Curious about grammar instruction: common ground?

I have a strong response to McGee and Erickson’s essay on politics and MS Word and want to post something that makes a proposal and asks questions. The field of composition seems very rational and democratic in discussions of writing, but I observe a lot of conflict, political division, and polarization around the teaching of grammar. Although there is support in the field of stylistics for teaching grammar in context, as descriptive, and as part of that larger discussion of style, it seems that the majority of the field of composition wants to ignore grammar altogether as not contributing to better writing. However, my experience points to postsecondary teachers who teach grammar regularly and unsystematically (is it because of this lack of conversation within the field and the politicization of the topic?) and students who struggle with grammar, often avoiding content to deal with grammar issues. If the grammar checkers are students’ only coherent source for grammar instruction while writing, students use it. So McGee and Erickson offer good advice that teachers familiarize themselves with grammar checkers and talk about considering the settings of MS Word software. My question is–aren’t we missing the point? In a paper I wrote, I found support for finding an approach to teaching grammar that is descriptive, not prescriptive. If grammar engages student writing at the time when he or she is engaged in writing a paper, my experience in a tutoring center shows that students are interested.  My research shows that process, content, and sentence logic may not be all that far apart, and I’m curious what ideas, feedback, experiences-pro and con-others might have regarding grammar instruction or lack thereof.

These are a Few of My Favorite Posts (Part II)

As I continue my synthesis of ideas from the class blog , I should mention that you all have written lots of great stuff about many subjects including games, podcasting, multimedia and so on, but I will ignore all that for now in favor of what supports, expands or challenges the ideas I have been developing about my own teaching methods which seem particularly relevant to teaching a face to face, textually based writing class with online support.

These are a Few Of My Favorite Posts (Part 1)

What stood out from this week’s reading was the idea of asking students to write about their favorite posts or posters on the class blog. Rather than allowing to vanish over time, the assignment forces students to look back over the work the class has produced. Such an exercise has two important functions: it reviews the material, develops critical skills and encourages the social production of knowledge.

I would recommend a variation that would add another important skill, synthesis: students could review the blogs from the course and pull out ideas that seem most significant. Since my final project is an overview of the salient points of the course, along with some of my own new ideas, I thought I would mine your posts for the most relevant concepts for my own purposes (teaching face-to-face, text-based classes with online support), which I would then possibly include in my final paper. Such recycling of material fits in with my developing idea that teachers should encourage students to use the smaller pieces of writing, both their own and that of others in the class, to create a larger whole in an integrated and continuous process.

Teaching Writing Offline (With Online Support)

Even though Scott Warnock’s book Teaching Writing Online: How & Why focuses on writing classes that take place entirely over the internet and hybrid classes which are about half online and half in person, any writing teacher in the digital age can glean important advice from his book on how to update and enhance their own teaching practices. Here are some suggestions I thought I would adopt and, in many cases, adapt, with comments and musings about why they are significant.