Gladys Campbell

OWP July, 2001

Grammar for Teachers: Perspectives and Definitions

By Constance Weaver

National Council of Teachers of English

1979

Ugh! My eyes at times just scanned the lines, page after page of grammatical references. I was lost. I hung in there and it actually got a little better, even a lot better. I believe it was primarily the first chapter or two. My experience seemed to match the content of the book. I could not follow the thread of technical terminology, but they emphasized later that teaching grammar did not work for that very reason. Grammar was best learned in the editing process after a paper was written.

I had initially chosen this book, because I wanted some helpful hints, mnemonic devices, explanations, anything, to add to my Spanish lessons. It did help me. I was able to see where to focus my attention with the writing lessons I assigned. Students should feel safe to write. Even at the rewrite stage, one should only focus on a couple of errors. I do this already. It was natural for me, as I did not want to overwhelm the student with a sea of marks. I also clarified some of the terminology floating in my head: transitive and intransitive verbs, dependent and independent clauses.

Sentence combining was mentioned as one of the few, if not the only, prewriting activity that actually produced improvement. Fortunately, this section came the day after our lesson in class with Bill Strong. For that reason, I not only understood it better, but also had more of a connection with the information I was reading. This book was written twenty years ago. I am surprised more English teachers don't use this activity. In our small class only a few teachers were familiar with sentence combining.

All in all, a tedious little book that would be useful as a reference and a source of classroom activities. There are better choices.