Response to Breakfast, Bumper Stickers and Beyond

How important is grammar really??  The first point made in this article tackles that question. Grammar is described as the 'rules' that make a sentence not a string of words, but a structure capable of communicating meaning" regardless of context.  This hits home for me. I am often one of those people who cares more about the content than the mechanics simply because I am going into special education. However I realize that if words are so poorly spelled and grammatical errors are so numerous it may be hard to understand the content. Thus I have resigned and decided to take up more stock in the importance and necessity of good grammar.

One thing I had not thought of before was the idea that piece of work had its own set of grammar and rules. Each one varied and each one is unique.Grammar in Facebook posts are going to be much different than the grammar used in a research paper. It is important to not only give students the eye to see this but to also teach them what type of grammar to use when. We don't teach this so that our students avoid error but to show them how rich and complex our language can be.

I loved the cereal box analogy in which each cereal box represented a different "goal" if you will. One was concerned about calories and fiber intake, while the other was more concerned with finding the toy inside and yet a third was the deliciousness of the overall cereal. This gave a great example for students to look at their writing in this way. Who s my audience? Whats my point? What am I trying to sell? These are all questions students should be asking themselves when they write. This is definitely an analogy I will use in my own classroom someday. It gives a real world  example of how this is actually used. It also gives students something to compare to and really think about how well they are doing with this.

Well I know this post was a little all over the place but I mainly wanted to highlight on what I enjoyed and learned from this article. I am also fighting a cold and my brain is also a little scrambled right now.