Got Grammar? > Diana White & Lindsay Motes

As instructors of first‐term students ‐“F.A.N.S.” as our Department Chair, Deborah Brien, refers to us, we see a tremendous range in our students’ writing abilities. Some students come to their first class writing proficiently, while others struggle to form a paragraph. It is our job as F.A.N.S. to Facilitate Achievement of New Students by helping them learn the content and by helping them prepare for what lies ahead: writing on the discussion boards and writing papers.

During Academic Strategies, a first‐term course, students learn how important writing is to their future academic and professional success. While we want to emphasize just how important it is to be able to communicate effectively through writing, we don’t want students who are struggling with their writing skills to give up out of frustration. There are so many excellent resources for students at Kaplan, and they are made aware of them throughout the term by participating in various activities. It seems, however, that if we overwhelm students with too much information at once, they are no longer receptive to ideas. We only make writing suggestions when students understand the requirements for the discussion board and have understood the lesson content. We also do this in the most supportive and encouraging way possible, by praising the strengths of their posts, even if the only requirement that has been met is submitting the assignment by the due date.

We find it important to introduce one new concept at a time so that the individual student may view it, process it, and then apply the recommendation in future postings. When grading the first week’s discussions, we ask students to make small and simple changes. For example, we ask our students who do not capitalize the word “I” to do so. We also remind them to run a spelling and grammar check. At the end of the second week, when writing comments for discussion board grades, we applaud the effort of students who have made these changes. There are some students who do not make these changes, and we reach out to them. Sometimes, the students are unaware of what we wrote, as they did not know how to expand the comment box or simply did not know that it could be expanded. For those students who made those initial changes, we move forward with the definitions for “too” and “to,” or “their” and “there,” depending on which word choice has been misused more frequently, and we provide them with a link to the Writing Center that shows them clear examples of their errors and ways to fix them.

By week three, we see a drastic reduction in the incidence of lowercase “I”s and many students learn the difference between “to” and “too” too! –“their” and “there” is a little harder. We try not to correct any other frequent errors during this time. We don’t want them to be discouraged, because always in the middle of praise for their work, comes a suggestion as to how their writing might be improved.

During weeks five through nine we continue to work with students at their writing level. Some students are advanced, some are intermediate, and some are at a beginner level. During these units, we have projects along with discussion boards that provide us the opportunity to show students where grammar and spelling errors have occurred and how they may be fixed. One of the activities students take part in during week seven is to visit the Writing Center. They are asked to find out about the Paper Review Service, or they “speak” to a live tutor, or research a topic through the Writing Reference Library. Students really enjoy this exercise, and they very often research a topic on which they are having difficulties, such as comma placement.

Focusing on introducing one or two new grammar or spelling concept(s) at a time, or per assignment, tends to alleviate the frustration first‐term students may feel from corrective grammar overload.

Diana White and Lindsay Motes are professors in Professional Studies.

[This article was originally published in our August, 2009 issue.]