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Title: Breaking the Rules : Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction by Edgar H. Schuster ISBN: 0-325-00478-1 Publisher: Heinemann Pub. Date: 13 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Invigorating English teaching and learning
Comment: This book is exciting, invigorating, and refreshing. If those responsible for training the next generation of English teachers would use this book in their methods classes, schools would see an increase in teachers ready to provide 'reality' based language and composition learning experiences. If every school administrator were required to read the book, he/she would place in every classroom teachers ready for "Liberating Writers." Present English teachers who read the book will find either affirmation of their current practices of different ways to look at old practices, or both.
Ed Schuster is no johnny-come-lately to either English education or innovative thought considering the teaching of English grammar and composition. Over the past forty years he has been a sought-after presenter at both state and national English conventions; his articles began appearing in "The English Journal" in 1962. He contended then and contends now that traditional school grammar stifles English learning, inhibits the development of solid communications skills, and repudiates its stated goals. His introduction begins: "Most people think students break rules aplenty. Why encourage them?" His reply reflects his own classroom practice: "to help them become independent thinkers and more effective communicators."
In chapter one, "Language Acquisition and Traditional English Grammar, Schuster clearly and forcefully enunciates his hypothesis: "Traditional school grammar, traditionally taught, is a staggering, Pentagonesque waste of time and money." He does not just fling out empty claims. He reviews the literature on language teaching and learning from 1604 to the time of John Warriner up to the present Warriner clones. His bibliography shows the pedigree of his thesis: Sapir, Jesperson, Donald Murray, Fries, Shaughnessy, Hairston, Sledd, Blau, and Elbow, a veritable who's who of language theory over the past seventy years.
The rest of the chapters are equally thorough. Chapter two examines "Definitions That Do Not Define." Chapter three reviews "Rules That Do Not Rule (and a Few That Do)." Chapter four, "Writing: Liberating the Student Writers," proposes methods for utilizing periodicals, novels, and newspapers as models to help students, by studying 'real' writers, maximize their own writing and language/grammar skills. No, Schuster does NOT ignore grammar; rather, he thinks traditional school grammar non-useful. Chapter five, "Punctuation Today," suggests new ways of using traditional punctuation to make more effective writers.
In these five chapters, Schuster moves from what was and is (Traditional School Grammar) to what is and could be (the Reflective Teacher) in the teaching and learning and utilizing of "effective communication."
Rating: 5
Summary: The most helpful book on grammar instruction I've ever read
Comment: No one could be happier than I to have come across Dr. Edgar Schuster's marvelous book. I'm a professor of creative writing and composition at a small university out West, as well as having been an ESL instructor for many years. In my eleven years experience as a teacher at the university level, no book has ever so eloquently and straightforwardly addressed the challenges of effective grammar usage. I've already begun recommending it to my colleagues in the English department. Schuster's book will certainly garner the high praise it deserves, for it is written by an expert (Schuster is a former Master Teacher at Harvard) who, with laymen's terms, places three questions at the fore: 1)What are the myths of grammar usage? 2)What rules are unbreakable? 3)How do we teach students to use their innate grammatical sense? One chapter, which I am currently teaching to my freshman comp students, has already made clear for them (and for me) the five basic instances in which a comma is appropriate. I cannot say how much this book has helped my teaching and my own understanding of the "myth rules" and the "unbreakable rules." I'm indebted to Schuster for making me, in the short time it took to read his book, a better teacher.
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Title: Teaching Grammar in Context by Constance Weaver ISBN: 0867093757 Publisher: Boynton/Cook Pub. Date: 26 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Image Grammar : Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing(Bk & Cdrom) by Harry R. Noden ISBN: 0867094664 Publisher: Boynton/Cook Pub. Date: 30 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Inquiry-Based English Instruction : Engaging Students in Life and Literature by Richard Beach, Jamie Myers ISBN: 0807741027 Publisher: Teachers College Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Literature Workshop : Teaching Texts and Their Readers by Sheridan Blau ISBN: 0867095407 Publisher: Boynton/Cook Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The English Teacher's Companion : Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession by Jim Burke ISBN: 0325005389 Publisher: Heinemann Pub. Date: 30 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
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