Non-Grammar Lovers Anonymous

I’ve never been a grammar lover.

But since I’m a Language Arts Education major as well as Spanish major, people assume that I’m this crotchety grammarian out to slap wrists with a ruler each time I hear a mistake. “Oh, I’d better be careful about what I say around Chantell, she’s an English major.” But contrary to popular belief, not all English majors and teachers are obsessed grammar fiends. Indeed, there is a debate in the Language Arts learning world centered around prescriptive vs. descriptive methods of teaching grammar.

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
According to Wordnet, a prescriptive approach is “pertaining to giving directives or rules.” It focuses primarily on teaching students the grammar rules, employing methods like rote memorization, and also focuses heavily on grammar when evaluating writing. A descriptive approach deals more with learning whatever grammar rule or concept in context and focusing more on content and purpose (when examining writing) than whether the student followed grammar rules. I tend to lean towards the descriptive approach.

But Can You Really Teach Every Context?
This bothers some people, I know. Else there wouldn’t be an educational methods debate about it. I think that English teachers should definitely teach the rules. But they have to be enforced in context. For example, a little thing they encouraged us to do when I was student teaching was a daily oral grammar thing where we'd put up a passage from literature, or a letter, or an informative essay that had grammar mistakes in it. The students would have to pick out and correct the mistakes, and then we'd discuss what was wrong and why. I think learning grammar is less effective when the method heavily relies on students simply memorizing a bunch of grammar rules.

Evaluation
Also, concerning writing assignments, the old school way of approaching evaluating the assignment is to redline every single grammar mistake and to stake the grade on spelling and getting all of the modifiers or whatever in the right place instead of basing the grade on the student's ability to communicate ideas and stay in line with the purpose of the assignment. Does a descriptive essay about a field trip to the aquarium which has high quality content, but has poor spelling and grammar deserve an F? I don't think it deserves an A+, but I don't think the grade should hinge on dangling modifiers. (Pun intended.) This debate gets even more heated when you're dealing with so-called "at risk" children who come from backgrounds where Standard American English (SAE) is not spoken.

What’s the Answer?
In the end, I think the answer is balance. It would be foolish to say that rules don't matter. One day, the non-Standard American English speaking children are going to have to use SAE in formal contexts—to get a job, to write messages in professional settings, etc. But still I shy away from the image of the English teacher as this strict grammarian who constantly corrects everyone's mistakes.

Like I said, I was never that much of a grammar lover. I guess I'm more of a creative writing/literature darling. I must admit that another reason I'm hesitant to jump on the English-teacher-as-grammarian bandwagon is because I know that my own writing would be decimated by red pen, even now, by hard core proponents of the purity of English.