This session focused on the idea of teaching grammar by using good sentences and emulating them rather than using bad sentences and correcting them. The teacher puts up a model sentence and asks students what they notice about it. I like this for several reasons:
- It avoids the idea that grammar is something broken that must be fixed.
- The only way to "get it wrong" is to notice something that's not actually there.
- Helps prevent fix-everything syndrome, where the students go through and just change all the periods to commas and vice versa. (Slight exaggeration, maybe, but yanno what I mean.)
- By comparing a changed version of the sentence to the original, it shows how changes in grammar are changes in meaning.
- Students produce good writing in small, non-threatening nibbles.
Oh, and we also got a copy of one of his books at the close of the session (the one I got was Everyday Editing). Yey!
Edit: Ew. I don't like the little daisy-bullets. Can't I get regular ones?!!
1 comments:
I work in the writing/reading center of the community college I attend; what a helpful post! We get so many ESL and otherwise, shall we say, challenged writers each day; error analysis doesn't help with some of them. I will try to remember your strategy and use it where appropriate; thanks!
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