The Story Behind Fix It! Grammar

Oct 06 2014 By Pamela White Photo Credit:Â  msahampton.info My first teaching post after graduate school was at a college prep high school. Generally eager to learn, the students would master the rules in their college handbook, yet there was a huge disconnect between knowing the rules and applying them to their writing. To make grammar stick, I needed a better solution than just having students memorize rules and practice them in artificially contrived sentences. I believed that grammar would not be meaningful unless I could more effectively root it in the context of writing. My first solution was to make students find the rules for errors in their papers that I would flag. While this exercise worked with students who took it seriously, everyone complained of its tedium. What was needed? Editing! However, students write too little for steady practice, and their papers are too personal and thus cloud their objectivity. The editing programs I had used at home were not quite what I wanted, partly because they did not emphasize the types of errors that pepper students’ papers. From that was born the concept of Fix It! Grammar: giving students daily practice editing short passages that cumulatively tell a story. Feedback has reinforced my conviction that teaching grammar in the context of stories makes it both fun and applicable—it works! Â   As IEW’s Online Class Department Head for Level C, Pamela White has an M.A. in English and A.B.D. from Vanderbilt University, is certified as an Accomplished Instructor for IEW, and wrote Fix It! Grammar. When she discovered IEW for her first-born, reluctant writer, who is now an adult, she found it so valuable that it completely transformed her teaching methods. Currently teaching both locally and online for IEW, she has over three decades experience in traditional classrooms and with homeschooled students. Â