Five Lessons I Learned While Writing a Book on Grammar, Language, Mechanics, and Writing Instruction: Part 1
Happy Belated New Year!
I'm delighted to announce that I'm properly back to the newsletter, and for those wondering where I've been, I spent the fall and early winter finishing up my now-completed manuscript for my third book: Good Grammar: Joyful and Affirming Language Lessons That Work for More Students (due out in July).
I took on this project nearly three years ago knowing that it would be a heavy lift. Grammar, language, and mechanics have long been and remain some of the hardest, thorniest, and most contentious topics to teach in the ELA classroom. In 2003, Brock Haussamen in Grammar Alive! called grammar study, “The skunk at the garden party of language arts,” and two decades later, I suspect a great many students and teachers might still agree with him.
The core concept of the book is that I wanted to go back to the very beginning of language (encompassing grammar, mechanics, syntax, and usage) instruction in English and trace its path to the present to seek answers for why it is often the skunk and what we can do to make it more engaging, meaningful, affirming, joyful, clear, and memorable. It has been one of the most exciting pedagogical journeys I've ever embarked upon, but like some journeys, the path was much more rocky and roundabout than expected, and I'm sorry about the unexpected delays in getting back to the newsletter.
There will be much more to come concerning the book in the future, but for now, I wanted to restart the newsletter with five quick posts between now and our Spring Break on five essential lessons that I learned concerning how to teach language better in the process of writing this book. These posts will be the type of short, practical, ready-for-implementation ones that I love to stumble across as the February push toward the April tests in Michigan gets in gear.
Also, before moving on, a quick logistical change: After experimenting with Substack, I've decided to return to my long-running WordPress host and Mailchimp newsletter. It is just a better fit, so look for future newsletters to come from me through Mailchimp, not Substack.
Lesson #1: The Importance of the Idiolect
For those who haven't encountered the term, an idiolect is one’s own individual dialect. Like a fingerprint, every human has one, and like a fingerprint, they are all so subtly unique that replicating them, even with modern technology, is shockingly hard. Even modern supercomputers that can take as much energy as a mid-sized country can struggle to fully replicate an individual’s unique blend of syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciations. ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AIs can at times do some impressive alchemy, but they still can't truly capture the cadence of any given voice*.
I have found that my students don't tend to know this. They don't know that they are walking around with a voice that, even with modern AI, can’t be fully replicated—a voice that is singular in the whole span of human civilization. They also don't know that no one has ever communicated like them before and thus they, with no hyperbole, can offer something new to the human conversation that has never been seen before.
Many students also don’t know where their voice came from. They don’t realize that from their very first days on the planet, they began absorbing rules for how to pronounce, conjugate, and order words from their family, neighbors, and eventually friends. They also don’t tend to realize that they don’t just mimic these sources; they curate them, meshing together varied rules from varied sources to create something that fits with and expresses their unique personality.
Toni Morrison once wrote that, “One’s language—the one we dream in—is home” (The Source of Self-Regard, p. 37). “Home” here is a brilliant word choice: Our home is where our language comes from. We get the building blocks of our language from where we grew up, and we then take those blocks and build something new—a new home base. And through our lives, we keep adding bits from our various other homes—the new locations we live in, teams we join, and friends we make—to our language.
I bring this all up because I have found that student awareness and appreciation of their idiolect and language usage is a powerful home-base from which to approach language lessons. When students know more about what their language is, where it came from, and what it offers to the world, it can help them to better understand what grammar and language instruction can do for them.
In the 1990s, there was a movement to “teach grammar in context,” which meant moving grammar and language instruction from worksheets and diagrams to student writing. More and more research is confirming that this was a good and enduring idea, as it helps students to better understand and transfer the skills and use them in their own writings.
My approach takes this notion a step further. Before diving into discussions about clauses and colons, they examine their language—their home—first. This gives them more context and a firmer foundation to study, and more importantly use and incorporate, language, grammar, and mechanics going forward. I have a series of lessons for doing this, but here is my first (and one of my favorite) assignments for helping them to explore their idiolects:
I start by telling the students a truncated version of what their idiolects are and where they come from: "We all learn language by listening to those around us when we grow up. We listen to our family, friends, neighbors, and teachers and incorporate rules they use for pronunciations, vocabulary, and sentence structure into how we communicate. This process of learning to communicate means something very interesting for our speech: Every human who has ever lived—having had a different blend of family, friends, neighbors, and mentors—has a set of internal rules for how to communicate that is unique in all of human history. It is called an idiolect, or an individual dialect, and it is an intersection of those around you and your own individual style.
We look at handful of examples of people talking about their own idiolects and approaches to language. Three that I often share or share excerpts of are “An Offering to the Power of Language” by Sandra Cisneros, “3 ways to speak English” by Jamila Lyiscott, and “Til The Cows Come Home: Also Known as a Darn Long Post About Appalachian English” by Kristen Tcherneshoff. I also share previous student examples and a bit of my own story.
I then hand out this assignment for them to explore their own language story:
The Story of Your Language (Link Here)
“One’s language — the one we dream in — is home.” -- Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard, p. 37
In class we read a wide variety of stories concerning the language that people use. Your job today is to tell your own language story in writing. This story can go anywhere you want, but some things you could write about include the following:
What linguistic (language) communities do you feel a part of? What languages, dialects, and accents can be found in your language? Also, how have any chosen communities (sports, arts, community groups, friend groups, etc.) affected your language?
What do you love about the language of your family, friends, and those around you? This can be things you’ve absorbed, things you haven’t, or both.
What are your favorite sayings and words in your own idiolect?
What are the characteristics of your familect (most family units, because of how much time they spend together, have what is called a familect, or rules for communication that only exist within the family unit)? What things do your family members say that most don’t?
What major experiences have you had in your life that involve language?
What kinds of things do you think about when it comes to your language?
What would you like to learn or to teach to others about your language and the language around you?
I look at this lesson as the opening statement in a larger conversation—one we continue all year—and I've found that since I started having that conversation, students are suddenly more interested in those other conversations about clauses and commas that come after.
Thank you, as always, for reading and yours in teaching,
Matt
*For one of the most interesting examples of using AI to capture a voice, this time with the permission of its author, see Imran Khan’s use of it in the recent elections in Pakistan.
I didn’t even finish reading the entire essay—so excited for your new book! Congrats! (Will go back and read it now).