The Glossing Process As A Practical Approach To Grammar Instruction

Source: Johansen, Deborah, and Nancy L. Shaw. “The Glossing Process as a Practical Approach to Grammar Instruction.” The English Journal, vol. 92, no. 3, 2003, pp. 97–100. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/822267.
Summary:
Johansen and Shaw’s article discusses their approach, called the Glossing process, as a way of teaching grammar. The article opens up with a short story of how Mr. Smith was not satisfied with his son, Sam, not receiving the “essential skills of grammar instruction” during his time in the Yarmouth School System (97). Johansen and Shaw devotes the first page to outlining the grammar dilemma. First, they question the reader whether grammar should be taught isolated or through writing or if it should be taught at all to students. Nowadays, students’ have easy

For teachers, this allows them to evaluate the student’s work. The nice part of the Glossing process is that grammar instruction is individualized. The teacher can assist students individually while others fill out their “Glossing Sheets.” This process also allows the teacher, depending on the grade, to steer the process based on what they are teaching their students. For instance, Johansen and Shaw explain how a freshman teacher may highlight fragments and run-ons in their students’ papers while a senior teacher might highlight parallelism (98). However, to keep students from feeling overwhelmed by the amount of grammar rules, a list of twenty most difficult grammar rules for students in 9th to 12th grade was created, English Conventions Rule Sheet. Based upon this list, the teachers would go through the student’s compositions and highlight the rules that were violated. Johansen and Shaw conclude the article with the results of their research which consisted of students understanding the Glossing process, a better understanding of the grammar rules, or finding the process tedious yet