Blog 2

When I decided to go into teaching I hated the idea of teaching grammar. Not because I thought it was pointless—I thought that teaching grammar meant teaching Daily Grammar Practice (DGP). When I was in High School we learned grammar through Daily Grammar Practice—each week we had a sentence we worked on and each day we had different grammatical elements to work on—I learned nothing from my Daily Grammar Practice. [Dash—to explain or add information]  I thought I would need to know all the rules of Standard English and I knew I didn’t learn anything from my years of Daily Grammar Practice.  We were taught that these were the rules of grammar and if we don’t follow them than we will be incorrect and marked down…I never learned where to use the rules in real life situations. [Ellipsis—to indicate pause or hesitation] My teacher only stressed the grammatical elements for that sentence of the week. I never understood why I needed to know a words part of speech…I still don’t. [Ellipses—to indicate pause or hesitation]  A better way to teach grammar is to incorporate the lessons in reading assignments.  In Grammar Alive it explains how you can teach capitalization, paragraph length, and organization of information, numbers, sentence length and style, active versus passive voice, punctuation, and coordinating conjunctions through having your students read something and look for something specific in the text. Incorporating pieces of writing that your students are already reading will make it easier for them to see the grammatical techniques.

After reading Haussamen’s Grammar Alive!  As well as Christensen’s Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard, I have found that how I thought teachers are supposed to teach may not be the best way.  In Grammar Alive, it contradicts this idea and says, “’Standard English’ is a concept with some flexibility to it. It has its gray areas” (5).  There isn’t just one way to speak and write English—each person has their own unique way.[Dash—to emphasize an important point]  In Christensen’s article it explained how when she was younger she was pointed out in class for saying the word lawyer differently than another student.  Christensen than found herself being cautious with what she said in case she said something “incorrectly”.  Although I never thought of a teacher having students stand up and saying a word only to point out how “weird” or “different” that student had said it, I do believe that teachers have been known to correct a student on how they say a word.

The book Grammar Alive! And Christensen’s piece both contradicted my learning on how to teach…but I believe it made my teaching better. It is easy to forget that people in different states and countries will say words and phrases differently than myself. In the books it explains that the differences in their speech shows character and gives the writer a voice…instead of trying to write the same as everyone else. [Ellipses—to indicate pause or hesitation] Promoting your students individuality and showing them different ways to use grammar in their writing is a much more useful way to teach than having one way students can write because this isn’t realistic. There is no correct way to write. There are different techniques, and by promoting these different ways, your students will be better off. My point of view on teaching grammar has definitely improved for the better.

 

I used both the ellipses and the dash. I believe I used them both correctly because for the ellipses I used it to show hesitation and for the dash I used it to emphasize a point as well as explain or add information. I was already comfortable with the ellipses…I seem to enjoy adding hesitation to my writing. Now the das—is my new best punctuation friend and I use it constantly!