My goal as a teacher of writing skills is to ensure that what my students mean to say or write is what they actually say or write. Consider the misguided baker who loudly bragged:
"Try our hot pies. You'll never get better."
RULES? WHAT RULES?
Those of you who are younger than, say, thirty, missed out on one of the great gifts of modern education--grammar! Someone, somewhere, decided that schools should no longer teach grammar, but should, instead, allow children to "pick up" the rules from their exposure to different types of language. Since children learn to speak their language without formal training, why not let them learn the rules in the same way?
We do, in fact, learn the rules of grammar by being exposed to language. After all, we use grammar every time we speak or write. But what we can't learn, unless we are taught it, is the terminology to describe the structure of our language.
Why is it so important to learn the correct terminology? Well, for one thing, it's very difficult to know how to fix something in your writing when you don't recognise the terms used to explain either the problem or the solution. The best way to understand anything is to get to know it--and the best way to do that is to break it down into smaller pieces and to tackle each one in turn. Then, when you put those pieces back together again you'll find out how the whole system works. Simple--but not always easy.
VALUABLE LESSONS
The prospect of sitting through a class learning about the rules of language and grammatical structure is about as appetizing to most students as biting into one of those questionable pies produced by that misguided baker mentioned above. Trust me, though, these lessons are a very important step toward improving your writing skills.
Try to keep this advice in mind when I--or other teachers--announce that the topic of today's lesson is "grammatical structure" or "parts of speech." What you're about to learn may not rock your world, but it will certainly help make you a better writer.
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