Tressler J. Grammar in Action 1928 torrent

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When the pendulum swung away from the teaching of formal grammar, there was danger that it would pass far beyond a sensible motivated teaching of functional or applied grammar to a denunciation of all grammar except usage drills. Now the pendulum is oscillating about the middle point, a mastery of the simple fundamentals of functional grammar as a foundation on which to build all English work, and will doubtless come to rest here. Of course, the boy or girl who grows up in an atmosphere of correct and elegant English - if such a fortunate one is to be found - speaks and writes well without studying grammar. Usage drills help the less fortunate to eliminate flagrant errors, but do not give “the genuine familiarity with the elementary facts of English grammar, without which,” the department of English of the University of Wisconsin tells us, “under existing conditions it is futile to expect the vast majority of our pupils to acquire the ability to use English correctly either in speech or in writing.” Grammar in Action is built on a belief that the important aims in grammar teaching are to help pupils to write and speak correct sentences, to construct varied, effective sentences, to punctuate correctly, and to extract thought from the printed page. Because, as Randolph found, half the errors in speech and writing are faults in sentence structure other than the choice of forms, a pupil should learn the terminology for a discussion of sentence building and should be given practice in forming, criticizing, and improving sentences. With the exception of a brief systematic preliminary study of the parts of the sentence, analysis and diagraming, which is shorthand analysis or graphic representation of analysis, are taught when needed. Thus the work is motivated; the probability that the study of analysis will function in class and outside of class, increased; and the habit of using analysis in correcting sentences, building varied, forceful, mature sentences, extracting thought from the printed page, and punctuating correctly, established. Chapter XIX, for example, gives the pupil practice in applying his knowledge of grammar to the improvement of sentences by placing some thing besides adjectives before the subject, building complex sentences, using appositives, series, and participles, and occasionally using an interrogative, an exclamatory, or an imperative sentence