My Grammar, My Experience With Grammar: My Experience

Grammar: My Experience “Unfortunately, my experience with grammar is very minimal” is what I said at the very beginning of this class. And although I did learn a lot in this class, I also learned that I had a lot of previous knowledge that I wasn’t even aware that I had. The problem with the background knowledge that I have is that I have a hard time putting a name to the things that I already know. In grade school I was taught very little grammar. I can think all the way back to Elementary school and I have vivid memories of being taught how to read and write. In fact, the “Letter People” were my idols for a solid three years. However, I have almost no recollection of being taught much grammar at all. I recall some lessons about capitalization

I think this could be due to two different reasons. The first being my lack of a grammatical background. Obviously, you can’t be expected to implement concepts that have never been taught to you. The other reason is that I have a really hard time editing my own work. I say to my students ALL the time, “PLEASE re-read your work. I know you don’t want to but I promise it’s going to help.” However, I am guilty as charged! Most of the time I just want to get the paper done and turn it in. I spend very little time going over my own work or reading it out loud. For some reason I have a mental block against going back to my own work and revising. I remember a specific comment that a professor left on one of my papers a year or two ago where he said that editing is the most important part of the paper. He explained that some of my errors were distracting from my writing and all of the points that I want to make. That was really an eye opening moment for me. I realized that I was sounding less intelligent because of my grammar (any somewhat laziness) mistakes. In the past year I have really tried to pay attention to my grammar and check my work more carefully but it is an ongoing

I dread it. I find myself planning out the week/month and forcing myself to include grammar. To be very honest, I usually pick grammar topics that I am comfortable to teach. The format that I was teaching grammar in was to do grammar one week and then vocabulary the next. However, truthfully, the grammar started to go by the wayside by the end of the marking period. When it was a grammar week, I would teach one mini lesson on Monday for about fifteen minutes. Then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday students would do small practice sheets. On Friday the students would take a small quiz (usually worth about ten points). In hindsight I now know that this kind of practice was pretty much pointless. The students retained very little information from quiz to quiz and I very rarely asked them to incorporate the new grammar that they learned in any kind of writing. By the middle of last year I knew I was doing something wrong. I started asking my colleagues for ideas and definitely knew that I wanted to incorporate grammar not only on a more regular basis but making it a key part of my writing