Friday, February 10, 2012
To Teach or Not to Teach
In one of my classes we have been talking about the prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar issue. We have been reading articles and studies that have found that teaching prescriptive grammar can actually be harmful. It may negatively affect a student's reading and writing ability. Although I do not know if these studies are true, it is discouraging to not know what to teach. Should I even correct grammatical mistakes or should I focus only on the writing process?
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Wow harmful? That's crazy. We have been discussing it in a few of my classes as well. In my group in traditional grammar Thursday night we were discussing our thoughts on the subject and I said that I believe many teachers put way TOO much emphasis on prescriptive grammar. When I was in HS my teachers graded more based on grammar than the actual content and meaning of my papers. Then when I got to college my professors are mostly the exact opposite. I definitely think that if students make a grammatical error countless times in their work as teachers it would be more beneficial to only take off points for the error once and just mark all of the other times they made the same mistake rather than taking off points for it each time. I can't even count the number of times I have heard people say "They took off ten points because I kept starting sentences with and" or something of the like. I think we should focus on grammatical mistakes but more so on the writing process.
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