Tools, Not Rules: Teaching Grammar in the Writing Classroom

If you want to start an argument in a teachers' lounge, bring up the topic of how best to teach grammar. There is a wide spectrum of opinion. Traditionalists claim that we must explicitly teach grammar. Students drill the basics and diagram sentences. Sometimes their study and drills take the place of writing, but these teachers claim that good writing demands good grammar. At the opposite end of the spectrum are teachers who claim that the best way to learn grammar is to write, thereby being forced to use grammar in writing and editing. They reason that students will learn grammar in the context of actually using it, without all the drills and worksheets. They trust the writing process to instill an appreciation for grammar, instead of actually teaching it. Teachers on the write-to-learn-grammar side claim that students who are only taught grammar rules might pass tests, but since they didn't learn in the context of writing, they typically don't apply the rules when they write. Grammar traditionalists say students in writing classes never learn grammar at all, because it is not explicitly taught. In Tools, Not Rules, authors Tommy Thomason and Geoff Ward take the middle-ground position that grammar should be taught as part of the writing process. Tommy Thomason is a veteran journalist and university journalism professor at TCU. Geoff Ward is a well-known Australian professor and associate dean from James Cook University in Townsville. Both have written several books and work extensively with American teachers. Publisher's website: http: //www.eloquentbooks.com/ ToolsNotRules-TeachingGrammarInTheWritingClassroom.html

Tommy H. Thomason has worked as a flight test engineer, manager, and executive in the aerospace industry for almost 40 years, including two years as a flight test engineer on the F-4 Phantom. He has flown more than 3,000 hours in 60 different airplanes, helicopters, and sailplanes.

Geoff Ward was a primary school teacher and deputy principal in New Zealand for nine years and had two years as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Auckland before moving to Australia. He taught graduate programs in Reading Education and Primary language Arts for four years at Adelaide CAE, and then moved to James Cook University in Townsville, where he is a Senior lecturer in the Department of language and Arts Studies in Education. He is the Secretary of the Australian Reading Association, author of Reasons to Read, and has presented papers at many conferences in Australia and overseas. He also likes to work with children as often as he can. As a teacher he enjoyed project work with his classes and he was delighted to undertake a book to extend his own thinking about the topic.