the book,” or “he couldn’t put it down.” The concept of being drawn into a book is
novel for most 11-year-olds today, which means that the student not only was at-
tempting to express an idea that doesn’t come easily to him but also that he was
trying to express something that he probably had never heard anyone ever articu-
late before. In this context, the error seems, if not predictable, less than fatal.
The Issue Is Usage, Not Grammar. What this example illustrates is
that the most serious errors students make in their writing involve conven-
tions ofusage,not grammar. For this reason alone, it seems that we need to
shift the focus of our instruction.
As the term suggests,usageis related to how we use language. If grammar is
about how words fit together in meaningful ways, usage is about thewords we
chooseto communicate meaning. On one level, these choices differentiate for-
mal from informal language. On another—and this is important—they differ-
entiate Standard from nonstandard English. Too often, our language arts
classes confuse usage and grammar, even though they are distinct.
Standard English, Nonstandard English, and Formal Standard English.
Every person speaks a dialect, a variation of the core language that usually is as-
sociated with geographic location and/or socioeconomic status. In the United
States, we have West Coast dialects, Southern dialects, Midwestern dialects, East
Coast dialects, and numerous variations within each region.Standard English
may be thought of as a dialect that includes certain features of all dialects but that
is nevertheless distinct from each. More important, it is identified as the spoken
language of educated persons and the written language of journalism.
Nonstandard English,like its counterpart, also includes certain features of
all dialects. It exists primarily as speech, although it frequently appears in stu-
dent compositions when writers import conversational features into their work.
They may do so for several reasons, but chief among them is failure to recog-
nize or accept the need to use Standard English in certain situations and an in-
ability to control the conventions of speaking and the conventions of writing.
Formal Standard English, on the other hand, describes spoken language in cer-
tain professional settings and nonjournalistic writing, particularly the writing
of government, business, law, and education.
With regard to writing, both Standard and formal Standard English have
developed a set of conventions associated with spelling, punctuation, and
capitalization that operate in conjunction with the words we choose in the ap-
plication of appropriate usage: Sentences begin with capital letters, words
have an established spelling, and so on. Historically, an important goal of lan-
guage arts instruction has been to teach students the conventions of Standard
and formal Standard English.
TEACHING GRAMMAR 31