Hey! Grammar!

The Atlantic has an article on teaching grammar!

And it's a good one.

Did you ever have to diagram sentences or memorize the parts of speech?

If you answered yes and you are fondly remembering those exercises, well, you're kind of weird.

It's okay, I like those exercises too. But as a writing teacher, I've become keenly aware of how much most people don't like those exercises.

Still, people insist that students should slog through them. "No pain, no gain, right?"

Funny thing, the brain isn't a muscle. We actually decided that a while ago. That's why we stopped asking college students to recite their lessons in Latin. That's right, schools used to have students recite in Latin and Ancient Greek precisely because it was so hard to do. They thought the work would make the brain stronger.

Except, that's not how it works. Not for learning the sciences and not for learning grammar.

The article by Michelle Navarre Cleary works to dispel the myth that students need to "learn grammar" before they can learn to write.

[One] well-regarded study followed three groups of students from 9th to 11th grade where one group had traditional rule-bound lessons, a second received an alternative approach to grammar instruction, and a third received no grammar lessons at all, just more literature and creative writing. The result: No significant differences among the three groups—except that both grammar groups emerged with a strong antipathy to English.

There is a real cost to ignoring such findings. In my work with adults who dropped out of school before earning a college degree, I have found over and over again that they over-edit themselves from the moment they sit down to write.

 I'm so pleased to see this article.

This is the information that writing teachers want to see in popular media outlets like The Atlantic.

Many of us know about what Cleary has presented, but we have trouble convincing people outside of our area that the old methods don't have an impact.

I often want to tell people, "Just because you hated learning grammar doesn't mean my students have to hate it too."