Task 1: Summarize and Respond to Our Assigned Reading

Linda Christensen was able to explain and further my understanding of what it means to teach grammar but she was also able to challenge my thinking and knowledge of the subject. I was never really exposed to grammar in a classroom setting so my understanding of ‘Standard English’ was more exposed from my parents, grandparents and tutors. As I moved to from the states to Canada, I was not taught grammar skills because of bad timing. I relied on my teachers for my understanding of the content of my English courses but they relied on me to know ‘Standard English’ as assumed knowledge. I appreciated Christensen’s articles for the fact that I related to the similar ideals that she portrayed in her teaching. Grammar Alive!’s article, similar to Christensen’s, incorporated the importance of ‘Standard English’ and how to teach in between he parallels of personal student wring and learning with the ability to convert to ‘Standard English’.

The articles confirmed by passion of teaching with a twist of societal norms that students are exposed to—visible or not [to emphasize an important point]. Christensen affirmed my belief that no writing is perfect and there are different kinds of grammar and there is no higher or correct version. I have always believed that everyone has a different form of language and I enjoyed how Christensen related student’s word to the importance of real world situations that everyone experiences or knows that’s real. Grammar Alive! Explains the similar importance through language variety, which is an interesting way to look at grammar.

The articles challenged my understandings of what it means to teach grammar because I have always seen teaching grammar as having a right or wrong answer, even though as student I never wanted to be wrong. The goals in Grammar Alive! Twisted my understanding because as a teacher I explain to be open to student differences and writing and then it said to have a strong form of structural teaching of grammar so students can be coherent of the content. I can image how this could be done but it just confuses me and challenges my knowledge.

Teaching grammar, as I image, has requirements but no set answer and even as a student I believe that to be true. Being a student I can see how grammar is fluid and always changing. ‘Standard English’ makes it difficult to completely comprehend grammar because it has a dominating influence of everyone’s grammar and writing. Christensen and Grammar Alive! were both able to confirm and challenge my understandings and as a teacher I feel like your teaching and understanding of teaching needs to be exposed to both. Even as a teacher you are still learning.

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I am experimenting with dashes because I have never used them before I would like to see how my writing could input them. I have never understood where exactly to put them so I experimented them in this blog post to see if I did that correctly.  I am not sure if I did so, but I feel like I since I am working on different things, it is still good practice.  I am learning more about dashes, which I have never, have and experimenting with them is really fun.