Cries of, “But when will we ever use this in real life?” resound through classrooms, debilitating teachers in their pursuit of student excellence. Once a staple in schools, grammar has become anathema to the standard course of English instruction. With the advent of the impending pertinence of the "real world," the tediousness and technicality of the study of grammar has undergone microscopic scrutiny. The real world forces people to face technical and tedious situations sometimes, however. Thus, the technical construct of grammar should not be grounds for its immediate dismissal. Grammar is foundational to proficiency in any language, whether it is a student’s home language, or a foreign language learned later in life (Kolln 17, Burke 441). In fact, studies have proven that when students have learned a language in a classroom grounded in grammar instruction, rather than just meanings-based teaching, the second language is learned more successfully (Burke 441, 456). Grammar has had a history in English lectures throughout the years, and, despite the paradigm shifts away from its instruction, it deserves attention in classes today.
There was a time when grammar was prevalent in almost every classroom across the United States. Not only this, but those in authority did not question its inclusion – its importance was taken for granted (Kolln 13). However, this would not always be the case. As early as the turn of the 20th century, professionals “emphasized the need to evaluate the amount of time devoted to formal grammar study in an overcrowded curriculum” (Kolln 13). In a system where teachers were expected to teach increasingly varied subjects, grammar became the nonessential item under examination. Critics dubbed the rote memoriza...
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...lessons to further prepare their students for school and life.
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Some teachers, when it comes to a child’s writing, do not want to make a child feel like what they wrote is wrong. Goldstein points out that teens today struggle more on college essays and in college because they are not taught correct grammar. Kathleen Sokolowski said that she went to Catholic school and grammar was a major element in her studies. I went to Catholic school as well and it was the same way. I knew others that were in public schools that did not learn grammar like I
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1. In his chapter “On the Need of Some Grammar” found in Modern American Usage, Wilson Follett argues that we need grammar to govern our language.
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Makers and Makerspaces was the subject of my multimodal English 1101 class, which exposed me to an innovative culture and developed competence in all communication modalities. Excluding the importance of this brand-new culture, which motivated me and originated a resonant excitement enough to sign up for the class, towards the end of the course I realized the main goal was to have every student work towards mastery of communication skills. Furthermore, the class constantly contributed to my personal writing and communication skills development throughout the creation of a webpage, a group presentation, and an analysis essay. As an international student, the transition was rough because I had been detached from the english language for three years before coming to Georgia Tech. Nevertheless, the course gave me much needed exposure to a language that I will require for my personal advancement. Although there are still innumerable things for me to improve regarding my English skills, the course taught me to express my ideas efficiently and craft effective arguments using different sources such as images and research.
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In this essay I intend to investigate how differently one of the closed word classes, determiners, are approached in a series of pre and post corpus-based English grammar reference books, course books and practice books. And the theme of my investigation is how corpus affects the development of English teaching materials. The grammar reference books I intend to analyze and compare are “A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language” (ACGEL) and “Cambridge Grammar of English” (CGE). The former is an indispensable grammar reference book first published in 1985, which has been widely consulted in researches in relation to English linguistic studies, while the later offers clear explanations of both spoken and written English grammar based on authentic everyday usage.
A large part of an English teacher’s job deals with helping students find their own voices amidst the many teachings of their parents and peers. A student’s voice can be their values, their interests, and their perspectives of the world in which they live. Their voice can be their critical questioning of the many situations they face, whether in a text, the school cafeteria, or a park after school. It is the job of an English teacher to aid in finding this voice through their writing. It is by putting words and thoughts down on paper that a student can sometimes feel comfortable enough to take risks and find their true voices. Although traditional grammar instruction has long been thought to improve this skill, this is no longer the case. Instead, by providing a classroom environment in which students are immersed in classic literature from many genres including poetry, short stories, and novels, students will learn how to harness grammar for their own purposes of finding their voice in their writing.
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In the article, “Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar” by Hossein Nassaji and Sandra Fotos two main issues had been discussed. The first one is whether grammar teaching make any differences to language learning where the questions raised are whether grammar should be taught or not. The second issue is what kinds of grammar teaching have been suggested to facilitate second language learning. If grammar should be taught, how much and should it be implicit or explicit grammar teaching? Lastly, the article discussed on the current approaches to grammar teaching in which formal instruction can be integrated with communicative activities which are processing instruction, interactional feedback, textual enhancement, task-based