In the article, the author Deborah Dean, talks about how using basic grammar education tactics was useless to her students. She tried to go about different approaches that would best benefit her students until the grammar curriculum was dropped from her school. While helping her students write, she realized that her and her students had to have a "common vocabulary" in order to succeed in improving their writing skills.
That is when she took a different approach. Since the students weren't familiar with grammar, she began to use "imitation" which is an older method in grammar instruction where she would explain grammar without using grammatical terms. When using this approach, her students can learn everything there is to know about grammar but in a fun and exciting way for her students to understand. She would have the students find or make up sentences that dealt with grammatical errors and have them correct them without the students realizing that they were learning about for example, sentence structure, fragments, and incorporating their ideas in more complex sentence structures.
Deborah Dean stated that even though her students learned about grammar, the students couldn't more than likely identify the correct grammatical terms for what they learned. For example he/she could not identify that he/she were correcting fragments or sentence structure, but the approach taught by Dean improved their writing skills.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that Dean's approach was both good and bad. It was good in the fact that her students were learning grammar in a fun way and they were learning in a way that they could understand, but it was bad because the students didn't know exactly what they were learning. Yes their writing skills improved but the students couldn't determine what they were actually learning.
ReplyDeleteLike Tashina said, Dean's teaching method was good, at first. She obviously found a great way to teach kids without them getting confused or discouraged by big grammatical terms. However, I think after they learned the function of the grammatical error, they should learn what the name is of the thing they are correcting. That way they are able to not only identify the problem, but also so that they know why it was problematic. Learning how is only the beginning. You also must learn why something is the way it is to fully grasp the concept you were taught.
ReplyDeleteThis article is very interesting becuase it it fits right into the study that I did for the previous survey monkey project we had. It does seem that people often know grammar better when they are not asked to identify it (as my results showed in my project). I don't however believe that this is the best way to teach students becuase they should learn the rule as well as the correct grammar term; especially if they are pursuing a career in teaching or journalism. When I was young, I had a tough time learning the grammatical names for things and now I am paying for it becuase it is so hard to recognize the name of the grammatical rule.
ReplyDeleteI run into so many people who, when they hear I've returned to school to become an English teacher, lament that English was their least favorite subject. That's because they never had me for a teacher.
ReplyDeleteYou hope students will discover Shakespeare, Milton and Vonnegut on their own, but they won't if all of their associations trigger words such as "boring" and "work." Whatever you can do to break through those perceptions is great. You can bring a child back to this subject who tuned out when it became a rule-heavy snoozefest in grade school, but not if grammar has no relevance to them.
Tell them how much money J.K. Rowling made for the Harry Potter books and, oh, yes, her success was due to her knowledge of grammar rules.
Dean touches on a central premise of teaching: if the students do not relate, they will not learn.
Again, Dean's teaching was both positive and negative. As a teacher, one has to get creative and think outside of the box. Teachers have to find a way to excite their students when they are learning about a boring concept such as grammar. I thought that it was awesome that Dean was able to help her students improve their writing skills in a fun way, however; at the same time, I thought that it was horrible that her students were not even aware of what they were learning. It was somewhat pathetic that her students could not even list what the subject of a sentence was because they did not know the correct terminology. The students may be learning, but they cannot describe in words what they have learned. This article also reminded me of the research that I completed for my grammar study because it helped support the information that I found. While researching, I found a study that claimed that children do not learn grammar as well because they are taught too many technical concepts that they are not capable of understanding at such a young age or grade-level.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree with Mike--I can't describe how many times I've taken English classes that were dull because they focused solely on the rules. We need to bring in something to "jazz up" the curriculum-- talking about Harry Potter, like in his example, would be a good way to do that.I think this is what Dean was aiming for.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is important that after we teach these rules along with our attention-getters, we reinforce that teaching by telling them what rule it is they've learned. There is a way to encorporate both learning the rules and having fun--it just has to be carefully balanced.
I am currently observing a high school class and on occasion teach a lesson to the students. Students do not know grammar anymore. It is sad but true. This teacher's approach seems absoulutely fitting considering the students' writing improved; however, after the students' writing improved she, the teacher, should or should have continued to explaing grammatical terms to the students once they comprehended what they were suppose to do to correctly write sentences. It is wonderful that she was able to correct the students' grammar but it will do them no good with another teacher that does use grammatical terms. Overall, she has a great start to teaching them grammar but to actually teach students grammar she should continue and slowly implement grammatical terms; if she doesn't then the students will be back at square one once they are with a new teacher.
ReplyDeleteWow! What do you know, another teacher that has given up her chosen profession. I love to hear about teachers pressing the normal teaching methods. She isn't doing this. What she is doing is being lazy and failing her students. They might all get A's in the class, but unfortunately for the students, this will only hurt them later on.
ReplyDeleteWould you let your child be taught by a math teacher who doesn't follow mathematical procedures. What if he called addition a new term your child never heard of? Your child may understand the concept of addition, however, the following year your child will be behind in the presence of a new teacher who does use the appropriate terminology.
I'm sort of torn on this issue. I actually sometimes wonder if I was ever taught by a teacher in this manner with concern to grammar, as I often feel like I "know" what is right, but sometimes can't explain why either. Anyway, this teacher, like many teachers, seems to have found herself in a difficult position: the traditional methods weren't working for her students. I would imagine that trying to keep using those old methods wouldn't do any good, so she did the right thing I think in attempting to teach in a different way. And I'll even say she had a level of success. The most important thing overall for someone trying to teach grammar is getting students to write using better grammar and not having so many mistakes in their papers. Even if students can't explain why they are writing a certain way, as long as they are writing better, I'll consider that progress. The problem of course though is the long term issues that several people have brought up. If she could now now back and get the students to understand why they are writing the way they do, then I think she'll be fully doing the right thing. It's never too late to learn.
ReplyDeleteI think that the effort Deborah Dean made to teaching her students grammar was good, but at the end of the day I feel yes they were identifying, grammatical mistakes, but what's the point of the students doing these activities if they don't even know what they are actually learning. I believe that is what teaching is about to learn, and if these students can only identify, and not understand why or how these mistakes were made, Dean hasn't done her job.
ReplyDeleteI think that Deborah Dean did a good job as far as teaching her students how to write. But what about being grammatically correct???? This is only going to make it a little bit more harder for when the students move on to the next level (college) . It seems pretty backwards to me.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a good idea to try and teach grammar in a fun way, but its more about learning and focusing instead of having fun. She had a good idea, but it wasn't good when put in action.
ReplyDeleteI agree with samantha in that any way you can teach grammar in a different way is better. If you can make it fun then people will learn it easier
ReplyDeleteTeaching grammar in different ways is better; however, I feel like I've been taught in a way that I can identified wrong grammar sentences but I don't know why the sentence is wrong. Like most people, I know what what the grammar rule is but I wont know what it is called. Although the basic grammar rules can be boring, they are essential in beginning to learn grammar correctly.
ReplyDeleteI agree that teaching in a different way is better, but I feel that this teacher is somewhat giving up on her profession. Now-a-days there are so many distractions for a teenager so teaching in a more interesting way could possibly pull them away from the distractions. It is good that the students can identify the sentence is wrong, but I believe that it is equally important to know why it is wrong. In many aspects of life, one must pick a side and defend it. If you can't describe why something is wrong, your credibility is questioned. Based on this, the teacher needs to explain grammar a lot more in depth.
ReplyDelete