WRIT 200 Blog Post 15 - Grammar

What do you think? What role should the instruction of grammar play in the writing classroom? Does the type of writing classroom influence whether—and to what degree—writing should be taught?

Formal education in grammar is a fond but distant memory for me.  Diagramming sentences, absentmindedly humming Schoolhouse Rock, and knowing what a preposition is are behind me now. But reading about grammar education this week brought those memories back, and along with them came thoughts on whether that education benefited me in the long run. I can't know, of course, how life would have been different without grammar instruction. Would I have spent more time writing? Would I have picked up on the rules on my own? It's impossible to say. However, I do think understanding the concepts of grammar has helped me.

Primarily, I believe I'm a better editor for having learned grammar in a classroom setting. Those who picked up on it naturally may be just as able to see something that feels grammatically wrong in a paper or other text, but understanding why it's wrong allows me to communicate that to the author in others' writing, and to more swiftly address it in my own. 

This self-correcting impulse may also help me write more correctly in a first draft, though sometimes that takes the form of unproductive editing that interrupts my writing to address minor errors that would easily be fixed later on. 

Based on how I see my grammar education at play in my writing today, here's my attempt at a middle ground on the debate: Teachers should focus on allowing time for composition over memorizing parts of speech and grammar rules, but should give personalized feedback that addresses errors in students' work with explanations of why they're wrong. Teachers could even give personalized quizzes on a student's common mistakes to check their conceptual progress throughout the year.

This may be less practicable in a classroom with many students, but catering grammar education to those areas a student isn't picking up naturally would minimize the time it takes away from composition and maximize the benefit for each student.