Abstract
One of the most difficult language skills to teach is writing. It is not so much that it is difficult of itself as that providing sufficient relevant and motivating instruction and practice can be very demanding for any teacher. It is thus always a relief to find a text that offers to provide these for you. Teaching Grammar Through Writing offers just that in the Introduction.
The writer proposes 16 elements (seven parts of speech, six phrases and three clauses) as the keys to good writing. Mastering these will help students from (US) grades 4 to 12 improve their writing. The book then provides ideas and material for learning and practising these 16 elements. The attraction is the simplicity of the formula. After all, as the author says, ‘to subdue the grammar-Grendel … it is best to teach less of it, not more.’
Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with this book. Overall, the book remains a fairly traditional presentation of exercises that ask students to manipulate sentences that are without a context. This is a little surprising as the author writes in the Introduction that ‘it is best to teach grammar in the context of writing, not in isolation’. Furthermore, the focus is almost entirely on creative writing (short stories and poems). The only section on other forms of writing (Appendix A) tends to encourage literary forms in what should be functional texts.
What is missing is the type of approach promoted by Derewianka (1990) where the starting point is the reading and analysis of the type of text the students are preparing to write. This may be followed by the joint production of a similar text by the class, in turn followed by individual students or groups of students producing their own texts. The idea is to contextualize language usage in different types of texts, to provide examples and to scaffold the students’ writing including giving them time to develop content (please refer to the Curriculum Cycle in Derewianka’s book). Giving grammar instruction and practice without such context may leave students wondering about the purpose and possible application of what they are learning, especially when the language samples relate more to folktales than to anything else.
Another problem relates to the intended audience. Is it a handbook for teachers or is it a textbook for students? A lot of the text seems to be directed at students with instructions such as ‘Combine the following sentences by…’ (p. 31), and explanations such as: ‘A sentence is a group of words…’ (p. 62). On the other hand, there are sections which are more obviously directed at the teacher, such as: ‘It is also a good idea for the teacher to join…’ (p. 103). Could it be that this is a teacher’s handbook and that the exercises included in the main sections can be copied and used with the students? This appears not to be the case as Appendix C contains a limited number of ‘Reproducible Masters’ and has a footer that reads ‘Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education. Reprinted with permission’.
Another area of concern is that the instruction and practice actually goes beyond the promised 16 elements. For example, pages 59 to 62 focus entirely on punctuation. This is a perfectly reasonable area to look at but it does extend beyond the originally stated limited focus.
Despite these problems, the book contains a major contribution. The use of poems to practice certain elements as suggested in the book appears to have great potential and is the most important feature of the book. The author gives many practical examples. The poems can be short allowing students to write complete texts while still focusing on particular language. They can have fixed formats so that students are forced to use targeted language forms while still being allowed to be creative.
If this feature was taken and made the focus of a book that had a clear audience, we would have a useful support for a section of the writing curriculum. Until then, the book may have rather limited application.