Topic: Grammar and Composition

10-second review: Are grammar and composition the same? “For years we have taught grammar and usage, thinking that we were teaching composition, but the kind of mental activity required for grammatical analysis is not the same as that required for composing a sentence.”

Source: RL Graves. College Composition and Communication (October 1978), 227. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Comment: I grew up in the late 1940s and early 1950s studying nothing but grammar and literature in English. In high school, all I ever did was diagram sentences. I never wrote a composition. I never heard of a summary paragraph, nor did I know what a term paper was. I began teaching English thinking that I was teaching writing when I was teaching grammar.

When the head of our high school business department complained to me that the local power company that hired many of his graduates had to teach their employees how to write, I asked, “Don’t they know their grammar?”

“It’s not grammar,” he said. “It’s writing. For example, they have to teach their employees to use the ‘you’ point of view when they write to customers.”

“Oh,” I said. That weekend, I went down to center city Philadelphia to Gimbel’s bookstore where I bought every self-help book I could find on writing. That’s how I learned to teach writing. RayS.