Monday, January 28, 2008

Grammar Snobs

I personally like this book a lot. I think it has a lot of useful information in it, and it is fun to read (and I do not use that phrase often). I could see how Jane Casagrande can be seen as a Grammar Snob herself, but at least she has a sense of humor about it. I also like the fact that she uses funny stories to teach the lessons. The only real problem I have with it is that the actual grammar part isn't really marked, so if I were to look something up it might take a while (though dog-earring the pages has pretty much fixed this issue).

After reading this some of this book and talking about grammar in class today, I realized that I actually don't hate grammar as much as I thought I did. I don't think that I will ever memorize all of the rules (or even half of the rules), and I don't think that if I teach my main focus is going to be how grammatically correct a paper is. However, I do think that knowing a little grammar comes in handy every now and then. For example, I think that it was easier for me to learn German because I knew English grammar. I knew what the direct object was versus the indirect object, so I knew when to change the article accordingly. I also find it helpful to discuss ESL. Actually, as I am writing this, I am beginning to rethink my "useful grammar" statement. Other than learning a foreign language and helping ESL students, I can't really remember the last time I used a grammar lesson. I think it's kind of odd that the only things I really focused on English grammar for are those instances involving a language other than English. Huh. Well now I don't know what I think. Either way, I still like the book so far, and I guess I will have to figure out whether I like grammar in general at a later point.

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