Teaching Grammar Doesn't Lead to Better Writing
The ACT reported recently that college professors rank grammar as the most important skill for students entering college, while high-school teachers consider it the least important. The ACT thinks that this gulf between high college expectations and...
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Grammar-Doesnt-Lead/27874
It is a shame that more teachers do not have access to this article. I am fortunate to have a mentor who subscribed to this journal and who pointed out this article to me. I am a better teacher of English and overall better teacher because of the advice given in the article, which is locked behind the pay wall of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
I hope someday that the words of Dennis Baron can be shared more widely.
His prime points are:
1. teachers focus on spelling and grammar because those are EASY to focus on. Grammar is more "objective" -- you either have parallel construction or one doesn't. (get it? "you" and "one" are not parallel).
2. Real teaching happens when the students write a lot and find their voice, which is a hard quality or skill to create in students. If I have 30 students, I can usually get 90 percent of them using "its" and "it's" correctly by the end of two weeks, but it's hard to have students confident in their voice in less than six months.
3. Real learning happens when we REWRITE. That means taking the same assignment and allowing students to make changes and resubmit.
If you are a student, send this link to your teachers. Encourage them to figure out how to get behind the Chronicle's wall. .... and at least make an effort to share these methods with other teachers.
RESUBMIT. see the argument in favor of allowing students more time to complete a course by
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