Are you a new teacher? Are you teaching out of your field of expertise? Are you a parent home schooling your child? Perhaps a parent hoping to improve your child's performance in school? Are you learning English as a second language? Or, are you changing jobs and needing a basic review of language arts? Mastering Grammar addresses the basic information teachers and/or students need to empower them with regards to communication skills. Understanding basic skills is essential for high stakes testing and for maintaining a standard of English. The book offers direct instruction for mastering the SUM of all those errors (syntax, usage, and mechanics) so prevalent in placement tests and in one's writing. Mastering this material will significantly improve language arts skills, but more importantly, such mastery will boost your confidence!

Mastering Grammar

The SUM of All Those Errors: Syntax, Usage, and MechanicsBy Carole Loffredo

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Carole Loffredo
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-8425-7

Chapter One

The SUM of All Those Errors

The part of teaching effective writing (which everyone hates) is addressing all of the mistakes. Developing editing skills is an essential part of good writing and the core of placement tests, but teachers who mark papers to inform students of their errors are now viewed as prehistoric dinosaurs dripping blood (their red pens) as they attack the poor student. An effective teacher is not damaging egos when he/she helps a student understand the reasons for the marks, and that more often than not, the frequency of marks in the paper is the result of the same mistake.

A typical scenario for a grammar lesson is to read the lesson aloud with the class, discuss the examples, assign the lesson, check and grade the lesson with the class, and then move on to the next. The problem is that students can read a rule, such as, "A pronoun agrees with its antecedent in person, number, and gender," and not know what any of those words mean. These same students can do the exercises fairly well because they speak the language rather well. They only miss one or two sentences and are happy with their 80% or 90%. Unfortunately, these missed sentences are not mastered, yet they are the ones on placement tests and represent the errors that occur in the students' writing.

Another typical practice in language arts instruction is to fill time with worksheets on various grammatical problems. This approach is very prevalent with newer teachers because they have been taught that direct instruction in grammar is ineffective, and they themselves have had little training. In this approach the information is haphazard and lacks any sense or connection to writing and becomes the least effective method while reinforcing the belief that grammar instruction is a waste of time.

Peer editing is another popular approach in which students discuss each other's writing to discover and correct errors. Peer editing has its place but is an inefficient method because it does not guarantee coverage of problems. For example, students are tested on appositives, but how many students' writing samples contain them? And sadly, peer editing can become an exercise in the blind leading the blind while the teacher sits at his/her desk. If any of these approaches sound familiar, this is why grammar instruction is failing.

How does one effectively teach all of those errors? By direct instruction and chunking! There is an immense difference in handing out worksheets and covering grammar in a haphazard fashion and doing worksheet practice after direct instruction and chunking. Following direct instruction, group work becomes a scavenger hunt, a game to find the errors, and the students now have mental lists of the "treasures" to acquire and edit.

In order to chunk the information, the teacher has to have mastery of the editing skills, an understanding of the specific errors that occur on placement tests or in students' writing, and a method of delivery. In other words, the teacher must master the SUM of all those errors. The SUM addresses only the editing part of the writing process, not revision, and certainly no other aspects of the product. Yet make no mistake, the lack of that editing skill is what wrecks a paper and costs most students high marks on SAT and ACT placement tests. And, like what I say or not, the reason mastery seems to elude most students is because no one, neither teacher nor student, likes the drill.

I would argue that all teachers should understand their language, and although K-5 teachers would not necessarily directly teach the SUM to their pupils, they should have mastery of the information themselves because they are then aware of internal structures within their students' own language as well as the external structures in the reading material they are encountering. The task of raising scores and developing more mature writing falls on the middle school teachers. Middle school students can and should master this material prior to high school. The system underestimates what the sixth to eighth grader can learn and bores them with repetition of material ineffectively and repeatedly delivered. What this book offers is a method of delivery for mastering editing skills with the purpose of raising test scores and improving the editing aspects of writing with the added bonus of empowerment that results from the confidence of knowing that what one says and writes is "correct."

The acronym SUM is the name of the framework for chunking the editing skills. It also serves as a mnemonic device to recall the steps for editing one's writing. As students embark on the scavenger hunt for all of those errors in a writing selection, theirs or others, they are searching for the SUM: syntax, usage, and mechanics. The term grammar is ambiguous because it conjures up different definitions for students. For some students, grammar means punctuation or mistakes. Others think of that noun "stuff." In order to create an effective method of instruction, teachers must agree on the terminology. Therefore, it is better to avoid the word grammar and use more specific terminology.

S: Syntax means word order in sentence structure. Although understanding sentence structure certainly improves writing by increasing sentence variety, with respect to editing, the focus is only on structural errors including fragments, run-ons, and comma splices. When students understand sentence structure, they are better able to identify these structural errors and are not dependent on some intuitive understanding common in verbally talented students. Understanding syntax also improves the comprehension of the usage and mechanic rules in English that are covered later. The correct use of the expression you and I as opposed to you and me makes perfect sense if the speaker/writer understands the difference between a predicate noun and a direct object. A mechanics rule stating to use a comma in a compound sentence does not make sense if the student does not know what a compound sentence is.

U: Usage technically refers to such problems as when to say less than or fewer. (Less than for quantities like sand; fewer for items one can count like oranges.) However, texts lump many errors under the usage heading, and in this method, these errors are chunked into four categories: pronoun errors, subject-verb agreement errors, verb errors, and modifier errors. Notice how dependent these problems are on syntax! How does a student correct subject-verb agreement if he or she cannot find the subject and verb in a sentence? Teachers argue students acquire good usage by good modeling and practice. Good modeling and practice, over time, accomplish the goal—for good students. Unfortunately, most students, and even very good students, are now practicing, voraciously, as they text in substandard English.

M: Mechanics chunks punctuation and capitalization errors. Most students are overwhelmed by these rules because they view them the same way they do spelling. There seem to be too many variables and exceptions and no end to them. In fact, by the time a child reaches middle school, the number of rules needed for improved scores and reduced errors is a finite, very manageable number. Then, by chunking and connecting these rules to syntax, the underlying sentence structure, real comprehension and mastery become possible.

Higher test...