Category Archives: • Grammar in the Writing Context

• Myth #2 about Teaching ESL Grammar: Teaching Grammar Doesn’t Improve Students’ Writing.

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Cover Myths shot

I’ve always been perplexed by this claim by some teachers: Teaching grammar doesn’t improve students’ writing.  A problem with it is that it doesn’t define what is meant by “teaching grammar” nor what is meant by “improve students’ writing.”  It seems to imply that they have looked at every conceivable way that grammar could be taught and worked with, and they found that none were effective.

When I questioned their basis for this belief, I was often directed to some studies in the 1970s and 80s. Typically, these studies started with students writing a paper. Then for a period of time, they worked on diagramming sentences, doing sentence-combination exercises, identifying parts of speech and completing some grammar worksheets. After this, they wrote another paper, and surprise, surprise, the writing in their essays hadn’t improved. From this, they concluded: teaching grammar doesn’t improve students’ writing.

On top of that, one researcher claimed that his students’ writing got worse, and somehow, he even knew that it was because the students had become obsessed “with avoiding error at all costs, to the point where fluency, content, and reasoning lost their importance.” *

Some teachers have pointed to this “research” as support for their justification to not work with grammar in their writing courses. Their philosophy tends to be: students improve their writing by writing.

How Working with Grammar Can Improve Students Writing

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• Myth 1 About Teaching Grammar: Focusing on Grammar will Stifle Students’ Ability to Write.

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Cover Myths 1 revised

A former ESL Writing student of mine was quite surprised by her English Comp class.  She told me that her instructor isn’t concerned about the grammar in his students’ essays. At the same time, a common complaint by academic instructors heard around the campus at that college was that their (American) students had many grammar mistakes in their academic papers. In fact, the grammar skills of the students coming out of the English Comp classes were so weak that the Business Department decided to offer business writing courses that would deal with these grammar issues.

I decided to pursue this further by interviewing several English Comp instructors. In response to my question, “Why don’t you work with grammar in your courses,” I heard this, “Focusing on grammar will stifle students’ ability to write.”  In a college newspaper, an instructor explained, “An exaggerated focus on grammar stops the development of engaging and complex ideas.”

That sounds like a straw man argument. Yes, if an instructor assigns a paper and tells students that they would write one draft and that their grade would be based on the quality of grammar in their paper, then students might overly focus on that rather than their ideas.  But what professional instructor would do that?

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• Common Grammar Mistake: “She hopes him to get a haircut.”

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Questions

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

I recently put my students in small groups, gave them a list of sentences and asked them to identify which were incorrect and to correct those. Several of the groups either thought that this sentence was correct or believed that there was something wrong with it but couldn’t correct it:

  • She doubted him to go to the party on Friday.

Surprisingly, these were advanced-level students who were stymied by this. In fact, when they asked me to explain the problem, some of them asked me, “Are you sure it’s wrong? It sounds right to me.” I imagine that the reason for their confusion is because they are familiar with the pattern of Subject + Verb + Object:

Actually, this is not a difficult grammar structure for students to learn, even lower level students. Basically, I tell them that after certain verbs, they should write “that” + subject + verb.  (Technically, the word “that” is optional, but to keep it simple, I tell them to write “that.”)  Although the formal term of this structure is “noun clauses,” I don’t expect them to remember that. If they can remember which verbs are followed by this structure, they’ll be fine.

These are some examples of this kind of mistake:

Mistake: She doubted him to go to the party on Friday.
Correct: She doubted that he would go to the party on Friday.

Mistake: His parents worry their kids to get into an accident.
Correct: His parents worry that their kids will get into an accident.

Avoiding unnecessarily complicated explanations (and handout exercises)

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• Mistake: He SURPRISED to see it snowing. (Adjectives that look like verbs.)

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Questions

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

When students see an –ed at the end of a word, they tend to automatically assume it’s a verb, and this assumption can lead them to grammar mistakes.

(* mistakes—These sentences are missing a verb.)
*Kai embarrassed during his speech.
* Rumi interested in horses.

To help students in the most efficient manner, I will sometimes paint with a broad brush.  So I simply tell my students that these words are adjectives: surprised, embarrassed, confused, interested and shocked. They need a verb with them.

(correct): Kai was (v) embarrassed (adj) during his speech.

Avoiding unnecessarily complicated information

It’s true that those words can be can be used as verbs, for example:
– It embarrassed (v)  Kai that he forgot some of his speech.

But in all my years of teaching writing, I rarely see students use them that way. They almost always use them as adjectives, so I don’t waste their time/mental energy talking to them about using these as verbs. Instead, I just generalize and tell them that they are adjectives.

Four-step exercises to teach these to students (Handout included.)

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