modern grammars short shrift and focus just on terminology. In addition, pro-
spective teachers must know how to teach grammar effectively, and this infor-
mation is not going to be found in a textbook for high school students or in the
associated teacher’s manual, particularly if the textbook is based on the drill
and exercise method, as most are.
Another approach is to follow the model of one’s own grammar instruction,
but this also can be problematic. As I’ve noted elsewhere (Williams, 2003a), “A
commonplace in education is that most teachers teach the way they themselves
were taught” (p. 42). Because the college model may be too intense and too fast
for middle or high schoolers, there’s a strong urge to draw on one’s memories
of, say, his or her 10th-grade English class and its lessons on sentence structure.
For most people, these memories will be dim—and essentially useless.
When we consider grammar pedagogy in our schools, one fact should strike
us as both bizarre and unacceptable: Grammar instruction begins in third grade
and continues unabated through high school, and yet our students graduate
knowing very little about grammar. Think about this for a moment. Is there any
other single subject in the curriculum that students study as long? After nine
years of instruction, shouldn’t our students beexpertsin grammar?
There are several reasons for such woeful results. The idea that grammar is
just too complicated is not one of them. We explore some of these reasons
shortly, but at this point one should begin to suspect that perhaps the grammar
instruction we provide year after year is not very effective and that a new ap-
proach is warranted (see Williams, 2003b).
The content of instruction also presents a challenge. What exactly do we
teach under the heading of “grammar”? Everyone may agree that grammar in-
cludes the parts of speech, but what about punctuation and spelling? We have
different conventions that govern both. Moreover, punctuation is often viewed
as a matter of writing style, and spelling is not related to sentence structure at
all. Are they really part of grammar? Deciding the content of grammar instruc-
tion is not a simple matter, and the new teacher’s task is further complicated by
the observation that, as Patterson (2001) indicated, all facets of grammar in-
struction are usually dictated by the district, by the school principal, or by se-
nior teachers without any consideration of research, theory, or outcomes. Of
course, the number of experienced teachers who faithfully adhere to district
guidelines is notoriously small, but for beginners the thought of modifying es-
tablished practice can be daunting.
The students themselves present another challenge. Even the best teacher
using a sound approach must face the resistance students have to grammar. Be-
cause many teachers make studying grammar an extremely painful experi-
ence—and because it only takes one such experience to get students to shut
18 CHAPTER 2