<p>I see that this forum is blessed with the active participation of quite a few English teachers, so I thought I’d ask a resource question. What do you recommend by way of books, articles, activities, or other resources to get students more interested in writing? What do you recommend to help them learn to write better, interested or not? </p>
<p>Do any of you know a good current book on English grammar from a phrase-structure, transformational approach? I had a textbook like that in eighth grade, and I’m sure that helped get me ready for college study of linguistics. There was a good book like that, even more advanced, in our public library system when I was a kid, but that book has vanished. I’d appreciate any suggestions you have for a book about English grammar from the transformational point of view accessible to high school students, or for any other good resources for students or teachers of precollege English.</p>
<p>Don’t know about “exciting”, but Easy Grammer is a fairly good text for the grammar process. It’s by Wanda Phillips. 3/4 is supposed to be for grades 3 and 4…such as 5/6 and the PLUS is supposed to be high school, but if the student’s grammer is very poor, start with 5/6 even if they are an older student.</p>
<p>The movie Freedom Writers was excellent - not sure how inspiring it would be for writing , but it was very good.</p>
<p>I like Woe is I by Patricia O’Conner. And I just read in the blog on her website (grammarphobia.com) that there is a Woe is I Jr. coming out in April.</p>
<p>I wish I could say I’ve gotten high schoolers excited with it…I guess they don’t despise it, and some of them seem to get into it.</p>
<p>Phrase structure grammar! I’ll be checking back to see if anyone recommends a good book on it that weighs less than the monster-sized college textbook I still refer to once in a while. I really like the approach, sort of like factoring sentences–great fun.</p>
<p>Thinking about it reminds of the prof who taught that course. His favorite anecdote had to do with what he considered to be the erroneous prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition. It seems Winston Churchill once had an aide who had the temerity to call him on his usage, and Sir Winston responded something along the lines of it being “…errant pedantry, up with which I will not put.”</p>
<p>I like the Winston Churchill story too. English grammar shouldn’t be put into the procrustean bed of Latin grammar. Thanks for the suggestion of Woe Is I.</p>
<p>“Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” is about punctuation and it seems pretty popular just in general. I haven’t read it though, I just hear a lot about it. We just do grammar worksheets.</p>
<p>Stephen King wrote a wonderful book on writing, but the title escapes me. I greatly enjoyed it. William Goldman wrote a wonderful book on screenwriting called “Adventures in the Screen Trade.” Great book!</p>
As a parent who often wondered how my otherwise intelligent kid could possibly write the way she did, I’d have to say that nothing has improved her writing more than being required to write, often, in her English and history classes. Perhaps the most helpful class of all has been a creative writing class, generally seen in our hs as a waste of time - but it has improved my d’s writing beyond a point I’d have thought possible 2 years ago.</p>
<p>The class spent the first marking period writing poetry, and my d discovered an unexpected passion for it. The assignments helped her to connect what was in her head with what went down on paper. Since poetry is pretty forgiving of the grammatical rules my d struggled with in writing essays, her enthusiasm and confidence grew. Now that the class has moved on to writing 1-2 page personal essays, my d’s skills continue to improve. And she enjoys it!</p>
<p>Her improved writing has even spread to her expository assignments. She’s had to hand in nearly 100 written assignments so far this year - primarily 3 or 4 paragraph responses to prompts about the day’s assigned reading material, but several 3-5 page essays, as well. Wasn’t it Stephen King who said that anyone who sat down and wrote for 8 hours every day would inevitably become a better writer? (My d’s favorite author, btw.)</p>
<p>This year DD2 has honors Brit Lit. I have never seen her more excited about a class, and she is much more a science-geek type. With each major period piece - beowulf, chaucer, etc right now on Swift, they not only read the work, the created work in the style of the piece. For Canterbury Tales they made their high school the culture, broke it down into social and economic groups and wrote a poem/story for 2 types they picked. (dd picked emo kids and janitorial staff I think)
With Swift they are now discussing and creating individual satirical pieces. I never-ever expected to hear this much about Chaucer, the timelessness of the work, or how funny A Modest Proposal was from a girl whose idea of interesting school work was genetics. Her reading and writing improvements are coming from this interative experience rather than just rote work.
DS and DD1 had AP Comp and wrote constantly and had at least 2-3 revisions on each piece. They were better prepared for essay work than DD2 was, but she wasn’t up to that writing level yet. I am so thrilled that this teacher is bringing the writing levels up while keeping interest and excitment going.
Teaching wordsmiths craft is great, but taking kids without the orientation, or without the skills and opening up the world…priceless.
one of my own favorite classes was English Language, Classical Roots. mmmmm. mmmmm. good.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reports about high school students becoming excited about writing. </p>
<p>As for technical writing, I think Zinsser’s On Writing Well would be a reasonable book to start with. But I’d be happy to hear more specific suggestions from other participants here.</p>