Reply to Does your school teach grammar?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Does your school teach grammar? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Isn't teaching grammar just about modeling it? Kids learn from listening to others. Obviously, children in ESL or households with minimal education would need direct instruction, other than that.. is it necessary?

P.S. It's 1am in the morning, so please don't analyze my incorrect grammar.[/quote]

Not necessarily.  Modeling certainly helps, but I know lots of well-educated people who had well-off and well-educated parents who still make grammar mistakes, or who don't write particularly well because they don't know the rules of grammar.  I spent a year diagramming sentences in sixth grade.  I did not enjoy it, but it was one of the more useful parts of my education.  You'll pick up a lot just from listening and reading, but there's really no substitute for learning the rules of proper sentence construction.  [/quote]

My firm hires only from top colleges, and many of our employees don't know grammar. They had basic grammar modeled well by their parents, so they speak intelligently. But when they write, you see how much they never learned. They dangle modifiers, they don't use parallel structure, and their subjects and verbs don't agree in complex sentences. These things have a big impact on clarity of writing, but they have to be taught.[/quote]

This is shocking. [/quote]

Actually, it doesn't surprise me at all.  Our DC went through HRCS and Deal and has had essentially no formal writing instruction that involves grammar, and certainly nothing like the sentence diagramming of my youth.  She's a very strong reader and writes a lot but I think her critical writing is definitely weaker for the lack of formal instruction.  It's part of why we are considering private for our second child, who seems even farther behind.[/quote]

I'm the PP who posted about top college alums not knowing grammar, and I would not assume private schools teach it.

I think one of the reasons it isn't taught much anymore is that it's viewed as too rule-based and uncreative. Grammar is often taught as a set of rules with little context, which makes it boring to teach and to learn. It's so much more engaging when taught in context, demonstrating how good grammar makes writing clearer and more powerful. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics