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A common concern of teachers in the English-speaking world is that students at all levels often show very little knowledge of grammar. As traditionally taught (if taught at all), grammar is a dry, prescriptive subject and one that students often dislike and therefore do not learn well. In this edited collection, distinguished teachers offer a vibrant alternative by sharing the ways in which they make grammar and writing interesting and exciting to their students. These contributors show how to bring language alive in the classroom.
Concrete, animated articles explain how students (elementary through college) can discover language structure in contemporary classrooms. Examples of imaginative learning techniques include doing fieldwork to explore the language of home, neighborhood, and workplace. Freed from scowling linguistic admonitions, students develop a careful eye in exploring the patterns of our living language in its myriad manifestations, from speaking, writing, reading literature, and finally, in our language reference works.
List of contents
Introduction by Rebecca S. Wheeler
Beyond Grammar of the Traditional KindGrammar, Tradition and the Living Language by David B. Umbach
The Persistence of Traditional Grammar by Edwin Battistella
Prestige English Is not a Natural Language by Nicholas Sobin
New Ways in the ClassroomDialect Awareness Programs in the School and Community by Walt Wolfram
Linguistics Is for Kids by Jeannine M. Donna
Looking at Life Through Language by Patricia MacGregor-Mendoza
In Front of Our Eyes: Undergraduates Reflecting on Language Change by Anca Nemoianu
Grammar Teaching Is Dead--NOT! by Richard Hudson
Language and WritingWriting Standard English IS Acquiring a Second Language by Susan K. Heck
Reading, Writing and Linguistics: Principles from the Little Red Schoolhouse by Gail Brandel Viechnicki
Copious Reasoning: The Student Writer as an Astute Observer of Language by Todd Oakley
Writing Well in an Unknown Language: Linguistics and Composition in an English Department by Victor Raskin
Language and LiteratureWaterships All the Way Down: Using Science Fiction to Teach Linguistics by Suzette Haden Elgin
In Fiction, Whose Speech, Whose Vision? by Elizabeth Closs Traugott
The Poetics of Everyday Conversation by Deborah Tannen
On Dictionaries and GrammarsWho Wrote Your Dictionary?: Demystifying the Contents and Construction of Dictionaries by Sylvia Shaw
Online Resources for Grammar Teaching and Learning: The Internet Grammar of English by Bas Aarts, Gerald Nelson, and Justin Buckley
Index
About the author
REBECCA S. WHEELER teaches writing, grammar, and linguistics in the English Department at Christopher Newport University in Virginia.
