A New Approach to Grammar

I really liked Deborah Dean's article entitled Grammar without Grammar. The article specifically outlines some new and fresh ways of teaching old and worn out material with a creative spin. Dean starts off by telling the reader how she more or less rejoiced when daily language and grammar requirements were lifted at her school. She thought that this would give her more time to spend on writing with the students, but she soon found out that there was no common language with which to discuss student writing without the grammar lessons. Not wanting to go back to the way she had previously taught grammar Dean decided to use an old technique, sentence immitation. In reviving this strategy in her classroom, I think that Dean's success in getting it to work with the kids was that she used modern methods of delivery in getting the kids to immitate sentences.

The first modern strategy that Dean used in getting her students to appropriately model sentences was modeling the technique herself. In addition to pulling sentences from other publications to attempt to duplicate, Dean offered sentences of her own for students to match as well as working with students to immitate some of the examples that she used from other authors. In short, Dean showed the kids how to complete the required task by doing that task with them. Another modern technique that she used was to allow the kids to write on any topic which they desired as long as it was classroom appropriate. This kept the material engaging and personal for the students, and in my opinion, it probably yeilded positive results much more quickly. Third technique that Dean used was to scaffold student learning through the immitation activities. She eventually had the kids combining two, three, and even four immitated sentences in a row, and even began to put occassional content stipulations on the sentences forcing the kids to write about one focused topic. In this way, Dean was able to prepare kids to face specific writing prompts by getting them used to writing on predecided content and material. Lastly, she kept the activities gamelike and fun for the kids. During many classperiods the sentence writing turned into a competition or contest which further enticed the kids to participate at their highest level.

Overall, I loved this article. I think it was a fabulous synthesis of many of the skills that we are being taught in the program. This is a great example of how a little teacher ingenuity with the proper techniques can produce some fantastic results. The only concern that I have with the piece is that she noted at the end that the kids would not be able to name or recognize the rules and usage patterns that they had been learning if they had to. This makes me worry about them not being exposed to the common language of standard english grammar that they might need to posses as their schooling progresses. Sure, she has gotten the kids to write better, but how will they be able to explain their writing choices and practices when go through college processes of editing and revising. What if they get into linguistics courses and other fields where some base knowledge is required. Would this type of teaching be a problem?

This link takes you to a website that will send you daily grammar lessons and tips through your email. It might be helpful in conducting these types of lessons. You can also search the site for specific grammar topics.
http://www.dailygrammar.com/archive.shtml