Empowering Grammar:
To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach. – Hindu Proverb
Margaret Seelie
Teaching Community, FA2014
Los Medanos College
Table of Contents
Explanation of Project …3–5
Purpose & Focus
Question & Explanation
Method of Investigation …6–16
Explanation
Assessment
Amendment (when necessary)
Results …16–20
Student Work
Revisit Question
Explanation of Project
I often wonder weather we, as instructors, are teaching for ourselves or for the students. We spend a lot of time, energy, and money to access sophisticated language, nuanced grammar rules, and complicated theories; thus perhaps it is only natural to feel compelled to wield this highfalutin language and ideas. But why? Who is this language benefitting, the students, or the instructors? For instance, is it more beneficial to the students to rattle off a grammatical term, like verbal, followed by a definition? Instructing them to memorize it, find it in some generic sentence, and regurgitate it on the exam. Educational theorist, Paulo Freire, would be appalled at such a model, probably citing his banking education theory that criticizes this antiquated way of teaching.
Instead, move beyond depositing and regurgitation information, and empower the students to imbibe grammar in their own unique way. Give them tools and space to make each rule their own. This may seem impossible, but in my Engl-083: Sentence Skills for College Writing course, I taught verbals.
I admit that I deposited some knowledge around the topic, but then I simply asked, “Who can give me an example of this in your everyday life?”
The class fell silent for two minutes, then one student mumbled, “The Hulk.”
I asked him to speak up and he said, “The Red Hulk, you know, the bad version of the Hulk. He acts like the Hulk, kinda looks like the Hulk, but he isn’t the Hulk. Like how verbals look and act like verbs, but they’re different.”
I believe this is what empowered grammar looks like in a composition classroom. In my project for the teaching community this semester, I intend to reflect on similar moments, and try to analyze more of these empowered moments.
My question is how can instructors empower grammar through language, lesson design, and a student-generated curriculum?
Purpose & Focus
Teaching grammar can feel overwhelming for both the students and the instructor. Imagine finding a scaffolding process that could be applied to all grammar lessons, from technical grammar to usage. This consistency would relieve some of that pressure by setting clear and consistent expectations for each lesson. The ultimate hope is that once this scaffolding is removed, each student has imbibed the grammar lessons, made them their own, and can go out and empower others with their unique understanding of writing and grammar.
Question & Explanation
I am proposing that steps I. through V. can be completed within each unit in the semester, which means this process would be done approximately sixteen times within one semester (every week). Starting with the first week of instruction using Chapter 1 Parts of Speech in At a Glance: Sentences by Lee Brandon.
I suspect this process will be too time consuming to complete every week, but upon investigation, it may work.
Can all grammar lessons be taught with the following scaffolding that would ensure each student imbibes, owns, and retains each lesson?
Can steps I. through V. be taught every week within an eight week accelerated grammar course (Engl-083)? Or is this too time consuming? Does this cycle work for both technical grammar lessons and usage lessons?
How does Professor Kate Brubeck shift the instructional lens from the teacher to the students?
How is empowerment created in the grammar classroom?
Grammar Scaffolding (to be completed each unit / week)
0. Increase Student Confidence by Writing What They Know
I. Lesson / Learning Stage
A. Lecture
B. Exercises
C. Pass / No Pass Assessment
D. All or Nothing Assignments
II. Life Experience Lesson
III. Contextualize & Synthesize with Surrounding Grammar Landscape: One Lesson to Rule them all
IV. Traditional Assessment
Method of Investigation
To access the Method of Investigation, it is imperative that I share my background in grammar instruction. I have been studying grammar pedagogy since 2012. In the fall semester of 2012, I had the educational opportunity to assist grammarian, Kate Brubeck, in instructing her English 20: The Fundamentals of Grammar course at Mills College. The following semester, spring 2013, I was the teaching assistant for Tarah Demant at Mills College for the same course. I include my work with Professor Demant as background, but our work will not be discussed in this report. One year after completing my second TA opportunity, I was hired at Los Medanos College to teach an accelerated hybrid grammar course called English 083 / EMT.
Kate Brubeck is a Visiting Professor at Mills College who teaches The Fundamentals of Grammar, Grammar and Style for Writers, and Teaching English as a Second Language. She is an expert grammarian who has been honing her knowledge of language as an ESL instructor and college professor for over a decade. According to the Mills College website,
Kate Brubeck has taught and coordinated programs in language diversity and acquisition at Mills and throughout the Bay Area. She is interested in language—in the rules that bind and the ways we break those bonds; in the junctions and schisms, in both academic and creative writing, between voice and culture, between our private and public senses of self.
Her pedagogical approach is one of empowerment. She opens each semester with her syllabus for the course and a “stupid questions coupons.” Brubeck is a master at shifting the instructional lens from the teacher to the students. This shift slowly empowers the students with a genuine sense of authority on the subject of grammar. We will examine more closely how she creates this empowered classroom in the Methods of Investigation sections of this report.
As Brubeck’s teaching assistant, I attended her classes and met with each student for thirty-minute sessions weekly. In those meetings and in class I came to understand how her pedagogical approaches either facilitated or stifled student learning. I also occasionally taught grammar lessons where I aimed to create my own empowered classroom.
I, Margaret Seelie, taught English 083: Sentence Skills for College Writers / EMT Course in the spring 2014 semester at Los Medanos College. This unique grammar course was taught as part of the Career Advancement Academy, which is a program designed to “target low income young adults, 18 to 30 years old, who face academic and personal barriers to employment and training.” I was hired to teach sentence level writing to Emergency Medical Technicians in training. Instead of they typical sixteen-week semester, our grammar course was taught in eight weeks.
In the following section I will dissect my proposed grammar scaffolding mentioned above by explaining what each section means, discussing ways in which Professor Brubeck and myself manifest these approaches, and assess what worked and didn’t work within each section. Samples of assignments and student work will appear where necessary.
Let us start by considering one instructor approach that did not work. As instructors, we know that courses, lessons, and exams are designed with an end goal in mind; for instance, when teaching prepositions we approach the lesson planning from a place of hoping all students can identify what a preposition is and how to find it in a piece of writing. It is important to strike a balance between instructor goals and students’ goals when designing these structures and assignments. My instructor set irrelevant goals in her grammar classroom in grade school. All I remember about my grade school English teacher was her turtleneck covered in turtles, and how much I disliked the word participle. This instructor was only interested in meeting the bare requirements or the course; thus she aimed to deposit the grammar rules into her students so that they could regurgitate them when tested. In my opinion, this is exactly how to not teach grammar.
Grammar is a tricky topic within writing because it is like the math of language. Unlike learning how to write a well-developed paragraph or organizing ones ideas, grammar can technically be taught as a series of rules. But, these rules are useless if they cannot be wielded within a sentence, paragraph, essay, or report.
Grammar Scaffolding
0. Increase Student Confidence by Writing What They Know
This step in the scaffolding is listed as “0” because this is a part of the learning process that is invisible to the students, but it is imperative to their success in all courses, but especially in the grammar classroom.
Increase Student Confidence
When I entered Kate Brubeck’s grammar course as her teaching assistant in 2012, it became immediately apparent that she was interested in teaching to the whole student. The course goals are listed on her syllabus as,
You will leave this class with clearer academic writing, increased confidence, improved proofreading skills, greater awareness of your common areas of strength and weakness in academic writing, and a frame of reference within which to think about the role of academic language in your life and its relevance to any other forms of language you may use.
After working with students for over ten years, Kate doesn’t seem to question weather confidence is the key to unlocking grammar for her students, she knows it is. I have not read many syllabi that discuss “your life” and “increased confidence,” but after working with her student for a semester, these became the pivotal points that lead to their success. It was strange, even the few students who came into her course with an error of confidence seemed to benefit from this unintimidating zeitgeist that was built into the course.
Her confidence scaffolding begins on the first day when she asks her students to write a simple on-page paper about their names. I worked with students on these pieces of writing in our tutorials and found that they were able to access the grammar elements much more easily when working with such a familiar topic as their name.
Write What You Know
On the first day of my English 083: Sentence Skills for College Writing, I asked each student to take out a sheet of paper and write one sentence about themselves. I proceeded with the lesson on what a sentence is (subject and verb), then we defined these two elements. At first, most of the students rolled their eyes as they repeated the age-old definition of a noun, verb, and subject. I imagine they thought, great here we go again with some boring grammar class. But then, I asked them to take out their sentences. I told them to find the nouns and verbs. Then I asked them to determine whether they had written a complete sentence or not.
Some students blurted out, “I don’t even have a subject, do I, Professor Seelie?”
At that moment I encouraged them to turn to the person next to them to confirm whether they did in fact have a complete sentence or not.
Assessment
This was the moment when the grammar lesson moved from depositing to imbibing. This was a particularly significant moment because it was the first time these seemingly isolated rules began to lean out of the boundaries of the classroom and into their lives. I would not change this structure, and I continued to use it throughout the semester.
I. Lesson / Learning Stage: Deposit, but not too much
A. Lecture
Explanation
Educational theorist, Paulo Freire, is responsible for coming up with the banking education theory. To paraphrase his theory, he describes the students as reciprocals for information and the instructor as the one responsible for filling these vessels with valuable knowledge. Freire sets up the banking theory not as a model for teaching, but as an antiquated method of instruction that does not yield lasting results. He found that students who experienced the banking method of education forgot much of what they were taught within weeks, months, or the years that followed. I am proof that the banking theory does not work; I studied his work as part of a graduate course called Theories and Strategies of Teaching Writing. I was tasked with reading Freire’s theories and then teaching his work to the class. I created a lesson plan and a one-page summary of his work. Reflecting back upon that semester, I realize that I read many pedagogical theorists in that class, but I only taught one theorist’s work, and as you can see his work is what I recall today, three years later. Teaching is truly the way to master a subject and make it your own.
The banking process is vital within a grammar classroom, but it must be done with care and intention to retain confidence in the students and to create empowerment. To maintain a confident ecosystem within each student, I treat the depositing stage in the learning process as a time that is open to mistakes. Students are assessed based on completion rather than content via a grading scale that is pass / no pass, rather than a numeric assessment.
The depositing of knowledge begins with the lecture or lesson in the classroom. I feel that it is important to tap into synapses that are already formed when introducing new materials to the brain, which is why I begin with a very short writing assignment to acquaint the students with the forthcoming materials. Next, I move into the lecture for the day that is based on the unit in At a Glance: Sentences by Lee Brandon. Within these lectures I aim to give the students a reduced form of the lesson by giving the notes on the board. I also seek out all opportunities to let the students make the lesson personal by asking for examples or tricks to remember the grammar rule at hand.