On Grammar Education
May. 18th, 2007 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gnomiIn the midst of a conversation with a coworker this morning (on whether a good book exists from which one can learn punctuation rules), I had the opportunity to reflect on the fact that, for me, English grammar rules (and, thus, proper punctuation) is one of those gut-level instincts. I can look at a sentence and, for the most part, tell you what's wrong with it and how to fix it. And in the course of this conversation, I expressed just why that is true.
I had an English teacher in high school, Sharon Steiff, who seemed to have as a personal goal that we would not leave her classroom at the end of the year without a fundamental understanding of English grammar. I was lucky enough to have her for three years (grades 7, 9, and 12). Miss Steiff (as I always think of her, even though she insisted after I was no longer her student that I call her Sharon) died of leukemia in January 2004, but I'd like to think that her memory survives through the lessons that she taught that I implement on a daily basis. She taught us literature, as well, of course. We read plenty of novels and plays, discussed their importance and fundamental meanings. But we always came back to the grammar, to how the author used language.
I didn't even realize how unusual this focus on teaching grammar was until I started talking to my friends in college who would bring me papers to edit. I'd flag things that I thought should be written differently, sentences I felt should be restructured, and when I tried to explain why, my friends hadn't necessarily encountered the concepts before (such as restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses).
I've come to understand that most US schools aren't teaching grammar to the level that used to be taught. I'm not honestly sure why this path away from grammar education has been followed. Folks who learned English somewhere other than the US, did you get a strong grammar education? And folks who learned English in the US, do you feel that your grammar education was as rigorous as you'd like?
I had an English teacher in high school, Sharon Steiff, who seemed to have as a personal goal that we would not leave her classroom at the end of the year without a fundamental understanding of English grammar. I was lucky enough to have her for three years (grades 7, 9, and 12). Miss Steiff (as I always think of her, even though she insisted after I was no longer her student that I call her Sharon) died of leukemia in January 2004, but I'd like to think that her memory survives through the lessons that she taught that I implement on a daily basis. She taught us literature, as well, of course. We read plenty of novels and plays, discussed their importance and fundamental meanings. But we always came back to the grammar, to how the author used language.
I didn't even realize how unusual this focus on teaching grammar was until I started talking to my friends in college who would bring me papers to edit. I'd flag things that I thought should be written differently, sentences I felt should be restructured, and when I tried to explain why, my friends hadn't necessarily encountered the concepts before (such as restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses).
I've come to understand that most US schools aren't teaching grammar to the level that used to be taught. I'm not honestly sure why this path away from grammar education has been followed. Folks who learned English somewhere other than the US, did you get a strong grammar education? And folks who learned English in the US, do you feel that your grammar education was as rigorous as you'd like?
