Teaching Grammar as a Resource for Writers

Teaching Grammar as a
Resource for Writers
Dr. Jan Frodesen
Director, English as a Second Language
Department of Linguistics
UC-Santa Barbara
frodesen@linguistics.ucsb.edu
Outline of presentation
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The role of grammar in teaching composition
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Prevailing attitudes about grammar
Need for new perspectives
What does “grammar as a resource” mean for
student writers?
What’s a teacher to do? Guidelines for helping
students develop academic language proficiency
Sample activities for writing classrooms
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Text analysis activities (noticing, explaining)
Production activities (guided exercises, composing and
revision tasks)
To begin, a thought about
grammar from a writer…
Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
All I know about grammar is its
power.
Joan Didion
The role of grammar in the
teaching of composition
First we will briefly look at:
 Prevailing attitudes about grammar in
the field (L1, L2 composition)
Then we will consider:
 Why new perspectives on grammar are
are needed
Prevailing attitudes about grammar
for writing instruction
“In composition studies, grammar is unquestionably
unfashionable. It is frequently associated with ‘lowskills’ courses that stigmatize and alienate poor
writers while reproducing their status as
disenfranchized. This association emerges naturally
from teaching methods that present grammar as a
fix-it approach to weak writing, rather than, as
Martha Kolln describes it, ‘a rhetorical tool that all
writers should understand and control’.”
Laura Micciche, “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar”
(CCC 2004)
Some supporting evidence…
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“My students have been so beaten
down by emphasis on grammar, I don’t
want to further weaken their confidence
in themselves as writers.”
Spoken by a veteran college writing
instructor
More “dissing” of grammar…
Remarks reported by Terry Santos (2005):
“I’ll never teach grammar in my writing classes:
I don’t want to be accused of malpractice.”
“I’m glad I never learned formal grammar; now
I’ll never be tempted to teach it.”
“Teachers only teach grammar in a writing
class because it’s easy and makes them feel
like they’re doing something.”
Or…

Some may even think of grammar focus in writing as
being about as helpful as the toad in this little poem:
A centipede was happy quite,
until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”
This raised his doubts to such a pitch
He fell distracted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run
(Author unknown, cited by Richard Feynman in
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Perseus Books, 1999)
In sum …
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Grammar instruction, especially at the
sentence level has often been thought
to be:
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Unnecessary
Remedial/stigmatizing
Unrelated to larger concerns of purpose
and audience
Detrimental to students’ composing
processes
However:
As evidenced by discussions in both L1
and L2 composition literature (including
journals for K-12 ), teachers,
researchers and curriculum developers
are advocating new (and improved!)
approaches to grammatical focus other
than traditional grammar.
Why are new perspectives
needed?
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Recent reports such as the intersegmental (CCC,
CSU, UC) document on English Competencies for
Entering Freshmen stress that students need to learn
a range of academic registers and that language
focus should be an important part of the curriculum
in preparing high school students for higher
education and beyond.
Develop in applied linguistics and composition offer
new directions for teaching grammar as central to
many components of writing:
New Perspectives: Centrality of Grammar
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Meaning: Grammar is integral to meaning making
We draw on our language resources to make
choices about expressing meaning.
Text cohesion and coherence: Writers use a
variety of grammatical devices to organize, focus,
emphasize and link ideas.
Stance: Writers draw on various linguistic forms to
engage readers, express attitudes about ideas,
establish an authoritative voice, etc.
New perspectives on academic
writing
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Academic texts:
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Are not decontextualized but differently
contextualized from those contexts familiar
to students
Are complex in a way different from the
complexities of conversational language
Schleppegrell, 2004)
Linguistic vs. cognitive demands
Schleppegrell (2004):
Descriptions of academic writing as
decontextualized, explicit, complex
often interpreted as cognitive issues.
Instead, we need to consider the
linguistic issues: Different language for
different genres/purposes, many of
them unfamilar to our students
Need for explicit language instruction
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Students often given assignments with
expectation that they understand directives
such as “Use a formal academic style,” “Be
clear,” “Put it in your own words,” “Use
appropriate vocabulary”
Need to show student writers how texts are
structured and organized and how language
is used for different purposes and audiences
Issues related to advanced level
multilingual writers
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Their language problems not always easy to diagnose
compared to those of less proficient writers who have
many obvious grammar/syntax/lexical errors
Though some problems similar to L1 developing
writers, others are not: Educational backgrounds and
literacy experiences may be very different
In the case of entering freshmen, often their
academic vocabulary has been acquired receptively
(e.g., for SAT preparation), and they have had few
opportunities to use this language productively
So what does “grammar as a
resource” mean for student writers?

Students develop awareness of
different kinds of grammatical
forms and structures used in
different types of texts.
Different types of grammar for different text
types

The environmental impacts of the wine
industry have been assessed in recent
years. The different stages of the wine
grapes cultivation and production all
contribute to the global impact of the
industry.
From a case study for Environmental
Science and Management
Different types of grammar
'SO YOU'RE THE Mexican who doesn't speak good
Spanish," the Univision Radio producer sneered as
we discussed whether I should appear on his show.
Wow. My "¡Ask a Mexican!" celebrity star is no
brighter than gaffer level, yet rumors and whispers
about my personal life already buzz around town.
From My Sinful Spanish Syntax By Gustavo Arellano
August 28, 2006
Grammar as a resource for students
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Students also develop a rich
repertoire of language options:
Different ways to introduce,
develop, focus and link ideas in
writing and to reference the
ideas of others.
Drawing on language options
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Replacing overuse of logical connectors with lexical links to
create cohesion.
Using relational verbs instead of logical connectors
X results in Y instead of Therefore…
Example:
Therefore, Henry lacked a respect for his father.
Revised: Henry’s belief that his father was weak
resulted in a lack of respect for him.
Grammar as a resource for students

In addition, students learn that
there are different systems of
grammar from which writers
consider their choices.
What are “systems of grammar”?
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Reference system in English
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Personal pronouns: it, they
Demonstrative pronouns and adjectives + NP:
this, this belief
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Definite article the + NP
the beliefs of many writing teachers regarding the
role of grammar in writing
Comparative forms: such, such a + NP
such beliefs; such a response
Systems of grammar
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Modality for expressing probability/possibility
 Modal verbs: can, could, might, may
 Probability verbs: indicate, attest to
 Frequency adverbs: frequently, scarcely
 Probability adverbs: perhaps, maybe
 Determiners: many, most
Grammar as a resource for students
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Students learn, too, how writers make
different choices among grammatical
forms based on communicative
purposes and assumptions about
readers.
Different choices for different purposes
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From student essays:
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Wendell Berry thinks that escaping nature is what
we seek for satisfaction, but how can that be
so?… He also mentions, “Life will become a
permanent holiday.” That is impossible!
Let us not part from nature nor from technology:
instead let us carry them both with us into the
future!
Student essay examples, cont.
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Although technology has caused many
people to lose sight of their own
capabilities, we cannot overlook the
medical advances and research possibilities
that it has allowed us and still allows us.
(Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 59)
Grammar as a resource for students:
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Students learn as well the ways in which
grammar and vocabulary interact
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New approaches to grammar recognize that
grammar and the lexicon are overlapping, not
separate domains and have complex interactions.
Lexical-based grammar assumes that vocabulary
choices affect grammatical choices.
Corpus-based resources offer much insight in this
area (corpus grammars, collocation dictionaries,
concordancers).
Collocations
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Definitions of collocation
‘the company words keep’ (J.R. Firth)
‘the ways words combine in predictable ways’
(Holten & Mikesell, forthcoming)
Collocations
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Here are some examples of collocation (from
Moon, 1997, cited in Holten & Mikesell,
forthcoming)
 Idioms: Don’t count your chickens
 Compounds: collective bargaining
 Phrasal verbs: give up
 Fixed phrases: how do you do
 Prefabricated routines: the fact/point is…
Interaction of grammar and vocabulary
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Lexical choices have grammatical
consequences
Television does not find happiness,
but serves more as a time out.
He criticizes that cars would create more
accidents and deaths in the nation.
Invention and necessities help
develop each other through history.
Student written examples
from Holten & Mikesell (forthcoming)
Grammar as a resource for students
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In addition to all of the previous gains,
students learn that grammar functions
at the larger discourse level, not just
the sentence level, to create focus,
clarity and information flow
Discourse grammar and information flow
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In writing, “flow” may mean to student
writers a nice sound to writing as it’s read,
but that flow is achieved grammatically as
well as lexically by the structuring of
information in sentences, with given (“old,”
“known”) information presented first – the
theme– followed by new information - a
comment or claim about the theme. Linguists
often call this topic-comment structure.
Information flow: Given and new information
From The Hurried Child (para. 3 in handout)
This idea of childhood as a distinct phrase preceding adult life
became inextricably interwoven with the modern concepts of
universal education and the small nuclear family (mother,
father, children – not the extended family of the earlier eras) in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the heyday
of the original Industrial Revolution.
“Given” information or theme summarizes the ideas in the
previous paragraph, so this information is known to the reader.
Note the use of reference word this.
Information flow: Student sample
Consider the information flow of this passage
from a research paper:
[A] sweat lodge is made of long saplings, which
are stuck into the ground and bent inward to
form an igloo-shape. These supports are
covered with blankets. [The] diameter is
about six-feet. In the center is a hole in the
ground. Rocks are heated until they are hot
outside the hut.
Thematic positioning and coherence
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Looking at the themes (sentence
subjects of introductory elements) of a
piece of writing can reveal the extent to
which the text is structured coherently
or whether it seems to shift topics.
Grammar as a resource for students
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Yet another very important area of
grammar in writing is that students
develop effective ways to express
interpersonal relationships: their stance
on ideas and their relationships
(engagement) with their readers.
Expressing stance and engagement
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Over the past decade or so, academic writing has
gradually lost its traditional tag as an objective,
faceless and impersonal form of discourse and come
to be seen as a persuasive endeavor involving
interaction between writers and readers.
This view sees academics as not simply producing
texts that plausibly represent an external reality but
also as using language to acknowledge, construct
and negotiate social relations.
(Hyland, 2005)
Expressing stance in academic writing
Stance: This refers to the interpersonal
relationships that writers have with readers
and their texts.
We take positions in relation to what we are
writing about, and we position ourselves in
relation to others who hold points of view on
the topic. To persuade others, we need to
show competence and to express our views in
a way that is convincing. We do this with
language among other things.
What does grammar have to do with
stance and engagement?
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There are many different ways to express our
evaluations and attitudes in our writing
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We hedge our claims with words like
perhaps, possibly, suggest
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We boost claims with words like of course,
obviously, X shows
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We express attitudes about what we say with
words such as unfortunately, hopefully,
remarkable, agree
Problems multilingual writers
have with expressing stance
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L2 writers rely on a more limited range of markers of doubt and
certainty (e.g., I think, probably, definitely, it is clear that) than
L1 writers
They make strong commitments that are not appropriate for the
claims (e.g., using always or never when a claim needs to be
qualified.)
They use stance markers inappropriately or in ways not
common to academic writing
It is clearly showing that these buyers usually lack confidence.
Probably, they can learn the importance of confidence.
Hyland and Milton (1997)
Hyland and Milton note that little attention is paid to these important
linguistic devices in writers’ handbooks, style guides and most ESL
textbooks.
Grammar as a resource for students
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And finally:
Focus on grammar as a resource means
that students will gain better
understanding of the interrelationships
of the aforementioned areas. Writers
need to draw on a variety of features
that characterize different registers.
Interrelationships: Stance in different
academic disciplines
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Hyland (2005) found striking differences in
how markers of stance and engagement were
used across disciplines.
Example: Appeals to shared knowledge such as “Of
course, we all know…” used frequently by
philosophy, marketing, sociology but not sciences
such as physics or biology.

Many multilingual students, including international
graduate students, need to become more familiar
with the ways in which writers express stance in their
fields in English.
What’s a teacher to do?
Helping students develop proficiency
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Teach grammar not only reactively but proactively
Reactive: Responding to diagnosed errors, responding to
students’ questions and requests for information
Proactive: Anticipating needs, providing instruction and
practice that addresses specific task demands, develops
fluency, provides a range of structures for expressing
stance, making connections, etc.
Helping students develop proficiency
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Use content-based and genre-based
approaches to grammar teaching
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Anticipate and incorporate grammar at
points where students need knowledge/
practice for particular functions or tasks
“Mine” assigned readings for examples of
grammatical structures, lexico-grammatical
relationships that may be helpful
“Mining” texts
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Some examples:
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Frequently used clause patterns that serve
particular functions; e.g., relative clauses used for
definitions
Varied use of verb tenses for different purposes:
Establishing time frames, introducing topics, topic
shifts, providing background information,
expressing writer stance (e.g., conditional tenses
for the latter)
“Mining” texts
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Set or routine phrases (multi-word units)
often used in academic writing for
introducing sources, agreeing, disagreeing,
comparing viewpoints, etc.
Different word forms for key vocabulary –
e.g., civil, uncivil, civility – and the
grammatical forms needed with them
(articles, nouns, etc.)
Helping students develop proficiency
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Encourage students to “Read like a writer”
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Explain how this is different from reading for
content.
Discuss how you yourself developed as a writer
this way.
Model the process as it related to language focus
– take a short text and discuss what you find and
how it can help you in your own writing.
Helping students develop proficiency
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Have students read, discuss and write about
the features of different text types
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Look at textbook pages, newspapers, blogs, email, texts from different disciplines, etc.
Ask students to bring in examples of texts to
discuss in groups.
Have students look at different examples of
student writing.
Provide brief guides or charts for them to
complete to direct the activities – they can be very
simple!
Helping students develop proficiency
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Show students how to use a variety of
resources (paper and online) for composing
and revising
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Dictionaries
Thesauruses (online and paper)
Corpus-based references: Collocation dictionaries,
concordancers
Writing handbooks with useful templates
(e.g., Graf & Berkestein’s I Say, They Say)
Corpus-based resources
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For more information about/examples of
corpus-based resources, please see my
PowerPoint presentation:
Using Corpus-Based References to
Guide Editing and Revision in L2 Writing
http://www.esl.ucsb.edu/people/
frodesen.html
Helping students develop proficiency
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Assign both analysis and production
tasks and show students how to
approach them
Analysis tasks should provide grammatical
explanation where needed (e.g. what
a noun phrase is if students don’t know).
 Students need productive practice – and
lots of it – to acquire academic language
proficiency.
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Need for productive practice
For learners the language is not
real or authentic until they have
learned to realize or authenticate it.
Widdowson, 1991
Cited in Seidelhofer,
Controversies in Applied Linguistics,
Oxford, p. 80
More Sample Text Analysis
Activities
The following offer more suggestions for
types of text analysis: noticing and
explaining grammatical and lexical
features in assigned readings.
Techniques for noticing
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“Noticing” means paying attention to forms and why
they are used and to patterns of language. Noticing
techniques can include asking students to do the
following:
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Highlight words and phrases (e.g., highlight present perfect
verbs to see how they are being used to frame topics).
Put brackets around structures such as clauses and phrases
to see how complex sentences are created.
Create lists of structures identified (e.g., make list of words
that express a writer’s stance about claims)
Text Analysis: Feature Clusters
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Ask students to identify language features
that characterize different text types – see
Biber et al. (2000), Byrd and Reid (1998),
Holten and Marasco (1998) for more
information and examples.
Example: “Engagement” features in “A Law
for Bad Humans”
Students identify imperatives, rhetorical
questions, 1st person for author, 2nd person
you to address readers
Text Analysis: Sentence Variety
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Ask students to speculate on reasons for a writer’s
use of sentences in a text and to react to them.
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Why short sentences? Why long ones?
Why do some sentences start as they do?
Which kinds of sentences (simple, complex) seem to be
dominant? Why?
Pick a particularly long sentence with multiple clauses. Why
did the write use the sentence this way instead of several
shorter ones.
Which sentences do you like? Why?
What kinds of sentences do you use most?
Text Analysis: Lexical Chains
The following task created by Margi Wald uses sample student
writing on Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary and the ICAS
Academic Literacy competencies report.
One of the ways that writers link key ideas in a text is through
lexical chains, repeating words/phrases and using
words/phrases that have similar meanings. Look at the sample
student essay. Focus on the opening sentences of each
paragraph. Scan the previous paragraph to find words the
student echoes in the opening sentences to the next paragraph
by changing the word form. Highlight the words in both
paragraphs. Notice also the strong verbs and abstract nouns the
writer uses and how these verbs and nouns help the writer
create cohesion. The first two are done for you.
Analysis: Lexical chains
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Sentence from par 2:
The assumptions professors make include a
student's ability to think critically, "exhibit curiosity,”
and “ask provocative questions” when they read
(13).
Opening to par 3:
The mistake is professors assume that all students,
even students who have attended low-achieving high
schools and high schools in other countries, will
automatically be able to actively engage with
readings and assignments.
Text Analysis: Identifying complex
noun phrases used for cohesion
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Many types of academic writing employ complex
noun phrases as subjects for cohesion
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Information in previous clauses are reduced to phrases and
nominalizations
The pressure to engage in competitive sports
is one of the most obvious pressures on contemporary
children to grow fast. (From The Hurried Child)
Resulting phrases and nominalizations have high lexical
density (LD= number of lexicalized elements in a clause –
Columbi & Schleppegrell, 2002)
Complex noun phrases for cohesion
This is a noticing task based on The Hurried Child
excerpt.
Some sentences that begin paragraphs have long
noun phrases that summarize previous information.
To see how these structures function as sentence
subjects, for each of the following sentences: 1) Find
the verb; underline it. 2) Find the head noun of the
subject; draw a box around it. 3) Put brackets around
the entire noun phrase that is the subject; include all
the prepositional phrases and other modifiers. You
should be able to replace the entire phrase with it or
they. The first two have been done examples.
Complex noun phrases for cohesion
1. [Today’s |pressures| on middle-class children to grow
up fast] begin in early childhood.
(They begin in early childhood.)
2. [The |trend| toward early academic pressure] was
further supported by the civil rights movement.
(It was supported…)
3. One consequence of all this concern for the early
years was the demise of the “readiness” concept.
4. But the emphasis on early intervention and early
stimulation (even of infants) made the concept of
readiness appear dated and old-fashioned.
More Sample Production
Activities

The following tasks offer examples of
guided production activities focusing on
academic language development.
In almost all cases, such tasks will
involve a focus on both grammar and
lexicon.
Production activity: Lexicogrammatical relationships
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Building Knowledge of Word Collocations
These phrases are taken from The Hurried Child. What
prepositions occur with the phrases? Skim the passage if
necessary. Write the prepositions in the blanks.
1. a consequence ______ something (or doing something)
2. an emphasis _______ something
3. a direct result ______ something
4. a golden opportunity ______ something/someone
5. pressure ________ something (e.g. achievement)
6. pressure ________ someone
7. stimulation ______ someone
8. a trend ___________ something
Production Activity: Lexicogrammatical relationships

Ask students to substitute verbs in sentences
they have written and to make needed
syntactic and lexical changes using a learner’s
dictionary or a collocation dictionary.
Examples:
Pelleg countered Perlstein’s perspective on college
life today. (substitute disagree)
Rodriguez states that the new technology is the
cause for the lack of literacy today.
(blame)
Production Activity: Highlighting
themes
Focus on sentence themes: As
mentioned earlier, the beginning of a
sentence, and often the subject,
expresses the theme of the sentence.
Student writers sometimes “bury” their
themes in other places, such as
embedded “that-clauses” or
prepositional phrases. Revision tasks
can help them highlight themes.
Highlighting themes

Help writers revise sentences beginning
with phrases such as “I think that…” or
“He says that…” by deleting the
introductory phrase, substituting a noun
phrase that expresses a key idea and
using an appropriate verb.
Highlighting themes
Examples:
Original: I think, without distractions, when a person
is limited to what they have, then that’s when their
true abilities shows.
Revised: Getting rid of distractions can allow a
person to draw on his or her true abilities.
Original: Rodriguez mentions the idea that teenagers
that sit behind the bar are able to comprehend the
importance of literacy.
Revised: The importance of literacy is understood by
people in prison.
Focus on themes

Another way to focus on thematic information
is through sentence combining practice in
revision.
Example: This article is written by Richard
Rodriguez. He wrote about our current
literacy status.
Revised: This article by Richard Rodriguez
discussed our current literacy status.
Production Activity: Creating
cohesion through reference and
summary words
(Another task courtesy of Margi Wald)
The following are some sentences from
Sydney Harris’ “What True Education Should
Do.” For each one, write a second sentence
with a reference form + summary word.
Remember for each, write a sentence that
“makes sense” with what Harris is saying in
her article. The first one is done for you.
Creating cohesion through
reference forms
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1a. Original: Sydney Harris writes, “So many of the discussions
and controversies about the content of education are futile and
inconclusive because they are concerned with what should "go
into" the student (1).
1.b. Your sentence: She feels such concerns do not focus on
what’s important – how to get the student to generate more
information on his or her own.
2a. Original: “When most people think of the word ‘education,’
they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing.”
2b. Your Sentence:
Revision activities related to
stance

Following noticing or other instructional
activities, students could be asked to do
the following:

Check claims that need to be less certain.
Add hedges to qualify them (e.g., modals
such as may or could; verbs like suggest;
determiners like most; frequency adverbs
like often)
Revising for stance

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Consider places in a draft where attitude
markers (e.g., unfortunately, important)
could be added to strengthen positioning
about one’s topic
Revise to vary stance markers (e.g., avoid
repeated use of I think; substitute verbs
such as seems or appears that are often
more frequently used in some kinds of
academic writing.
A few final words

Don’t be a toad (), but do
try to provide students with
the language support they
need to meet challenging
academic tasks.
Final words…

As a mantra, try
“Grammar as a weapon: Bad,
Grammar as a resource: Good!”
Final words…

Think like Joan Didion:
Grammar is power!
Help students develop their
knowledge of it as an instrument
they can “play by ear”
And lastly…

Help students have fun with
language (even academic
language). And have fun
yourself!