I was talking with a Language Arts teacher today about observing a future lesson. The conversation eventually turned to the importance of “teaching grammar” to our students. Now as a former Language Arts teacher myself I have thought about this quite extensively over the past 5 or so years. I began teaching in 1997 and there were quite a few teachers doing things in the classroom that I remember doing when I was a kid in school. Things like diagramming sentences with different colored chalk are what I remember in Language Arts classes and there were more than a few teachers doing the same thing in 1997. Not to say that there is not a time and a place for this type of activity, because there is. The evidence found in the billions of text messages and e-mails is enough to make any English teacher’s stomach turn.
Students need to learn grammar! Yes, I agree, but how?
The analogy I used with the teacher this morning was this: I consider myself to be pretty proficient with web creation and things of that nature. I can create an aesthetically pleasing website in under 20 minutes. Does this mean that I understand all of the code that goes along with it? Nope, it doesn’t. In fact if you put the code page in front of me I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking. What does that mean? I understand the concepts behind web design and I can apply those concepts to create something, but I am leaving the lines of programming to those more proficient than I. We can say the same thing about grammar, cant we? in the sentence, “The cow ran quickly to the barn” I know what the word “quickly” does in that sentence. How did the cow run? The cow ran quickly. Do I need to memorize the rule.
This is a very elementary example and the fact of the matter is that you do know the rule for adverbs in order to use and place an adverb effectively. The point is that you don’t have to spend time learning like that.
Is that OK to do? Can students get away with that type of attitude when it comes to things like grammar?
The argument that I hear most often is that attention to detail is just not valued anymore. I would tend to agree with this statement and include this in my response. I can sit for hours wondering if the picture for my blog or website should be in the center or the top or should the text wrap around it or should it be cropped. Do I need to know the code behind it though? Is that being cavalier about detail?
No answer or side of the fence that I am taking here, just thinking out loud.
