Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction

Grammar doesn't have to be a stick-in-the-mud subject-stodgy, traditional, and rule bound. Open the pages of Ed Schuster's book and you'll find an energetic, untraditional, creative means of helping students become independent thinkers and more effective writers.

Schuster acknowledges that there ARE bedrock rules of English syntax that should be honored, and offers lesson plans to show how these rules can be taught effectively, in ways that empower students and enable them to write with confidence, authority, and precision. He also examines the history of the other rules, the "myth rules" that are the legacy of traditional school grammar-taught for hundreds of years but infrequently followed outside of the classroom, as shown in numerous examples of the best contemporary writing. He devotes his book to better ways of teaching grammar, usage, writing, and punctuation by

• teaching the unbreakable rules in such a way that they stay taught
• debunking the "myth rules" that are commonly taught in class, but infrequently followed in practice
• trusting students' own intuitive sense of grammaticality
• appealing to the evidence of the work of his own and others' students and to the best contemporary writing.

"Only look and connect" is the guiding principle of Schuster's book. Look at the results of your teaching; look at the facts of language; look at practices of our best writers, both student and professional; look to see which rules really rule. Then connect what you discover to your teaching practice.

Edgar H. Schuster has taught English in secondary schools and in colleges for more than forty years. He has spoken frequently at national conferences, held various positions with NCTE, and is a member of the Writing Assessment Advisory Committee for the state of Pennsylvania. Author of several textbooks and articles, he has been a Master Teacher at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University and is a recipient of a Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. Click here (member login required) for Ed's article "Beyond Grammar: The Richness of English Language, or the Zero-Tolerance Approach to Rigid Rules" in the March, 2011, edition of English Journal. Click here to read Ed's article, "The Core Standards for Writing: Another Failure of Imagination?", in February 3, 2010 edition of Education Week.