Week 11, Post 4: Grammar Lesson Plan, Parts 1 and 2

Blog 4: Do either an idea draft, a brainstorm, or an outline for part 1 and 2 of the lesson plan portfolio (It can be very sketchy at this point; the goal here is start figuring out your ideas.) Bring 4 hand copies on Thursday to share with your group:
What's your philosophy about grammar editing and proofreading? How can teachers help students become better grammar editors? 
What's your philosophy about development of academic language?  How can teachers help students produce more complex sentences, more complex writing and more appropriate academic language?

• How students develop academic discourse, including factors that facilitate/hinder the development.
• The role of students’ oral language, home dialect, and home language in the process.

For your teaching approach, be sure to discuss:

• How you will foster academic language development in your classroom through assignments and activities.
• How academic language will build over the course of the semester.

ONE 

* To develop academic discourse, students need to develop as readers and writers and imitators of "the conversation."  Factors that facilitate this growth are intensive readings of academic discourse, writing in it, journaling about the process, peer discussions about it and teacher-student discussions about the student's process.

* It has been shown that home dialect that differs greatly from MAE and SE can present a greater challenge to the student attempting to assume the role of academic writer with SE.  Non-standard dialect students have no less potential for learning SE than students of standard dialect.  However, learning to code-switch or style-switch is vital.  Many linguists hold that allowing students to write freely in the home dialect is the best way to "warm up" such students to the notion of academic writing.

* Students will be given numerous opportunities to practice writing in various styles and genres, from home dialect (if they choose) to formal, from personal narrative to descriptive essay, to argumentative essay, to a formal research paper complete with appropriate citations.

 

• How students develop grammar and editing competence, including factors that facilitate/hinder the development.
• The role of students’ oral language, home dialect, and home language in the process.
• Your attitudes toward error (both based on both descriptive and prescriptive rules).

For your teaching approach, be sure to discuss:

• How you will foster grammar and editing competence in your classroom through assignments and activities.
• How these activities will build over the semester.
• Your process for “error treatment” in student papers (including assessment and grading)
• How you will deal with errors that come from home dialect and home language.

TWO 

* It's been shown that content is always of greater importance than form, and that a writer's ideas are more critical than his grammar and punctuation.  It's also been illustrated that students, while they may show interest in error analysis, almost never improve from this method, nor from explicit grammar instruction -- unless it's conveyed in meaningful context, for instance, a mini-lesson in the context of trying to understand their errors.  These mini-lessons are useful as are student grammar logs, where students keep notes of their errors.  Also peer counseling is a great low-stakes way both to practice spotting errors and to accept criticism.  Explicit full-class grammar lessons should be rare, limited to recurring issues across the majority of student papers.  In addition, sentence building and sentence template exercises show great promise for assisting students in assuming the academic voice.

* As written language shadows oral language, non-standard dialect students may struggle to adapt their writing to SE.  It's critical for teachers to be aware of this, to be patient, and, where feasible, spend extra time with non-standard students one-on-one.

* Errors can create great errors for students personally, contributing to an inferiority complex, which can give way to self-fulfilling prophesies of incapacity in writing classes.  For this reason, error analysis, is often best left for later drafts of essays, especially in developmental classes.  For mainstream FYE courses or sophomore courses, however, where student self-esteem may be more robust, it can be useful for students to learn means of incorporating grammar and punctuation as additional tools to strengthen their rhetoric, as Laura Micicche and John Dawkins have shown.

* I believe it's important to discuss prescriptive and descriptive grammar approaches with students.  This angle places grammar in context in terms of history and function and de-mystifies an otherwise intimidating theme.  Personally, unless we're discussing an SE context, I generally prefer my grammar on the descriptive side.