The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar - Michelle Navarre Cleary. A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons—those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech—don’t help and may even hinder students’ efforts to become better writers. Yes, they need to learn grammar, but the old-fashioned way does not work. There is a real cost to ignoring such findings. In my work with adults who dropped out of school before earning a college degree, I have found over and over again that they over-edit themselves from the moment they sit down to write.
They report thoughts like “Is this right? Is that right?” And “Oh my god, if I write a contraction, I’m going to flunk.” These students are victims of the mistaken belief that grammar lessons must come before writing, rather than grammar being something that is best learned through writing. Happily, there are solutions. There are also less immediately apparent costs to having generations of learners who associate writing only with correctness. La Vitrine Technologie. Maison des technologies d'apprentissage. L'École numérique. L'Agence nationale des Usages des TICE.