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The Grammar Graduate's Parts of Speech

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My students in Kansas City, like most students anywhere in the world, exhibit non-Academic uses of language that they pick up from home and from peer interactions. These uses of language are so comfortable and familiar that most young people do not realize they are not universally accepted in school or careers.

When we teach the patterns of Academic English, students can easily learn to add the Academic English usages to their code-switching strategies. Many teachers know to uncover the skill of code-switching and to help students maximize this capability, in order to prepare them for higher level schooling and employment. 

I use the verb "uncover" because everyone does code-switch, whether we know that term or not. We use different standards and registers of language in different environments, under different conditions, for different purposes, or for different effects.

When I wrote my lessons for The Grammar Graduate's Parts of Speech, I included mini-lessons on some of the specific non-Academic uses of each part of speech that I hear my students use. 

Within the lesson, I simply point out these uses as non-Academic and give the Academic use instead. Here's an example:

Many of my students grew up hearing the word "mines" used in place of "mine". Without judgement, I just identify that use as a common non-Academic pattern and give the Academic version in a section that begins with "Please note . . .".

At the end of the Parts of Speech lesson packet, I have included an exercise that gives students practice in transcribing several sentences with common, non-Academic uses into Academic English. 

For your free lesson packet on Nouns and Pronouns, including practice exercises, quizzes, and teacher's keys, use the sign up form in the sidebar. You will get a short series of tips and additional resources, along with the free download, delivered straight to your email inbox.

Can the Knowledge of Parts of Speech Improve Writing?

Most writing teachers encourage students to draft freely, to get some ideas down on paper that they can work with. Most writing teachers know and preach that the real work of writing happens in the revision stage of the writing process. 

The writing program we are using in our school district has a form called the "shaping sheet." On this form, students write each sentence of their drafted paragraph into a separate shape so that they can examine each one for revision. 

If isolating sentences can help student authors examine their choices in sentence writing, then isolating words can help student authors examine their word choices, a very important trait of good writing, an activity that good writers engage in almost constantly, whether drafting or revising.

Two camps of educators hold very strong opinions about whether we should spend any class time on formal or traditional grammar lessons. Surely, students don't need to learn parts of speech, do they? How can the knowledge of parts of speech help our students improve their writing?

I believe that it can. I agree with critics of isolated grammar instruction, that students will be more engaged in learning grammar structures when the lessons are immediately useful for their efforts with composition. There are very easy ways to accomplish this. 

After leading a lesson on any part of speech, ask students to underline, circle or highlight all the nouns (or pronouns, or adjectives, or whatever part of speech you have been learning) that they can find in their own draft. Ask them to notice how they used that particular part of speech. Just calling attention to one brick in the wall, so to speak, will focus the writer's attention on a word choice they might improve.

As the writing coach, you might ask them to make thoughtful decisions about the nouns they have used. Would a proper noun (a more specific name) give more information about a character or a place than the common noun they used? 

Can the student writer identify the antecedent of every pronoun? Do those antecedents "agree" with the pronoun in number or gender, as Academic English requires?

Many writers dislike an overuse of adjectives. They assert that actions (verbs) convey images more effectively than lists of descriptors. The overuse of descriptors, adverbs or adjectives, sounds amateurish (even flowery) to seasoned readers and writers. 

A look at his highlighted adjectives enables the young writer to analyze the effect of those adjectives on the reader. He or she may opt for one perfectly-chosen adjective rather than a list of trite descriptors. Maybe their draft has no descriptor, so the writer analyzes whether adding one or two will improve his or her composition, or not.

Speaking of verbs, asking your student writers to focus on this part of speech in every sentence can help their writing improve quickly. Verbs should be selected for connotation, as well as denotation, and for aptness, for perfect expression. Did that character "murmur", "croak", "spit", "whisper", or "sing" the words he spoke in the story? It matters. 

Focusing on the use of one part of speech at a time is a valuable exercise for developing the writing trait called "word choice." 

Why Teach / Learn Grammar

Familiarity with what the eight parts of speech are, and how each one functions in a sentence, may seem like unimportant trivia, but this is critical foundational knowledge for analyzing sentence structures.

Why should you be able to analyze sentence structures? The way a writer puts words together is the core of composition. In order to express your ideas effectively, you must be able to form acceptable sentences, written in a standard of writing and speaking called Academic English.

Many post-high school opportunities and higher-paying jobs or careers depend on an individual’s ability to speak and write fluently according to the rules and conventions of Academic English. For this reason, many people call Academic English the “green” language or the “cash” register.

Tests in school, including college, are written in Academic English. Teachers and professors expect students to be fluent in Academic English. Many intelligent young people struggle in higher education simply because they are not fully fluent with Academic English.

Here are just a few of the rules you must understand in order to become adept at using Academic English:

·      subject-verb agreement

·      pronoun-antecedent agreement

·      punctuation rules

·      capitalization rules

·      subordination of ideas

It is nearly impossible to learn these conventions if you do not learn the terminology and understand the concepts of the parts of speech.

You have to recognize parts of speech to understand how to identify phrases and clauses. You have to understand phrases and clauses in order to apply spelling and usage rules and to fix sentence errors like fragments and run-ons. You have to use several kinds of sentence structures in order for your writing to sound intelligent and sophisticated.

The good news is, you already understand a lot of these concepts if you have learned any kind of language at all. These lessons put words to knowledge you already intuit and use every day. You are an expert without knowing it.

Additionally, all humans use language. Learning how language works is fascinating. Words carry meaning, and human beings’ use of words can be rich, creative, humorous, and moving. People groups from different countries, or even different regions within the same country, often speak different dialects, which is endlessly interesting.

Those dialects, however, can present challenges to students who are trying to learn and use Academic English, because the rules of Academic English may not sound as “correct” or “acceptable” as one’s spoken dialect. Once non-Academic English speakers learn the conventions of Academic English, they will find themselves code-switching between their cultural use of language and that of Academic English, depending on their audience.

What is Academic English?

Academic English is the standard of the English language that colleges and universities expect students and professors to use. It is the written language of schools, of assessments, of professional articles, and of textbooks. Most teachers speak some level of Academic English, although, in conversation, all of us shift in and out of our social language. We express our culture or background in the way we pronounce words, construct phrases, or use slang.

Academic English is more formal than social English. It follows the rules of English grammar, including sentence structure, subject-verb agreement, antecedent reference of pronouns, and many more conventions. Dialectic spellings, neighborhood or generational slang, double negatives, and many other casual or creative treatments of language are excluded in Academic English.

Social English is more informal. This is the form of English we speak with our family and friends.

Social expressions change relatively quickly as people find creative ways of expressing ideas, particularly in conversation. Words and phrases we use in story-telling, songs, poetry, and rap can become a part of our everyday language in a very short time.

We expect slang and idioms in our spoken social language. Many of us even enjoy intentional and unintentional twists of grammar and mispronunciations as a part of interacting with one another.

The ability to speak and write social English is natural,for almost all English-speakers. Academic English, on the other hand, must be learned.