The Trouble with Word Crimes
by Michael Mannix
Lately, grammar’s been getting a bad rap, and I’m not referring to the musical merits of Weird Al’s “Word Crimes”. I’m more concerned with its message: good grammar is the avoidance of errors. The song, a parody of the much-discussed “Blurred Lines”, rebukes a slew of grammatical mistakes, including homophone confusion and apostrophe misplacement. And as the school year approaches, the video’s fifteen million plus views will certainly climb again as teachers and students alike bond over its school-approved message. All of this buzz serves to reinforce grammar as a subject concerned solely with mistakes.
Indeed, many American students already have this view for a reason. The slashes and symbols of the red pen, a common classroom image, are synonymous with grammar instruction. So are mistake-ridden sentences, chalkboard models of bad writing presented as ways to practice fixing, correcting, and editing. The grammar classroom, or, more commonly, the fifteen minutes of isolated grammar instruction in the English classroom, resembles what teacher-researcher Constance Weaver calls a “correctional facility”.[1]
“Word Crimes”, when waved as a rally towel for effective writing, perpetuates this ineffective mode of grammar instruction. It also sends a message to students: you grow as a writer by fixing your bad writing.
Many teachers who are already wary of this view, those who cherish the unfiltered, unaltered expression of a fixed student voice, are likely to attack this notion of grammar with the spirit of a reformer. They might, as a result, ditch grammar instruction altogether, teaching students to ignore the archaic, self-contradictory, and oft-broken rules of countless handbooks of grammar. In lessons that resemble pep-talks more than actual instruction, they might emphasize, instead, the notion of writing with voice, of being yourself as you write.
There is an alternative to this approach. As Timothy Lensmire proposes in his essay "Rewriting student voice", real voice is developed from an interplay of factors: appropriation, struggle, and what results from the tension of these first two factors: becoming. [2]
Behind this refined notion of voice, the grammar classroom can be transformed from a “correctional facility” into a “creational facility” (again Weaver’s words), an environment in which students use and experiment with a variety of forms of sentence, paragraph, and genre structures to grow as writers.[3]
In this kind of classroom, grammar is used to make writing. Teachers immerse students in beautiful language rather than “Gotcha” sentences, modeling the ways in which writers act like artists to zoom in on images, build suspense, elaborate, surprise, order time, and add specifics.[4] Students lean on these examples to construct deliberately, developing a canvas of options to consider as they weigh audience and purpose. This tension between borrowing and using is what leads to “becoming”; in this case, the becoming is developing voice through knowledge of grammar.
Used to an extreme, the “Word Crimes” approach leads to a deficit mode of thinking, a mindset that shapes instruction and ultimately who our students become. The song's other lesson, that borrowing can lead to the production of creative art, is a more useful one, and one that I hope starts to shift the balance in grammar instruction from correction to creation.
[1] Weaver, Constance, and Jonathan Bush.
Grammar to Enrich & Enhance Writing Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008.
[2]Lensmire, Timothy J. "Rewriting Student Voice."
Journal of Curriculum Studies
30.3 (1998): 261-91. 3
[3]Weaver, Constance, and Jonathan Bush.
Grammar to Enrich & Enhance Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008.
[4] Noden, Harry R.
Image Grammar: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011.
Michael Mannix is a seventh grade ELA teacher at Norwood Fontbonne Academy. Michael joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2014 attending the ELL Invitational Summer Institute.