Blog Summary 17: Grammar Without Grammar

The responses are due on Monday, March 30th, at class time.
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by Julia Longueville

All of us from time to time have wondered why we need to know the rules of grammar. While proper sentence structure and grammar are important for good writing, is it really necessary to know the names of prepositions, subjects, adjectives, etc? While some people believe that these terms are important for communicating about writing, the author of “Grammar Without Grammar,” has her doubts.

This particular teacher started out being forced to teach grammar. Her students did not grasp it well and she even had some bad reviews from the parents about it. They did not understand how learning this information made them into better writers, especially since they were having such a hard time applying this knowledge to their own writing. Throughout the next couple of years, this teacher tried many different methods of grammar instruction, desperate to find something that worked that would help her students! Finally, she found a winner.This teacher, like most good teachers, was mainly focused on making her students’ writing better.

In order to do this and teach proper grammar, she decided to take the drills out of her grammar instruction. She dropped all of the terms. Her main form of grammar instruction was through something called imitation. Sentences from different magazines or novels from the class were taken and one by one put up on the board. The students would be given a moment to analyze these sentences and then were instructed to created a sentence in the same format.

By imitating different styles and sentence patterns, these students began to realize what a more effective sentence looked like. They did this everyday, each time creating more and more types of sentences that they could use in their writing. Sure enough, they began developing more complex sentences and understood what and was not acceptable in sentence structure.This particular teacher believes her tactics of using imitation to be a success. She claims that although her students do not know the terms of grammar they know how to use it.

Is knowing how to use grammar properly in writing the only thing that is important in grammar instruction? Do you think that imitation is an effective tool in teaching grammar? Are old-school grammar drills a thing of the past? How will you teach your students?