meaning guides grammar and teaching

[Lynn Stafford-Yilmaz]

Betty says that one aspect of grammar teaching is “giving students the concept that language consists of predictable patterns that make what we say, read, hear, and write intelligible” (Betty’s comments on this site about David Mulroy’s book, The War Against Grammar).

I completely agree with Betty, and her statement leads me to a related consideration that I often face in my teaching of grammar and writing at Bellevue Community College (Washington State).

Many of my students get so focused on the correctness of their grammar, that I think they begin to overlook the importance of their intended meaning. When we work one-on-one, students often ask me about their sentence, “Is it correct?” They are, I believe, focused on the grammar of their sentence, as if this grammar somehow exists outside of the sentence's meaning.
Apparently, they don’t always see how these two are intertwined.

In these cases, I always respond to students by first asking, “Is the information that you wrote, what you wanted to write? Is it accurate according to what you know or believe?” Students often look at me in surprise when I ask this question, as if I’ve brought up an irrelevant point.

Then, I engage the student in a discussion about what they’ve written in order to make sure that it matches what they wanted to say. That is, we focus on their meaning, and on my understanding of their meaning based on what they’ve written.

This is often a slow process. However, it is always worth the effort. During this process, I ask students about their sentence, and I guess at their meaning, asking whether I’ve understood or not. If not, I try to give students options of ways to rewrite the sentence so that it matches their meaning more clearly. In this way, they are often able to “correct” their own grammar. In other words, they are able to align their words with their intended meaning. It seems to me that they enjoy this process, and sometimes, we even get a good laugh about the potential misunderstandings that are possible based on how a sentence is written.

In this way, I always seek to help students focus first on their meaning, and second on grammar as a tool for expressing their meaning.

I wonder if other teachers have similar experiences or observations to my own? And if so, what methods do they use to help students see this all-important connection between one’s intended meaning and one’s grammar?

Lynn S-Y