Imagine taking a language arts final and pulling an absolute blank. This test could be the difference between passing and failing this year, but every lesson taught has escaped memory. Scanning the test, a few unfamiliar words stand out. Adverb, subordinating conjunction, singular pronoun, what?! Palms sweating and heart racing, panic begins to take over. These terms were not covered in language arts class! A failing grade would be detrimental to grades and future plans. It counts for the majority of a language arts grade! All of this stress could have been prevented if grammar had been taken more seriously, but grammar can still be implemented. This is a wake-up call. Many students today struggle with finals, and they are not making this tedious testing period any easier. Yes, many study for hours, but are they studying the basics? Are they literate? Do they have a working knowledge of grammar: the foundation of English? For many, the answers to these questions are no. The answers should always be yes. Grammar is the most important component in language arts curriculum, because knowledge of grammar improves skills imperative for academic success.
Comprehension holds prevalence among all students. Comprehension can be defined as the action or capability of understanding something. Every day, someone uses (or should use) accurate grammar, as the importance of such a tool tends to be unfaltering. For example, in order to compose any ilk of an academic piece, one must completely understand the language that must be used to write such a piece. Scientific conclusions and lab reports specifically use Latin; knowledge of grammar can be applied to other languages and subjects. Therefore, mastery of grammar will accommodate the need for...
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...o be the most salient element of language arts curriculum. Comprehension, analysis, and communication, or major academic skills, go hand in hand. They can be developed through the knowledge and faultless use of grammar. These tools are absolutely crucial for educational success in a school system and beyond. Without the use of grammar, language would be broken, just as without a foundation, a house would be broken. If used harmoniously with creative expression, a significant impact will be made. If proper grammar can be utilized in everyday life, then tests will no longer be nail biters and monsters to stress over, and academic life will be made all the better for it. Unknown by many, but begging to be explored, grammar: the final frontier.
Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking. New York : Little, Brown And Co., 2005. Print.
Children were taught to speak in a proper manner and because they were taught to speak correctly they wrote in a proper way as well. As technology evolved and texting came more profound grammar was becoming a lost art. In Dana Goldstein’s article ,‘Why Kids Can’t Write’, she talks about what teachers are doing about grammar. The teachers are not doing much about the grammar issue in schools.
I do not totally agree, nor do I totally disagree, with the point about grammar that Kyle Wiens’ argues in his article. As an employer, Wiens has the right to make any of his potential employees write a grammar test and deny jobs to those with poor grammar. In my own experience, I notice that people who have poor grammar skills tend to be less meticulous in their work, just as Wiens suggests in the article. Good grammar is virtually paramount for businesses such as the ones owned by Wiens, which are heavily language based. As well, especially in the new millennium, quality workers and employees are becoming increasingly harder to find among the expanding, figurative sea of qualified post-secondary graduates. Thus, I agree with Wiens’ policy of making all of his potential employees write a grammar test. His policy seems like an effective way of determining the best possible people to hire.
Gladwell shows how, using strategies and old tricks can change the way people think. He introduce his third desirable difficulty; when you know that you have nothing to lose, it gives you the freedom to use any type of strategy to achieve your goal. He uses the story of Martin Luther King and his fight against social inequality, to show how to use a few old tricks and the freedom that gives us having nothing to lose, help us in achieve our goals.
Summary My book is Malcolm Gladwell’s book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Mr. Gladwell uses a lot of real life scenarios that are backed up by neurological research. The overall premise of the book is how we make unconscious decisions without being cognizant of why we are doing it. For example, you are at a clothing department store and you walk up and see some sneakers.
My first college English class was ENC 1101 at the State College of Florida. In this course, I learned a vast amount of information about writing, reading, and grammar. When I first walked into ENC 1101 in August, I expected the class to be like any other English class in High School; with rushed busy work and a lot of useless tests and quizzes. However, throughout each week of the semester, Professor Knutsen’s class made me beg to differ. This class was not like any other high school English class. In this class I actually learned important information and did not do work just to complete it. This class had a few assignments here and there, enough to maintain, in order to learn proper information. I learned a lot in this class because I was not rushed to
“More than half of public school students in New York City failed their English exams,” (Medina). There are so many students that are continuously failing these exams and being held back from the next grade level or from graduating high school. These exams are doing more harm than good since students are failing to actually learn information. The students are so worried about passing the exams that they just try to re...
Good Grammar in the work place is very important. Without good grammar the work place wouldn’t be as repeatable as they want to be. Grammar is important in the work place because the employees need to sound as educated and intelligent as they can. Kyle Weins states that having good grammar shows intelligence. Having good grammar, according to Kyle Weins, shows that people can be organized in grammar and in tasks unrelated to grammar. Because of the internet, the grammar rules are changing. Correct grammar in the work place is important because if you work in a job that is like Kyle Weins’s company; the employees need to have good grammar because detail is very important to his company (Weins). Proper grammar in the work place shows that the employees are intelligent and recommends respect. Adam states that if you look for correct grammar while listening to other people; it shows that you are listening to the person and are thinking about what you are going to say. Correct grammar in the work place is very important, because it shows intelligence in the employee and will benefit the whole company (Adams).
Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Back Bay Books.
2. At first glance, one can assume that this specific medium of the text used in this discourse community has characteristics of an Engl 20 syllabus. There is a course description, grade breakdown, and other elements common in most syllabi which ca...
Borg, S. (1998). Teachers’ pedagogical systems and grammar teaching: A qualitative study. TESOL Quarterly, 32(1), 9-38.
In this essay I intend to investigate how differently one of the closed word classes, determiners, are approached in a series of pre and post corpus-based English grammar reference books, course books and practice books. And the theme of my investigation is how corpus affects the development of English teaching materials. The grammar reference books I intend to analyze and compare are “A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language” (ACGEL) and “Cambridge Grammar of English” (CGE). The former is an indispensable grammar reference book first published in 1985, which has been widely consulted in researches in relation to English linguistic studies, while the later offers clear explanations of both spoken and written English grammar based on authentic everyday usage.
A large part of an English teacher’s job deals with helping students find their own voices amidst the many teachings of their parents and peers. A student’s voice can be their values, their interests, and their perspectives of the world in which they live. Their voice can be their critical questioning of the many situations they face, whether in a text, the school cafeteria, or a park after school. It is the job of an English teacher to aid in finding this voice through their writing. It is by putting words and thoughts down on paper that a student can sometimes feel comfortable enough to take risks and find their true voices. Although traditional grammar instruction has long been thought to improve this skill, this is no longer the case. Instead, by providing a classroom environment in which students are immersed in classic literature from many genres including poetry, short stories, and novels, students will learn how to harness grammar for their own purposes of finding their voice in their writing.
Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). The role of context in focus on grammar: Teaching Grammar in Second Language Classroom (pp.121-134). New York and London: Routhdge
It is not uncommon to say that grammar instruction plays an important role in language teaching. Regarding the status and importance of grammar teaching, a variety of opinions have been made. Batstone (1994) states that “language without grammar would be chaotic: countless words without the indispensable guidelines for how they can be ordered and modified” (p. 4). More vividly, Wang (2010) makes two similes. She compares grammar to the frame of a house, which is a decisive factor to ensure the solidness of it. Additionally, she regards grammar as a walking stick, whose function is to help and support students to learn English. Thus, the nature of grammar instruction manifests its own significance as it helps students enhance their overall language proficiency by integrating grammar into other aspects of learning, like listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Before entering this class, I thought I was prepared for college English. I had incredibly capable high school English teachers, who taught me detailed mechanics, creative writing style, and of course, the necessity of practicing good grammar. On entering this class, I quickly realized how little I had actually learned in my high school English classes. While most of my high school English essays I wrote were based on literature, the majority of the essays I wrote in this class have been more experiential and centered on real-life issues. I expected to be writing essays on books I read and articles I analyzed, but that was not the case. This class showed me in a variety of ways that things are often very different than they seem originally