Stewart Sternberg-Rewrite-Grammar Instruction--In Search of a Pragmatic Approach

Grammar Instruction--In Search of A Pragmatic Approach

Stewart Sternberg

MSU

Grammar Instruction--In Search 2

Writing is about clearly communicating ideas; this should be first and foremost in the

mind of the teacher (and the student). Grammar is a way to organize those thoughts so they can

be expressed in the most concise manner. What‟s important though is that grammar isn‟t

necessarily subordinate, but rather instrumental to that idea‟s expression. It‟s at once a skill we

develop as we learn to speak and at the same time it is a “systematic description, analysis, and

articulation of the formal patterns of language” (Smith, Cheville, & Hillock, Jr, 2006, p. 245).

The struggle for teachers has been how to approach grammar instruction so that

acquisition of grammar competency isn‟t an end, but rather part of a balanced approach to

writing. This debate between a prescriptive grammar (an idealized structure determining how

one ought to speak and write) and descriptive grammar (a systematic approach describing how

language is actually utilized), and for purposes of discussion we‟ll use the umbrella of

descriptive grammar to include both Chomsky influenced formal grammar and Halliday

influenced functional grammar, has been reignited in the last ten years by the introduction of No

Child Left Behind (NCLB), a law that tipped the scales in favor of an outcome based education

and an approach to writing where the result might be standardized to the point where it was

easily assessed and quantified.

Unfortunately for the teacher of English, concern for evaluation means an educator is

more likely to play it safe, looking at the test as a compass, anticipating what questions and areas

of instruction might be dominantly scrutinized on a test, “the majority of which,” according to

Smith, Cheville, and Hillock (2006, p.244), referencing a 2002 study, “focus on surface level

features.” While a teacher may believe, that a particular approach to grammar is superior, or

that he or she may have a unique approach to implementing the teaching of that grammar, in our

current educational atmosphere freedom to experiment or to utilize approaches not emphasizing


prescriptive grammar is discouraged. Or even penalized. NCLB has raised the stakes regarding

curriculum execution and a school not performing up to test standards may lose funding while

administrators and teachers may find their employment threatened.

In a gradual process, changes in attitudes toward grammar instruction have filtered down

through professional development and changes in curriculum, a process where scholars, acting at

the behest of ideological influences, have guided teachers, with mixed success, away from a

traditional approach to grammar instruction, to an approach where grammar instruction has been

steered through a filter of a genre-based approach, and then back again to a prescriptive

approach.

Ultimately, a teacher is too busy to keep track of what transpires in the Congressional

Committee on Education and Labor, or what current research is being done in prestigious

academic circles. Teachers are seldom directly aware of the works of Bhaktin or Hillock, Weaver

or Carver, Halliday, or Thorndike. Instead their approach to writing instruction may be indirectly

influenced by professional development activities such as the workshops under the Lucy Calkins

brand name. Or perhaps they forsake any real critical assessment of the educational process,

abandoning all inquiry, in favor of putting full faith and trust into the drills found in a book of

grammar or in the readings found in the board-approved basal reader.

Regardless of the political battle being waged, the English teacher must juggle his or her

own need for expression, how best to serve the immediate needs of his or her own student

population, and how to do both of these things while satisfying the expectations of the

Department of Education. Policy evolves over years; the teacher doesn‟t have the luxury of time

when working with a student population. The needs of the student are paramount and solutions

must be found quickly, often intuitively, and acted upon. Still, without some knowledge of


different approaches to writing instruction, the teacher lacks the background information

necessary to implement an intelligent approach to craft. So although the teacher may at times

struggle against mandates delivered by academics functioning as policy makers, the teacher has a

necessary reliance on the academic to provide new strategies for instruction or to reinvent or

reframe old trustworthy strategies.

Perhaps ignorant or indifferent to the battle being waged between prescriptive or

descriptive grammar, the teachers start to cobble together, armed with experience gained through

trial-and-error, a certain sense of what feels right. Also, through this experience, most would

probably assert that students seem to intuitively know grammar, even without being able to

identify the parts of speech or the level of importance attributed to that element of instruction.

Seeing this, a teacher must logically ask why focus on the parts of speech beyond a basic

approach. Why teach prescriptive grammar at all?

In their short essay on grammar, Tchudi and Thomas (1996) ask this same

question, but punctuate it by illustrating the intuitive nature of grammar. They do so by relating

an activity conducted in a college classroom. A group of students were given the following

words: “specialists those bearded Lithuanians ten linguistic” and asked that they rearrange them

to make a sentence. The students all constructed the following sentence: “Those ten bearded

Lithuanian specialists.” However, when asked to describe the prescriptive rules of grammar

governing their action, the college students struggled to do so. Why, one wonders, if the students

intuitively know this, if they are able communicate with a grammar that intelligently expresses

an idea and is understandable to an audience, should grammar be taught prescriptively?


This question is important because it is the touchstone of writing instruction, the

beginning point for any teacher. It is a question pondered watching students painfully struggle

banging together first sentences and then paragraphs. Where is the disconnect? Why can‟t this

student, who speaks using a fluent grammar, translate that grammar onto paper according

prescriptive rules? Is it because perhaps the prescriptive rules are an ideal and not a true

representation of the function of communication?

Patrick Hartwell (1985) took up this question when attacking prescriptive grammar,

quoting the findings of Braddock, Jones, and Schoer and published in Research in Written

Composition (1963), as proof that formal grammar instruction was over valuated. The quote

used by Hartwell was:

“In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types

of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the

teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some

instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in

writing” (qtd in Hartwell, 1985).

The issue though, according to Martha Kolln (1985), in her response to Hartwell, was

that the authors of that report weren‟t stating that the teaching of grammar was pointless, but

rather that the teaching of formal grammar was the problem. According to Kolln, “formal

grammar” refers to “a separate class in the curriculum in which students study grammar in a

“formal” rather than an applied or functional way, grammar taught with no connection to

writing” (p. 874).

This response was an echo of an earlier publication by Kolln (1981) in which she

attacked the Braddock report, describing it as being responsible for the movement away from


grammar instruction in public education. In a rather superlative burst, she wrote: “That famous

statement has probably had a more harmful effect on our students these past seventeen years than

all the time spent memorizing rules and diagramming sentences ever had” (p. 147).

A response to Kolln‟s views seems to sum up the maelstrom of theories regarding the

teaching of writing, and more specifically grammar. Shook (1983), wrote:

“I would ask two questions about the grammar she would have us teach. First, I

would have to ask, „Whose grammar is it?‟ Is Professor Kolln referring to

transformational generative grammar? If so, which form? Or could she possibly be

referring to case grammar? Or to stratificational grammar? Junction grammar? Text-

grammar? Schema theory? Speech act theory? Discourse theory?...In fact, as we learn

more about the act of creating a text, we discover more and more facets to that act, more

angles to explore, more counterexamples to simplified sentence-generating models.” (p.

491)

A year after the above exchange, George Hillock (1986) would side with Kolln in his

work “Research on Written Composition: New Directions for Teaching” (1986), also focusing

on the term “formal grammar”, taking the stance that linguists had long before shown that formal

grammar provided “an inconsistent and inadequate description of how the English language

works” (p 148). He further faulted those teachers who “made no distinction between grammar (a

description of how a language works) and „correctness‟ (adherence to accepted conventions of

punctuation and usage)”, in other words, correctness over other features of writing (p. 148).

Hillock, writing with Smith et al (2006) boils down the argument against prescriptive or

Traditional School Grammar (TSG) into three arguments:


1) TSG is inflexible and it denigrates the “lexical and syntactic elements

associated with vernacular dialects” (p. 265)

2) Students have tremendous difficulty learning TSG

3) TSG has little to no impact on writing.

So, what path does the teacher follow? What is the pragmatic approach that offers peace

between the prescriptive and the descriptive? Perhaps the starting point for such an approach can

be found in M.A.K. Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Linguistics or SFL. SFL is similar to

structural grammar but it takes meaning into account. Maybe here TSG and a genre approach can

find a meeting point. Starting with a text driven approach, SFL takes text into a consideration of

meaning and function. “While the other grammars we have discussed how to treat words,

clauses, or sentences as the units of analysis, SFL moves beyond clauses to a consideration of

how text and genre work together to make meaning” (Smith et al., 2006, p. 269).

Cope and Kalantzis (1993) help put Halliday‟s approach in perspective by dividing

grammar into three groups and discussing the relationships between those groups. They describe

traditional grammar (prescriptive) as focused on the goal of standardization of language; formal

grammar (descriptive), as based on Chomsky‟s concepts regarding the emergent and intuitive

nature of grammar; and Halliday‟s contribution of functional grammar, as focused on a social

goal of rhetoric. In other words, Halliday‟s approach is meaning oriented.

Halliday‟s approach can be embraced by the pragmatist, who can teach the basics of the

eight parts of speech and at the same show the students the function of grammar. From a

pragmatist‟s point of view, unless grammar is taught with application in mind, with a compass

heading aimed at function, then it becomes an exercise in futility for both the instructor and the

student. It‟s common sense and generally agreed upon in education that when students can see an


application to their work, when they can see a direct line between content and usage, they better

internalize that content. This is true across disciplines. Why then shouldn‟t this be true in the

instruction of writing?

Perhaps no approach to writing is more about function than one based on a genre

perspective. The idea of the function of grammar was a major thrust of M.M. Bhaktin‟s The

Problem with Speech Genre (1986). He wrote: “…a study of the utterance as a real unit of

speech communion will also make it possible to understand more correctly the nature of

language units: words and sentences” (p. 67).

The sentence as a language unit, when it is part of an utterance, or is expressed as an

independent utterance, has grammatical boundaries and according to Bhaktin (1986),

grammatical completeness and unity. The student speaking knows the appropriate grammar to

communicate ideas, knows the expectations of the audience and will often make the necessary

adjustments to be understood. This sort of utterance, where it is given in anticipation of a real

response, is called a “primary genre”. However, most forms of writing such as fiction and

expository writing, would be considered “secondary genre”. That is, they are composed of

primary utterances, forming a more complex system of communications where there is perhaps

no expectation of an immediate rejoinder from the person receiving the utterances.

The problem students seem to have is making the leap from primary to secondary genres.

Written grammar is often different from the grammar of spoken language. The transition is

artificial; an attempt to impose structure on something which is intuitive for the student.

The above detail of the discussion of grammar is important to show that the debate

between supporters of both descriptive and prescriptive grammar is still being waged (although


currently the proponents of TSG, girded by NCLB, seem reinvigorated). It also illustrates the

cloud that storms above the head of the rank-and-file teacher in his or her classroom.

With the seemingly settled issue of grammar instruction apparently unsettled, what is a

teacher to do to address what they see as gaps in student knowledge? The answer is probably to

follow the course that teachers will take in the name of self-preservation, namely to safely pursue

the middle ground, following board policy while also listening to intuitive sense of what works

with a given population to improve both writing skills and surface level performance skills, with

a result often unsatisfying to both the teacher and the policy maker.

As mentioned in the beginning of this paper, teachers are a harried lot, and with the

pressures of accountability, increase of details in content expectation, and increases in class-size

due to budget cuts (along with the pressures of teaching a diverse population, whether that

diversity is the result of a changing ethnic demographic or the result of an inclusion policy

regarding special education), what sort of environment can be created for the educator to assess

his or her own teaching methods and strategize for improvement?

What professional development can realistically approach an application of theory while

satisfying ideologically driven content expectations? Anecdotally, it would seem that too often

development is removed from reality, a mere tipping of the hat to the research, with the school

district failing to implement the recommendations of the professional development being

endorsed.

It‟s important that people start listening to the stake holders, that the voice of the teacher

is given weight. Where do the teachers stand? In an introduction to an issue of The English

Journal dedicated to grammar instruction, then editor Leila Christenbury (1996) made a point of


stating that despite the numerous views on grammar represented in the issue, that most of the

contributing teachers tended to form a consensus on several major points:

“Regardless of philosophical stance, almost all the writers in this issue of EJ agree

that grammar and usage (1996):

Cannot be taught effectively in discrete, unconnected units;

Cannot be taught effectively in massive doses;

Cannot be taught divorced from student writing;

Cannot be taught effectively if students see no real need for it and if

teachers cannot persuade them to see a need” (p.12).

William Murdick (1996), in an article in that same journal, written before No Child Left

Behind, acknowledges that (and whether or not the situation has changed in the last ten years or

so is worth investigation) the majority of teachers he encounters utilize a more traditional

approach to grammar. He argues that teachers, especially less experienced teachers, fall back on

a traditional approach because of its oversimplification and because traditional grammar “seems

to be roughly accurate within the limits of what it tries to describe” (p. 38). This statement is

then followed by a lengthy discussion of the deficiencies of a traditional approach, showing why

children struggle with it. He further states that it is important for teachers to understand that

“consciously formulated grammatical “rules,” developed by linguists, are not the same thing as

either the process by which sentences are formed in the mind or the basis for that process” (p.

40).

If Murdick is correct, and traditional grammar is a fallback, even if the teachers

themselves do not have a true command of that grammar, then doesn‟t that raise the stakes for a

pragmatic approach to grammar instruction?


Perhaps this need is represented in the decision of Lucy Ferriss, a professor at Trinity

College, who has bucked current trends by building a class around diagramming sentences, and

claims to have created her class at the passionate requests of students who felt there was

something missing in their language arts education (Landecker, 2009). This feel-good piece of

fluff gives little information about the merit of Ferriss‟ class, especially as it might relate to

transformative grammar and Ferriss‟ utilization Eugene R. Montoux‟s “Diagramming Step-by-

Step: 155 Steps to Diagramming Excellence.”

Ferriss herself offers some peek into her instructional philosophy in an informal interview

given to a website constructed and run by Elizabeth Obrien, an young English teacher who

champions a return to a more traditional type of grammar instruction which employs

diagramming sentences to help students understand grammar function. In the interview, Ferriss

proclaimed that “9 of 10 adults who learned the art (of sentence diagramming) when they were

young, remember loving it; those who hadn‟t still thought it was valuable; and younger people

felt they‟d been cheated out of something” (O‟Brien, 2009).

Although both the O‟Brien webpage and the Landecker article focus on Dr. Ferriss‟ use

of diagramming sentences, they both miss the main point, that Ferriss isn‟t returning to

traditional grammar, but rather making an effort to bridge the gap between the two camps. When

Ferriss is asked by O‟Brien, “Is there anything I haven‟t asked you that you think is important or

worth talking about?” Ferriss raises the issue of the goal of her teaching: “One of the purposes of

the class is to move beyond diagramming to syntax and its importance in good writing. To that

end, once they‟ve learned the skill, students take sentences of their own—from academic papers

or other essays—that they or the teacher has found to be awkward. They diagnose the problem

by attempting to diagram the sentence, and then find a way to restructure the sentence by


analyzing the problems in the diagram. If diagramming bears no relation to good writing or

better comprehension of writing, it is no more than a parlor game. The problem with old-

fashioned diagramming instruction, I suspect, is that teachers focused on students‟ understanding

the tool, not on understanding the uses to which it could be put” (2009).

Ferriss‟s approach to teaching grammar is worthy in that it first identifies a tool (in her

case that tool is a prescriptive grammar) and frames that tool for application (and hopefully in

her classroom, that means starting with prescriptive grammar and moving to a descriptive

grammar). Without first knowing what tools are at one‟s disposal, how can anyone be expected

to understand their usage? One can‟t teach a language, after all, without first teaching

pronunciation and some vocabulary. Ronnie D. Carter (1997), writing in the NASSP Bulletin, to

bemoan the lack of development in the instruction of writing instruction over the last twenty

years, despite the numerous initiatives and mandates, might support Ferriss‟ approach of

identifying a tool and then showing students that tool‟s usage. After his laundry list of woes in

writing instruction, Carter identifies several instruction strategies that he believes work,

including the process approach, a form of interactive learning that deals with different learning

styles and group work and group discussion.. He also adds the use of “grammar and punctuation

instruction that deals with authentic materials (not abstract linguistics)…and practice, practice,

and more practice” (p. 60). In this last sentence we see the marriage of prescriptive and

descriptive grammar, the idea, as Ferriss might say, of identifying a tool and more importantly,

its usage, but that usage within context (2009).

What makes Carter‟s essay significant is that it not only reinforces the efforts of

instructors such as Ferriss, but that it is published in the National Association of Secondary


School Principals (NASSP), with an intended audience of those who help set local school policy,

helping oversee how curriculum is executed.

Another instructor who has tried to turn the debate between the traditionalists and those

that support a transformational grammar into a pragmatic approach to instruction is Peter

Kratzke. In his essay the Four Basic Principles of Grammar (2003), he puts forward an approach

to grammar that is beautiful in its simplicity. He suggests that an instruction can be crafted

around four basic sequential principles. The fact that he focuses on the concept of principles over

rules is important. Kratzke defines principles as “statements of substantive objectives” and rules

as “directives that, when implemented, confirm originating principles” (p 107). While Kratzke‟s

view of these principles is somewhat grandiose, as can be seen in the quote: “syntactical

relationships among virtually every word, phrase, and clause can be explained given four key

principles” (p. 108). Such a statement might open the author‟s approach to skepticism, but the

principles he proposes are based on beliefs of function, and is in line with the works of Hillocks

and Kolln.

The first of these principles, according to Kratzke (2003), is that grammar instruction

should be founded on “a functional sense of the eight parts of speech” (p. 108). The point of

function is key. Rhetoric, after all, isn‟t about identifying verb from noun, but rather about being

able to understand the relation between the two and then to apply the result as a functional part of

a whole. According to Kratzke, “this orientation is as important to composition as arithmetic to

factoring polynomials” (p. 108).

The second principle would be the integrity of the clause. The integrity of the clause, as

described in this principle, refers to the basic meaning of the simple subject and the simple verb

predicate. This is bedrock. It‟s this principle that first pushed me toward choosing grammar


instruction as a subject for inquiry. Having fought with students for too long over being able to

chop a sentence apart, I began to see that the clause should be the starting point, the clause as

basic expression of meaning. By having a student re-read a paragraph and by challenging the

statements within the paragraph by asking “You said this, but what did you mean?” I saw

students begin to realize their statements as part of an utterance.

The third principle, which Kratzke says begins the roll of syntax is that of ellipsis. The

use of ellipsis is to offer meaning in an sentence or utterance by leaving out content. Confusing

as this may sound, Kratzke (2003) offers the following example:

“For instance, to the comment, „I only received the letters yesterday,‟ the wise

guy responds „you didn‟t open them?‟ Although this misplaced modifier doesn‟t impede

spoken communication, it does reveal how, because English has relatively little of the

grammatical glue enjoyed by other languages, we must pay close attention to the role of

syntax in written communication. Conversely, word order often means no words at all,

sentence elements dropped because we speak so quickly or wish to eliminate

redundancy” (p. 110).

The fourth principle is that of restriction (“to what extent words, phrases, and clauses

modify other elements” (Kratzke, 2003, p. 111). This principle focuses on the boundaries of

grammar, with punctuation helping to set those boundaries.

It is important to keep in mind the sequential nature of these principles.

For the English teacher, Kratzke‟s approach would be something immediate to build

upon, four principles to stick on the inside of a lesson planner as a ready reference when

considering how to approach writing instruction (2003). Kratzke‟s ideas aren‟t unique, and

although there is only one cited work in the essay that relates directly to the instruction of


writing, looking back on some of the concepts cited here, it is easy to see behind Kratzke the

ideas that frame his thinking, whether or not he was aware of those concepts directly or

indirectly. His use of the idea of restriction can be rephrased Bhaktin‟s (1986) concepts

regarding grammar in primary utterances, that the grammar fits the context and changes for

meaning. The effective omission of words in an utterance is done so as to accent meaning and for

clarification purposes, not for laziness (Kratzke). And Bhaktin would surely agree that the use of

that restriction would depend on the intended audience.

Unfortunately not all attempts to find a peace between the prescriptive and descriptive

camps of writing instruction are successful. But even the failures are worthy of some attention, if

only for their ability to ignite new ideas for pedagogy. One such example is Diana Purser‟s

(1996) model for grammar. Believing that grammar and usage instruction tends to be “linear

(hierarchical), harsh (dealing with right v. wrong), left-brained, and usually teacher-oriented,”

and the writing process to be “recursive (cyclical), gentle (supportive), right-brained and more

student-oriented” (p. 108), she describes an approach, which in her words, melds the two. Her

model utilizes Gardner‟s concept of the multiple intelligences (1983). The activities she outlines

are weighted toward the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Her belief is that these activities will

allow the student to draw upon background information and make a connection with the present.

Although she doesn‟t identify it as such, the process would fit into the emergent theory of

grammar, an idea posited by Paul Hopper (1987), in which it is believed that grammar emerges

as it is used. In other words, grammar develops according to experience.

Purser‟s (1996) approach begins with a graphic organizer aimed at visual learners (Figure

1). The organizer then becomes a jigsaw which is broken up and given to the students. This,

according to Purser, is for the kinesthetic learners. The idea behind breaking the puzzle into


pieces and eventually reuniting the pieces through various learning activities, is to show the

relationship between the different elements of grammar and also to allow students to learn

through chunking. Chunking is the cognitive strategy for recoding information into smaller bits

of information for easier accessibility and recall.

Purser‟s (1996)approach is convoluted, but the ideas of using the multiple intelligences

and chunking constitute a legitimate strategy for classroom pedagogy. What is most worrisome

about Purser‟s ideas is that that she doesn‟t actually describe writing activities. Furthermore, her

emphasis on grammar, although implemented through fun and engaging activity, focuses on

grammar out of application.

If her approach is so flawed, then why should we give her attention? Perhaps because we

can break apart her model and find within it salvageable elements for usage. Even from flawed

models come ideas for pedagogy.

What if we kept the idea of a graphic organizer, and even utilize the jig-saw approach

Purser (1996) outlines, but add another component, perhaps taking a piece of the jig-saw and

using it as the centerpiece of a writing activity, helping the student link the concept to the

application. This way we have the identification of the tool displayed by the puzzle, and through

the writing activities, perhaps done in small groups with peer review to check how the writing

connects to the puzzle, we also have the students understanding usage of the tool. In this

instance, we maintain the concepts of kinesthetic, aural, and visual learning, as well as the

concept of chunking, and add a functional approach reinforced through peer role-modeling and

influence.

Whether we sit down as teachers and begin with Ferriss‟ ideas of diagramming sentences,

or reduce the teaching of grammar to four simple principles (Landecker, 2009; O‟Brien, 2009),


or whether we wrap ourselves in a fuzzy understanding of Gardner‟s different types of learners

(1983), we can‟t begin to truly be effective in a pragmatic approach without first having some

internal core belief regarding the nature of grammar and what form of grammar instruction

works best for our students. Ultimately as teachers, what we do, regardless of the academic

battles being waged, is experimentation, taking bits and pieces from different workshops and

readings and mixing and matching according to what might seem to be called for at that time.

Even the grizzled veteran who might wearily rely on grammar drills without much thought to the

theories behind them, will still step back and think of other strategies to help the student who

struggles or learns differently. If not for the student‟s sake, then perhaps for his or her own job

security, or reputation, or self-esteem. Even burned-out teachers are human.

The previously mentioned work of Hillock and Calkins, as well as the Book Club

curriculum offered by Raphael, Pardo, and Highfield (2002), give us a practical, hands on

approach. But what about inquiry? Should that be left in the hands of the influential academics

who indirectly whisper in the ears of current and future policy makers? Of course not. Otherwise,

the divide mentioned at the beginning of this paper is allowed to fester and teacher effectiveness

is crippled.

Ellis (1998) explains the gap between the world of the academic and the world of the

rank-and-file by looking at the differences in knowledge that the two camps draw upon.

“Teachers require and seek to develop practical knowledge, researchers endeavor to advance

technical knowledge” (p. 41). Practical knowledge is intuitive, resulting from need and prior

experience. Technical knowledge is quantifiable; in Ellis‟ words: “…it exists in a declarative

form that has been codified. For these reasons it can be examined analytically and disputed

systematically.”(p. 41)


Given this perspective, one can see that the policy of NCLB, created by research oriented

policy makers, weighs instruction using scales calibrated according to technical knowledge,

mostly because such knowledge is empirical in nature and therefore readily yields quantifiable

information (whether or not that information is a true representation of a successful educational

model). One flaw here is that much of the research in theoretically motivated writing instruction

is that its conclusions are disputable, as evidenced by the lively academic battle over prescriptive

vs. descriptive grammar.

Another issue is how such policy influences actual pedagogy and teacher morale. Ellis

(1998) acknowledges that the danger of relying strictly on research for making pedagogical

decisions is that it “places researchers at the top of a social hierarchy, giving them the

responsibility for making decisions, and teachers at the bottom, consigned to implementing

research-driven curricula” (p. 54). Without addressing the practical knowledge utilized by the

teacher, the policy driven by the technical knowledge of the researcher creates a tension between

the two that creates an atmosphere where the former feels disenfranchised.

New teachers, coming into the profession, enthusiastic over the flavor of the year being

offered through professional development, are sometimes disappointed when techniques being

offered are not supported by the local district due to budgetary concerns or politics. Models

change, and while the teacher continues to struggle to adapt and find working models that are

concrete and applicable in the here and now, the debate over grammar instruction continues,

especially as education is subjected to governmental mandates.

Until the educational environment becomes conducive to teacher and student forming a

learning partnership, until the emphasis is redirected from a standards-based approach to

curriculum, where process is secondary to quantification, teachers will continue to find their


access to new developments in educational inquiry limited. Imagine if instead of the professional

development opportunities contractually wedged into the school year, teachers instead could

avail themselves of pre-established time set aside to explore at their own pace the professional

journals and publications that track current trends in inquiry and strive to stimulate new ideas.

An administration could easily put into place a mechanism that could guide and monitor such

inquiry to assure teacher accountability in such activity. Imagine how much more effective this

sort of learning would be compared to the presentations that are squeezed into half and full day

presentations. How many teachers actually retain information offered at these activities, and

what percent of content is retained?

Without this level of personal inquiry on behalf of the teacher, encouraged by the

administration, a pragmatic approach that truly deals with the challenge of writing instruction in

today‟s society, where the issues of inclusion and diversification further complicate writing

instruction, teachers fall back on the safe rather than the effective and walk the road to frustration

and burn-out.

References

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University of Texas Press.

Carter, R. D. (1997). Obstacles to the effective teaching of writing: A 20-year

follow up. Nassp Bulletin, 81(591), 57-61.


Christenbury, L. (1996). The great debate (again): Teaching grammar and usage.

The English Journal, 85(7), 11-12.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (1993). The power of literacy: A genre approach to

teaching writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Ellis, R. (1998). Teaching and research: Options in grammar teaching. TESOL

Quarterly, 32(1), 39-69.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence. New

York: Basic.

Hartwell, P. (1985). Grammar, grammars, and the teaching of grammar. College

English, 47(2), 105-127

Hillocks, G. (1986). Research on written composition: New directions for

teaching [Brochure]. Urbana, Il.: National Institute of Education.

Hopper, P. (1987). Emergent grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Conference (BLS),

13: 139-157.

Kolln, M. (1981). Closing the Books on alchemy. College Composition and

Communication, 32(2), 139-151.

Kolln, M. (1985). A comment on “grammar, grammars, and the teaching of

grammar”. College English, 47(8), 874-977.

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Figure Caption

Figure 1. Purser‟s (1996) graphic organizer. From Grammar in a nutshell. The

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Stewart Sternberg-Rewrite-Grammar Instruction--In Search of a Pragmatic Approach

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