Grammar for Academic Writing:
Discursive Strategies
Dr. Olga Griswold
California State Polytechnic University at Pomona
Pedagogical Challenges in
Grammar and Composition
• Varied levels of grammatical competence:
– native speakers + Generation 1.5 students + EFL/ESL
• Varied familiarity with grammatical meta-language:
– None
– Basic (and inaccurate) elementary-school level
– (More) extensive declarative knowledge from EFL contexts
• No dedicated room for grammar in the composition curriculum
• Perception of grammar as “boring” and unnecessary
• Perception of grammar as “learning about commas and such”
• Lack of skill transfer from grammar instruction to grammar control in
writing
Some General Strategies
• Make time for grammar instruction on a regular basis
– 20-25-minute mini-lessons
– Grammar-focused homework
– Attention to concrete aspects of grammar at different stages of the writing
process
• Focus on structures that students need for effective writing:
– In response to patterns of errors
– In anticipation of structures needed for a particular assignment
• Make grammar relevant:
– Genres and disciplines in which students will be writing
– Expand grammatical repertoire, enhance style and fluency
• Teach them how to fish:
–
–
–
–
Grammatical terminology as a tool
Raising consciousness of structures and their functions
Self-editing strategies
Progress tracking
Techniques: Identifying
Structures to Teach
 Identify patterns of errors in student writing and design mini-lessons
in response to these patterns
 Explore authentic texts – especially those students read in their
majors – to identify structures that need to be taught:
 Frequent (in particular genres or fields)
 Challenging (structurally complex, non-colloquial, etc.)
 Useful (common turns of phrase, “chunks,” collocations)
 Analyze writing prompts to identify key structures needed to write on
them:
 Narrative – verb tense shifts
 Cause-effect – conditionals, causative verbs, logical connectors
 Comparison-contrast – comparative and correlative structures, adjectives and
verbs expressing comparison and contrast, etc.
 Expand the students’ repertoire of structures;
Techniques: Raising Awareness
 Discovery activities performed on assigned readings:
 Highlight structures in an assigned text and ask students to examine the form
and usage of the structure
 Have students formulate the “rules” or reasons for using a particular structure
from a rhetorical perspective
 Discovery activities for self-study and/or homework:
 Direct students to observe and note the use of a particular structure (or
structures) in the readings they do for their major
 Have students journal on the observations of language use in texts for their
major
 Have students “hunt” for common lexico-gramamtical structures in their field of
study (constructions and collocations)
 Discovery activities on student writing:
 Have students explore their own writing and the writing of their peers and look for
different lexico-grammatical ways to express similar meanings.
 Have students analyze prompts and discuss what types of grammatical
structures (previously taught) they will need to use in writing on them
Techniques: Applying the Skills
 Assign short writing tasks that call for the use of the previously studied
structure(s). Specify the structures students should use.
 Assign “imitation writing” of paragraphs containing particular structures (pretaught or as a consciousness-raising exercise)
 Have students analyze particularly good sentences and determine how they
are constructed. Then have students “split” and “combine” sentences from
their own writing.
 Have students peer- and self-edit for a particular grammatical structure (with
an editing guide)
 Have students track their errors in an error chart
 Have students observe the use of particular structures in the “real world”
and bring examples to class for discussion and/or journal on them.
 Have students compare “early” and “late” drafts and reflect on the
improvement of their language control
Thank you!