Source: Blogger
http://funnysmsweb.blogspot.com
Date accessed: 1/25/15
Throughout
the first chapter of Grammar Alive! we learned a lot about how
grammar is often forgotten and untaught, it's easily spoken but not
easily written, and that even in the work-world it is forgotten.
There
is a certain tension between the “standard english” grammar and
the home language that isn't easily bridged, especially because it's
not easy to teach the difference between the two in a classroom
setting. Grammar
is situation and there are tons of different varieties and dialects;
there is no right or wrong English
[two closely connected sentences joined by a semi-colon]. This
was hard for me to grasp at first, until I realized that maybe my
thoughts coming into this topic were different than others. In
my home, we speak sort of a German-English language that calls for
certain grammar differences than “standard English” or “standard
German.” We often times leave out “nonsense” words such as “is”
or “the” and just stick to the needed-to-make-sense-words that are crucial to the meaning of the sentence [forming original compound words with the use of hyphens]. If
we can't think of a word in English, the German word replaces it
fine, but isn't necessarily grammatically correct in either standard
language.
But
aside from the mixed-language my family speaks at home, I was taught
that this is not how we speak outside the house. It
was very clear to me-as taught by my parents- that it was
inappropriate
to use anything other than this “standard English” we spoke and
wrote in school [use
of the parenthetical dash to emphasize an important point].
The
topic of at-home language and
the idea of code-switching
was brought up in chapter 2 of Grammar Alive! We
learned about African
American grammar and how that language uses possession in a different
way than standard English does. It's
important to note the difference between these situational grammar
languages and to notice that neither is the correct way, they're just
different.
My
understanding of teaching and
learning
grammar has always been a by-the-book type of system; when
I think back to learning grammar, I remember a lot of worksheets,
sentence practices, and editing of other student's sentences
[two
closely connected
sentences
joined by a semi-colon].
After
reading for this class, it has come to my attention that I have been
coming about grammar in all the wrong ways...Grammar isn't right or wrong, it's situational [use of ellipses to create a pause or hesitation to emphasize a point]. The
reading by Christensen really related to the idea of situational
grammar. She
didn't want to be seen as lesser, so she used different words in
place of words that she couldn't pronounce correctly. She
code-switched in
order to not show she had a different at-home grammar language. The
teacher in Christensen's story was using a one-size
fits
all
lesson
by requesting that each child says the same word correctly. What she
failed to recognize was the different languages each student brings
to the classroom. In this case, Christensen couldn't speak the word
and was made fun of because the children in the class expected
standard English.
I
incorporated the semi-colon pattern in my post because it
is one I struggle with mostly. I wrote my post, in fact, and had to
go back and try to squeeze one in because semi-colons just don't come
naturally to me. I
think the sentence I put it in for the use of the semi-colon (my
understanding of teaching grammar has always been a by-the-book type
of system; when
I think back to learning grammar, I remember a lot of worksheets,
sentence practices, and editing of other student's sentences)
works better without the semi-colon, but still works just as well
with it. I'd
like to get more familiar with where they are needed and where they
aren't. I
used the parenthetical
dash for my first time in this blog post. I'm still not savvy with
them, but I tried in the sentence: “It
was very clear to me-as taught by my parents- that it was
inappropriate
to use anything other than this “standard English” we spoke and
wrote in school.”
