Rebecca Eaker
English 579
Dr. Southall/Dr. Smith
Book Review: Teaching Grammar Through Writing
In, Teaching Grammar through Writing, Keith Polette (2012) attempts to do exactly what
the title states: offer teachers options for teaching grammar through writing. He says, “[This
book] starts with ideas from Weaver and Noguchi: to teach students to subdue the grammarGrendel, to know the ins and outs of grammar, it is best to teach less of it, not more. And it is
best to teach grammar in the context of writing, not in isolation” (Polette, 2012, p. xiii). This is
his guiding philosophy in this text: that students can best learn grammar through active writing.
In the introduction, he goes on to explain the benefits of using writing to teach grammar,
including that: it helps meeting national standards, it helps writers develop useful tools, it enables
students to develop voice in their writing, encourages critical thinking, inspires confidence, and
shows that grammar is “part of a process, not an end itself” (Polette, 2012, p. xvi). Overall, the
book is aimed at showing how a teacher can present grammar instruction as a tool for writing
rather than in isolation.
According to the preface, Keith Polette is an English professor at the University of Texas.
Additionally, he was an English teacher for a wide range of students at a school in Saint Louis.
He is also a widely published author of many articles, several books on teaching, and several
children’s books. Overall, Polette takes a practical approach to teaching about writing,
approaching it in the same way that a teacher might. He offers lessons, worksheets, and
activities geared toward this purpose.
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In form, this book is composed of an introduction, followed by a compilation of lessons
geared toward teaching grammar through writing. This includes lessons on: parts of speech,
phrases, clauses, sentence expanding, sentence combining, sentence structure, punctuation,
grammar patterns, and an overview of the writing process. For each of these sections, Polette
gives fairly detailed set of scaffolded lesson plans. He starts with parts of speech, specifically,
with the noun. For each the parts of speech, the section begin with sets of words that ask the
students to identify commonalities. For example, for nouns, Polette (2012) gives a group of
words that are people, another group that are places, another that are things, and another are
ideas (1). The lessons ask students to identify commonalities to better understand what that
concept—in this case, nouns—means. After this, there are then several activities which ask
students to fill in the blanks in order to apply their new understanding of that part of speech. For
example, the section on participles has students create example sentences that use participles,
combine sentences using participles, reconnect dangling participles in some example sentences,
and create a participle poem (Polette, 2012, pp. 40-43). Many of these sections on the elements
of grammar are scaffolded, using exercises that refer back to each part of speech that has already
been learned.
For those sections that are not parts of speech oriented—like sentence combining—
Polette takes a similar approach. First, he defines the subject, in this case why a writer might
want to combine sentences. Then he gives a few sample sentences that students could try
combining. Next, the book asks students to apply more of what they have learned by creating
sentences that combine several different types of phrases (Polette, 2012, pp. 55-58).
Overall, the author attempts to provide creative ways for students to experience grammar
through writing. However, this book comes off rather like a glorified grammar textbook with a
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very few interesting or innovative components. If teaching grammar through writing is the goal,
it seems to me that more authentic writing is needed, rather than prepositional or participial
phrase poems here and there. Ultimately, the goal still seems to be to teach students parts of
speech rather than how parts of speech can be a tool in writing.
This book does genuinely offer some creative ideas. Some of suggestions about sentence
combining and sentence imitating remind me of a book I use by Don and Jenny Killgallon. I
have found that these type of exercise are useful in getting students to see and understand
different types of sentences which they can then apply to their own writing. However, some of
what could be helpful ideas in this book just fall flat. For example, I was excited to see the
chapter titled “Ten Ways to Begin a Sentence” because I thought this would a useful tool for my
students. I was disappointed to see the book simply lists the way you can start a sentence: noun,
article +noun, adjective + noun, pronoun, adverb, absolute phrase, participial phrase, etc. There
is one example sentence for each of these, followed by one exercise in which students are only
asked to fill in the blank of this sentence “____________________________, frog plopped in the
pond” with seven different sentence starters (Polette, 2012, p. 53). To Polette, this appears to be
an exercise in writing. Really, however, it is only a glorified grammar drill. Why not have a
student do this very same exercise with something they’ve written independently?
Part of the problem with this book lies in the fact that it is targeted at grades 4-12. It is an
ambitious goal to provide lessons that are adaptable to each of these grade levels. The needs of a
fourth grade classroom are very different than the needs of a tenth grade classroom. The author
does say, “The book can be used as it is arranged, or it can be used as the teacher needs to use
it… The teacher can modify the activities to tailor them to students’ needs” (Polette, 2012, p.
xviii). His expectation seems to be that you can take whatever you want from this book and
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adapt it to best suit your needs. However, I would have found this more useful if the book had
different sections for elementary, middle, and high school. Another alternative would have been
to target this entire book to a more specific audience of students.
One thing I felt the book was majorly lacking was any suggestions or lessons regarding
authentic writing experiences. Though this book claims that teaching grammar is closely tied to
writing, the goal is still far too grammar oriented. Polette (2012) says, “[This book] is designed
to teach students to learn to recognize seven parts of speech, six phrases, and three clauses.
When students shift their emphasis from being content driven in their writing to making
conscious choices about the manner in which they convey content (that is, by choosing to use
and combine the sixteen grammatical elements), they will have made substantial growth as
writers” (p. xix). So, while he claims to have some lofty goals in terms of how better
understanding of grammar can make students better writers, ultimately the book is still very
traditional in that its expectations are understanding what each grammatical element means and
how it is used. However, the problem still remains: just because a student can recognize a part
of speech—lets say a prepositional phrase—and do some isolated sentence writing, doesn’t mean
that they can automatically understand how to use it in their own writing. I would have liked to
see more suggestions in this book about how to take something a student has already written and,
using what they’ve learned about grammar, how they can revise that writing and make it better.
Overall, I don’t think I would recommend this as a “must-have” book for English
teachers. It’s worth a glance for some ideas, but ultimately, I was expecting a book that was
much more writing centered. At the heart of this book is grammar in all its convoluted glory. I
have found that teaching grammar for grammar’s sake does not work in my classroom, and I
cannot imagine this text would revolutionize the way my students see grammar in any way.