Schooling students on grammar
Educators agree emphasis needed
The Courier-Journal
December 9, 2006
By Nancy C. RodriguezEach year she drills her students on nominative case and objective case, plurals and possessives, objects of prepositions, direct and indirect objects, and spelling rules.
"I do it all," said Pfeffer, who teaches eighth-graders and juniors at Beechwood High School in Kenton County.
Pfeffer's focus is something of a novelty in the education world, where grammar drills and sentence diagramming were replaced years ago in many classrooms with a holistic approach that focused on fostering students' creativity and taught grammar through writing and literature.
Teaching grammar "was just very unfashionable," said Pfeffer, who noted that colleagues in other school districts are not allowed to buy grammar books or teach grammar lessons. "… But I just knew how important it was."
Now the education pendulum is swinging back, re-emphasizing grammar to the pleasure of Pfeffer and others.
This new emphasis is being driven largely by a growing concern that students are not learning the grammar and composition skills they need to succeed in college and in the workplace.
In surveys, not quite two-thirds of students said they had studied grammar by the time they took the 2005 SAT college-entrance exam.
The SAT has added an essay section, which includes multiple-choice questions testing students' ability to assemble and dissect sentences.
In Kentucky, where most students take the ACT college-entrance exam, scores on the English section of the test have risen slightly in recent years, but still trail the national average.
State education officials are taking notice, adding a multiple-choice grammar, usage and mechanics test to the writing exams that fifth- and eighth-graders will take next year.
Juniors also will answer grammar questions as part of the ACT exam that the state is requiring for all 11th-graders.
And this fall, eighth-graders and sophomores answered grammar questions on state-mandated college-preparation exams.
Spelling out rules
Technically, schools always were expected to evaluate students' grammar skills on their writing portfolios, but many tended to overlook this aspect because grammar scores were not fully detailed in the final score, said Cherry Boyles, assistant director for the division of curriculum at the state Department of Education.
Now, a scoring method adopted by the state will spell out how well students used grammar on state writing tests.
The state also is specifying to school districts this year the grammar skills all students at each grade level should have, from using an apostrophe to capitalizing proper nouns.
Dottie Willis, the writing specialist for Jefferson County Public Schools, said all the changes will put an emphasis on grammar, mechanics, punctuation and spelling.
"That is still not an excuse to do drill and kill," she said.
This year, the school district distributed a book to writing leaders at each school to help teachers instruct students in grammar through reading and writing.
The district also trains teachers on integrating grammar into their lessons, but Willis said many instructors find that difficult.
"There's always been a concern about grammar and about whether or not kids are getting it," Willis said. "I can tell you as a veteran teacher who has been teaching three decades that back when we did the drill … they still didn't get it and always apply it."
State's expectations
State education officials say they aren't endorsing a return to grammar lessons and drills, but they say grammar needs to be enforced in the editing step of student writing, which often doesn't happen.
"You really should let writers get their thoughts on paper," Boyles said. "Then there is an editing phase before you publish where you go in and clean up your thinking. You make sure that you have spelled words correctly and that your sentences flow well and that you have the appropriate grammar and usage."
State Board of Education member Janna Vice endorses the state's changes.
"If we believe that what gets tested gets taught, then one way to ensure that grammar is taught (is) to test it," said Vice, associate dean for the college of business and technology at Eastern Kentucky University and a corporate communication professor.
Elaine Jarbow, dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Northern Kentucky University, said she sees education majors with a weak grasp on grammar.
"It spills over into sloppy writing and sloppy thinking," said Jarbow, who wonders whether the state should require future English teachers to pass grammar and usage exams before becoming teachers.
Questions arise
Educators still debate what is an appropriate emphasis on grammar.
The National Council of Teachers of English, whose directives shape curriculum decisions nationwide, insists that grammar should not be taught through drilling and rote lessons.
"What we've done here with this whole No Child Left Behind and testing craze, we're forcing kids to learn grammar in terms of correcting broken sentences," said Kyoto Sato, the council's former president. "It's all memorization of rules and convention."
At Beechwood High, Pfeffer's eighth-graders learn grammar through writing, but they also work through their grammar books and complete worksheets that Pfeffer creates.
Pfeffer said both types of instruction are needed to get students to understand grammar.
"If you don't stop and teach it, they just don't get it by osmosis," she said.
Trudy Weiss Craig, whose daughter took Pfeffer's class, approves of the teacher's approach.
"Kentucky has most recently put a lot of emphasis on writing, but you can't be a good writer if you don't know grammar well," she said.
Craig's daughter, Rachel, is now a junior, and she said Pfeffer's lessons have stayed with her.
"Even writing my papers now, I find myself going back to what I learned or the special tricks she taught us in eighth grade," Rachel said.