Tips for Teaching Grammar

Introducing Students to Sentence Patterns

Use students' intuitive knowledge of grammar to get them ready for clause patterns. Give them a variety of sentences and ask them to “clump” the sentences into no more than 4 clumps, circling everything that should stay together or is related to the same item. Do not tell them how many clumps they should use for each sentence.

Don’t tell them at first to label the clumps. That can be the next step. As they concentrate just on the clumping, without worrying about the labels, they gain confidence in their ability to see how a sentence is structured.

As they work with complex clauses, you can point out to them that no clause contains more than four clumps (subject, main verb phrase, object, complement). This is all the more reason for them to feel confident about their ability to divide a sentence into its basic parts.

The skills engaged in this exercise transfer to their writing. Tell them that when they are having trouble with a sentence in a paper, they should try to clump it. If it won’t clump, it won’t work as an English sentence. They can then decide how many groups should be in the sentence and re-write it accordingly.

Wanda Van Goor