What We Talk About When We Talk About Grammar: Integrating Grammar into the Writing Process

Since the mid 1960s, explicit grammar instruction within the composition classroom has been a widely contested subject. This grammar debate and the effects of grammar instruction� or lack thereof� evidenced by various educational systems attempting to answer the questions surrounding grammar instruction and students’ needs, has bubbled upward; composition instruction at the university level faces the daunting task of amending curriculum to incorporate some form of sentence-level grammar instruction. This presentation� an abridged look at the forthcoming English Master’s Thesis “The Importance of Teaching and Contextualizing Grammar in Freshman Composition Instruction”� argues for the necessity of grammar instruction within college composition courses. Formalized instruction in sentence-level� syntactic� fluency has an integral role in developing college students’ ability to effectively communicate ideas and demonstrate writing proficiency. To say that grammar should be formally addressed in the composition classroom is only a part of the overall argument. This presentation addresses the need to integrate grammar instruction into the writing process. Ideally, freshmen composition students should understand grammatical concepts by recognizing how these concepts work within the context of their own writing. It is often difficult to develop strategies that help students integrate grammatical knowledge into their own drafts and demonstrate an overall proficiency in Standard English. Because of this, grammar is often taught in isolation and is far removed from the actual writing process. This presentation proposes a way to develop students’ overall grammatical proficiency with a new model relevant to Central Washington University’s current composition curricula