Students’ lack of awareness of basic
grammar rules can seem like bad weather – everybody complains but nobody ever
does anything about it. If you
don’t expect correctness in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you send the
message that those elements don’t matter (or only matter in Language Arts
classes). It is important
that you make clear to your students that these elements are also important in
your field – and that they will be a part of the grade on any written
assignment.
As
teachers, we have a lot on our To Do list, and not enough time in the day. Adding grammar correction to your list
may seem overwhelming. There are
ways to correct grammar that will not take you hours. Here are some ideas on how to address the issue, without
taking up too much time:
·
Focus
your comments on only one or two types of grammatical problems on each written
assignment. Obviously, you
will want to choose areas of concern for most of the students in the
class. If you concentrate on one
or two concepts a month, you might even have time to present quick in-class
lessons.
·
Set
reasonable grammar goals for each student. Address your comments on how well that student meets his or
her goals.
·
Mark all
of the grammatical errors in only one paragraph of any paper. Write a comment indicating that the
errors in this section are typical of those in the entire paper.
·
Circle
errors you see and list at the end of the paper the most typical types of
grammatical errors you found.
It is the student’s responsibility to identify and fix errors.
Writing is a topic that is taught
in Language Arts, but practiced in every subject. If we want our students to become better writers, it is
incredibly important that every teacher addresses grammar. There is a tremendous amount of value
in students seeing their mistakes, and correcting them. If we all work together on this, we
will surely see improvement in our students’ writing scores.
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