As a student who was in grade school not long ago I related to the article on a personal level. I can remember as a child mistaking one word for another and feeling put down rather than a teacher or parent using that as a tool to teach me something. Corvitz has one main argument, that the way teachers currently approach error analysis is not successful in getting students to understand English. I found his argument that simple grammatical mistakes that students make aren’t for lack of ability to understand or work hard, but because they have a deeper misunderstanding of the concept very convincing. The example of Daily Oral Language (or DOL) exercises was helpful because as far as I know most if not every student has done some form of these in the past. DOLs are unhelpful, uncreative, and detrimental. A writer’s natural creativeness and artistic ability is stifled by the fear of “doing it wrong”.  DOL’s contextualize grammatical errors in ways that students and writers never run in to in real life applications. Corvitz offers alternative ways to achieve the same goals as DOLs while keeping students engaged in the activity and allowing them freedom to experiment with grammar in a more natural setting. Covitz offers the example of “Sentence Dictation Activities”. The teacher reads aloud a sentence from a published author and then the students, without being told how the author punctuated the sentence, copy the sentence and punctuate it themselves. Discussion follows and students and teacher can engage in open discussion about the different and most effective ways to punctuate a certain sentence. They can also discuss any incorrect ways of punctuating the sentence. Novels and poems are great examples because they often offer lots of wacky punctuation to emphasize or draw out different words.  The first paragraph of Moby Dick by Herman Melville is a perfect example.

 “The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and

brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons

and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly

embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations

of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it

somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality”.

The first sentence alone offers up a literary goldmine of punctuation. Students can play with it, punctuate it in their own terms and discuss their punctuation in an academic setting.  This is comprehensive, helpful, complete. Rather than looking at the same sentence on a white board and finding the error, students can experiment with different pieces of punctuation as they would in their own writing. This activity also keeps student engaged and thinking critically about what they are trying to punctuate. The goal in this exercise, as should be in all writing exercises is to help form the student into a better and more effective writer. There are many ways to teach grammar, just as there are many ways to punctuate a sentence. It is not always about right and wrong, rather, what is more effective.

William Cayo

It is intriguing to me how much we use grammar and how little we think about it; I made it through 17 years of schooling without anyone ever explaining it to me.  [ Two sentences that at closely related]. I never knew that there was a difference between the grammar that we grow up with, full of slang and conjunctions, and the proper grammar that we are taught in school. The same way Mrs. Delaney taught in the Christensen article, I was taught that any deviation from proper grammar was a flaw in both my grammar and that in some sense I was a lesser person for speaking and writing the way that I was raised.

Goal C in the “Grammar Alive” textbook says this “Every student will complete school with an understanding of, and appreciation for, the natural variation that occurs across time, social situation, and social situation” (Haussamen, 4). I grew up with a decent understanding of goal A and B but I had no idea that goal C was even something that existed. The Christensen article said this, “However, the biggest problem with Fred’s writing was that he didn’t make mistakes. This piece demonstrates his discomfort with writing. He wasn’t taking any risks…When more attention is paid to the way something is written or said that to what is said, students’ words and thoughts become devalued. Students learn to be silent, to give as few words as possible for criticism” (Christensen, 101). I think that this is something all students from around the globe can relate to on some level. From a young age “bad grammar” is metaphorically beat out of us through bad grades and criticism of our use of language. When you criticize someone for the way that they talk then nine time out of ten the will clam up and stop talking. As teachers and future teachers this should not be our goal, in fact it should be something we strive to avoid. The Christensen article put it like this, “Students must be taught to hold their own voices sacred, to ignore the teachers who have made them feel that what they’ve said is wrong or bad or stupid. Students must be taught how to listen to the knowledge they’ve stored up, but which they are seldom asked to relate (Christensen, 101). The article goes on to talk about how when we are forced to focus on the hard rules of proper English grammar we often don’t make the point that we were trying to get across. In other words, effective communication is a mixture between what we are raised with and the proper grammar that everyone is taught.

Though similar in topic, “Grammar Alive” and the other article were very different in approach. “Grammar alive focused on the goals that as teachers we should set for students while the Christensen article focused on why those articles are important. Both were informative and I would definitely recommend either to any current or prospective teachers.