Grammar Lessons
Grammar Lessons
(OP)
I tought I'd share this article in yesterday's newspaper with eveyone. Grammar instruction in US schools is coming back. I remember diagramming sentences at some point, but learned more about langauge structure only by studying foreign langauges. What about you?
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REBELS WITH A CLAUSE ARE BACK
Grammar in style again as SATs mark decline in verbal pent
By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post
October 26, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Mike Greiner teaches grammar to high school sophomores in half-hour lessons, inserted between Shakespeare and Italian sonnets. He is an old-school grammarian, one of a defiant few in the Washington region who believe in spending large blocks of class time teaching how sentences are built.
For this he has earned the alliterative nickname "Grammar Greiner," along with a reputation as one of the tougher draws in the Westfield High School English department.
Or, as one student opined in a sonnet, "Mr. Greiner, I think you're torturing us."
Greiner, 43, teaches future Advanced Placement students at the Chantilly, Va., school. Left on their own to decide where to place a comma, "they'll get it right about half of the time," he said. "But half is an F."
Ten or 20 years ago, Greiner might have been ostracized for his views or at least counseled to keep them to himself. Grammar lessons vanished from public schools in the 1970s, supplanted by a more holistic view of English instruction. A generation of teachers and students learned grammar through the act of writing, not in isolated drills and diagrams.
Today, Greiner is encouraged, even sought out. Direct grammar instruction, long thought to do more harm than good, is welcome once more.
Several factors--most notably the addition of a writing section to the SAT college entrance exam in 2005--have reawakened interest in Greiner's methods.
Nationwide, the Class of 2006 posted the lowest verbal SAT scores since 1996. That was the year the test was recalibrated to correct for a half-century decline in verbal performance.
Gaston Caperton, the College Board president, has lamented the scarcity of grammar and composition course work in public schools. In surveys, not quite two-thirds of students said they had studied grammar by the time they took the 2005 SAT.
Those concerns, and a growing consensus among scholars that many high school graduates "can't write well enough to get a passing grade from a professor on a paper," drove the addition of a third section to the SAT, upending decades of balance between reading and math, said Ed Hardin, a content specialist at the College Board.
The new section introduced a long-form essay and--less publicized--a series of multiple-choice responses that test how well students can assemble and disassemble sentences.
"We're interested in writing at the sentence level, at the phrase level, at the word level," Hardin said.
The National Council of Teachers of English, whose directives shape curriculum decisions nationwide, has reversed its long opposition to grammar drills, which the group condemned in 1985 as "a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing."
Now, even the sentence diagram, long the symbol of abandoned methodology, is allowed, if not endorsed, in the classrooms of high-performing school systems throughout the region. To diagram a sentence is to deconstruct it, with the main noun, verb and object written on a horizontal line and their various modifiers attached with diagonals.
"Our time has come," said Amy Benjamin, head of a council panel that concerns itself with grammar. In 17 years, her Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar has evolved from "kind of a revolutionary cell" into standard-bearers.
Grammarians are regarded as a rather grumpy lot. They decorate their classrooms with quotation marks rather than quotations, brood for hours over the staff memo that misuses the contraction "it's" and ply students with unpardonable puns. Greiner, in a recent lesson, elicited groans by invoking Santa's workshop while discussing the subordinate clause.
Of the 26 sophomores in his Honors English II class, six had diagrammed sentences before they met him, evidence that his brand of grammar has not reached much of the Washington region. Greiner, it should be noted, does not diagram; he prefers livelier methods.
For a half-hour one recent morning, students repaired broken sentences, an exercise with all the glamor of a linguistic assembly line. When one young woman read past the proper noun "southwest" without stopping to capitalize, Greiner politely reminded the class: This very word, or something like it, is bound to show up on Virginia's Standards of Learning exams in the spring.
- - -
7 sins, according to Mike Greiner
- Griener. It's "Greiner"; I'm an exception to the rule about i and e.
- Many writers think commas are cool, semicolons are special and sophisticated. Use a semicolon between independent clauses.
- english. Capitalize the most important subject ... or proper nouns.
- Between you and I ... Use the objective case, i.e., "me," after prepositions.
- This is her. Use the nominative/subjective case for predicate nominatives.
- Grammer. If you'd like an A in English, spell "grammar" with 2 A's.
- I'm doing good in English this year! Really? Are you curing cancer or helping the homeless? If not, use the adverb "well," not the adjective "good."
-- The Washington Post
************************************
REBELS WITH A CLAUSE ARE BACK
Grammar in style again as SATs mark decline in verbal pent
By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post
October 26, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Mike Greiner teaches grammar to high school sophomores in half-hour lessons, inserted between Shakespeare and Italian sonnets. He is an old-school grammarian, one of a defiant few in the Washington region who believe in spending large blocks of class time teaching how sentences are built.
For this he has earned the alliterative nickname "Grammar Greiner," along with a reputation as one of the tougher draws in the Westfield High School English department.
Or, as one student opined in a sonnet, "Mr. Greiner, I think you're torturing us."
Greiner, 43, teaches future Advanced Placement students at the Chantilly, Va., school. Left on their own to decide where to place a comma, "they'll get it right about half of the time," he said. "But half is an F."
Ten or 20 years ago, Greiner might have been ostracized for his views or at least counseled to keep them to himself. Grammar lessons vanished from public schools in the 1970s, supplanted by a more holistic view of English instruction. A generation of teachers and students learned grammar through the act of writing, not in isolated drills and diagrams.
Today, Greiner is encouraged, even sought out. Direct grammar instruction, long thought to do more harm than good, is welcome once more.
Several factors--most notably the addition of a writing section to the SAT college entrance exam in 2005--have reawakened interest in Greiner's methods.
Nationwide, the Class of 2006 posted the lowest verbal SAT scores since 1996. That was the year the test was recalibrated to correct for a half-century decline in verbal performance.
Gaston Caperton, the College Board president, has lamented the scarcity of grammar and composition course work in public schools. In surveys, not quite two-thirds of students said they had studied grammar by the time they took the 2005 SAT.
Those concerns, and a growing consensus among scholars that many high school graduates "can't write well enough to get a passing grade from a professor on a paper," drove the addition of a third section to the SAT, upending decades of balance between reading and math, said Ed Hardin, a content specialist at the College Board.
The new section introduced a long-form essay and--less publicized--a series of multiple-choice responses that test how well students can assemble and disassemble sentences.
"We're interested in writing at the sentence level, at the phrase level, at the word level," Hardin said.
The National Council of Teachers of English, whose directives shape curriculum decisions nationwide, has reversed its long opposition to grammar drills, which the group condemned in 1985 as "a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing."
Now, even the sentence diagram, long the symbol of abandoned methodology, is allowed, if not endorsed, in the classrooms of high-performing school systems throughout the region. To diagram a sentence is to deconstruct it, with the main noun, verb and object written on a horizontal line and their various modifiers attached with diagonals.
"Our time has come," said Amy Benjamin, head of a council panel that concerns itself with grammar. In 17 years, her Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar has evolved from "kind of a revolutionary cell" into standard-bearers.
Grammarians are regarded as a rather grumpy lot. They decorate their classrooms with quotation marks rather than quotations, brood for hours over the staff memo that misuses the contraction "it's" and ply students with unpardonable puns. Greiner, in a recent lesson, elicited groans by invoking Santa's workshop while discussing the subordinate clause.
Of the 26 sophomores in his Honors English II class, six had diagrammed sentences before they met him, evidence that his brand of grammar has not reached much of the Washington region. Greiner, it should be noted, does not diagram; he prefers livelier methods.
For a half-hour one recent morning, students repaired broken sentences, an exercise with all the glamor of a linguistic assembly line. When one young woman read past the proper noun "southwest" without stopping to capitalize, Greiner politely reminded the class: This very word, or something like it, is bound to show up on Virginia's Standards of Learning exams in the spring.
- - -
7 sins, according to Mike Greiner
- Griener. It's "Greiner"; I'm an exception to the rule about i and e.
- Many writers think commas are cool, semicolons are special and sophisticated. Use a semicolon between independent clauses.
- english. Capitalize the most important subject ... or proper nouns.
- Between you and I ... Use the objective case, i.e., "me," after prepositions.
- This is her. Use the nominative/subjective case for predicate nominatives.
- Grammer. If you'd like an A in English, spell "grammar" with 2 A's.
- I'm doing good in English this year! Really? Are you curing cancer or helping the homeless? If not, use the adverb "well," not the adjective "good."
-- The Washington Post





RE: Grammar Lessons
RE: Grammar Lessons
"The St. Martin's Handbook" by Andrea Lunsford is an excellent book for improving one's writing skills.
The "How to Say It Style Guide" by Rosalie Maggio is also very useful.
RE: Grammar Lessons
Extract from Anti-Dantas Manifest
Almada Negreiros (D´Orpheus Poet Futurist and everything)
Portugal
RE: Grammar Lessons
Thanks for your interesting post. A star for you. In elementary school during the '60s, I diagrammed sentences in 4th, 5th or 6th grade. I can't imagine kids not doing that anymore but my daughter never had to diagram.
NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas
RE: Grammar Lessons
I've never come across this word before in this context. I assume it's an American usage?
RE: Grammar Lessons
Incidentally, my seven deadly grammar sins are different:
1. Misue of their/they're/there
2. Misuse of your/you're
3. Improper pluralization using " 's "
4. Misuse of nominative pronouns in compound objects
(ie. "to her and I" instead of "to her and me")
5. Sentence fragments
6. Comma problems
7. Misue of colon preceding lists
RE: Grammar Lessons
RE: Grammar Lessons
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Grammar Lessons
Kind of wish I'd done more, but perhaps not enough to do anything about it.
RE: Grammar Lessons
Also, take a look at truly great writing. It doesn't always follow the rules. To continue the bicycle analogy, when great writing bends or breaks the rules it's like riding no-hands or doing a wheelie. You can't teach someone who can't stay up on two wheels how to ride down the road on one!
OK, off the soapbox. This method doesn't translate to a school setting anyway. There's no way to make all 30 kids in a class read the amount of quality literature required for this mental training.
RE: Grammar Lessons
Whether it is written or spoken, it had better be correct around him!
Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog
RE: Grammar Lessons
I am learning Hebrew this semester, and that is another great way to learn grammar, but the verb forms may well be the death of me....
-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!
RE: Grammar Lessons
I would add that consequently there are "law standards of education" in my country too: if I read newspapers or listen to the local radio stations sometimes I ask myself what language do they speak there. The impression is they hired tremendously advanced apes...
m777182