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First Year Writing Program
Teaching Resources: Grammer
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Grammar Top Ten
Top Ten Ways to Teach Grammar and Style
Or, how to teach style and grammar when you’re not exactlysure why that sentence sounds funny
10. Before they turn in those final drafts, have students proofread their own papers by reading the paper backwards, sentence by sentence. Encourage them to mark up in ink or pencil this clean copy.
9. Before they turn in those final drafts, have students exchange papers and proofread a peer’s paper, underlining (not correcting) sentences or parts of sentences that cause them to stumble as readers. Then asks students to swap back, review the underlined parts, and edit or choose not to edit as necessary, discussing changes with their peer as needed.
8. Pull grammatically correct, yet stylistically flawed sentences from student drafts of a particular assignment and print them on an overhead transparency or write them on the board. Ask students individually or in groups to re-write each sentence two or three times, then write their revised sentences on the transparency or board. Have students discuss the rhetorical choices they made in making this correct sentence better, or more effective.
7. Do the previous exercise but give students more direction such as editing the sentence for word choice, wordiness, clarity, etc.
6. When commenting on drafts of an assignment, rather than correcting a student’s paper, underline specific places where you notice particular patterns of sentence-level issues. Try to name these issues in the left margin of your underline, such as “comma splice,” “run-on,” or “subject-verb agreement.” Provide chapters or page numbers in the Pocket Handbook that the student should consult. Also, encourage the student to meet with you individually to discuss these issues.
5. Have students track these grammar and style issues in an error log. Encourage students to anticipate these issues in their writing and revise before turning in a draft.
4. In class, have students look at a draft of the current assignment and choose a body paragraph. Ask students to count how many words are in each sentence. Ask them to track how they begin sentences—subject/verb, transition word or phrase, introductory phrase, etc. Also, ask them to analyze the kinds of sentences that are in each paragraph such as simple, compound, complex, etc. (you will probably need to explain these). Ask students to revise the paragraph by varying sentence length and construction, to play around with different ways of organizing the paragraph and its idea(s).
3. Demonstrate the pros and cons of grammar and spellchecking programs.
2. Bring in a piece of writing in which you have done some serious editing, such as a conference proposal. Show students the changes you made and the rhetorical reasons behind them.
1. Disclose to students what your hot-button sentence-level issues are—what issues do you look for in a draft and why arethese important to you?
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