could
have spent actually guiding
students through the writing
process.
Weaver, 2007
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“Historically, most students have
not learned grammar well, fewer
have remembered much after being
tested on it, and fewer still have
independently applied the relevant
aspects of grammar study to their
own writing.”
Christensen (1967); Mellon (1969);
O’Hare (1973)
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Sentence combining is the only kind
of “grammar” teaching that has
consistently been found helpful in
enriching students’ writing—or at
least their writing of individual
sentences. . . [but] it is a technique
not for teaching grammar but for
teaching ways of making sentences
more sophisticated and effective.
Sentence Combining
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An entire semester of sentencecombining practice had effects not
much different from those of a week
spent intensively helping college
students combine, expand, and
revise the sentences in their own
writing, in connection with teacher
advice to use longer, more complex
sentences in their writing (Smith &
Hull, 1985).
Read! Read! Read! Write! Write! Write!
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Another study (Hartwell & LoPresti,
1985) suggests that extensive
reading and writing may be just as
helpful as sentence combining, if
not more so.
Sample exercises
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Ed: summary
Deborah: sentence
combining/imitation
Russ: misplaced modifiers
Directive #1
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Do not waste time on “drills and
skills” workbook exercises.
Students may perform well on
them, but do not apply them later
to their own writing.
Directive #2
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Don’t fall into the trap of thinking
you can help students fix all errors:
take on a manageable piece and
teach “an inch wide and a mile
deep.”
Directive #3: accept that language
changes
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Rules do change and are dropped.
Years ago English teachers went
into conniptions over the use of
shall vs. will.
(One grammar handbook has over
20 pages on this subject alone.)
Focus on things that block effective
communication of ideas.
The directives in action:
Each student should bring their own
folder on Friday. Subject Verb Agreement
error!
I can understand the sentence. LET IT GO!
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She didn’t go to the class she got notes
from a friend. Run-on sentence: incorrect
punctuation!
Faulty punctuation impedes my ability to
understand the sentence. FIX IT!
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