The Call to Grammar : Grammar in Composition Instruction
Lore: An E-journal for Teachers of Writing
Digressions, Fall 2003 Issue
Deadline:~ August 1, 2003

Lore: An E-journal for Teachers of Writing, is an online forum edited by TAs,
adjuncts, assistant professors, and others charged with the teaching of
first-year composition, and it is published by Bedford/St. Martin's Press.~
It can be found at [ http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/lore/
]http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/lore/.~

For the Fall 2003 issue, we are looking for teachers willing to contribute
their thoughts on grammar instruction in college composition. Composition
instructors often find themselves besieged by freshmen students who invoke
“grammar” as a catch-all term for all and any difficulties they have had with
writing. And students are not the only ones demanding that we attend to
grammar. A recent Chronicle article reported that an ACT survey indicated that
college educators are also concerned with grammatical propriety. “While the
college instructors ranked ‘grammar and usage’ as a student's most important
writing skill, high-school teachers ranked this skill the least important,
behind sentence structure, writing-strategy organization, punctuation, and
style.”

How do you rank grammatical instruction? Given the pressures of time and
necessities of the revision process, how do you deal with grammar in your
classroom? Do you feel institutional pressure to concentrate on grammar
instruction? Or do you feel isolated in your allegiance to grammar
correctness? How do you reconcile the dictates of grammatical purity with the
messiness of revision? Do you prioritize grammar, and if so, how? If you
bracket it, do you do so with trepidation? What kind of understanding of
grammar and its importance do you want to impart to the students that you
teach? What do you tell a student who comes to you, shrugs at a sentence,
looks at you plaintively and says, “I know, it’s my grammar?”

Please write a 1000-1500 word response to the topic of how you address the call
to grammar. If you or someone you know is interested in writing a
response to this section, email Eva Bednarowicz, Staff Editor for Lore, at [
mailto:tkazan_at_elmhurst.edu ]bednarow_at_humber.ca by August 15.~ Along with your
submission, please include a statement of your experience teaching composition
and current position.~ If space is no longer available, we will definitely
keep you in mind for future issues, topics, and sections.

Lore needs to know what you have to say, so join us!

Eva K. Bednarowicz, Ph.D.
Writing Centre Technologist
Humber Lakeshore , Toronto, Ontario
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Received on Wed Jun 25 2003 - 23:08:24 EDT