I’ve been in English education for over twenty years as a high school English teacher and a college professor. I’ve published six books, written dozens of smaller pieces like articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings about grammar and linguistics in secondary English classrooms. I’ve been all over the world and all over the United States telling people what I know about the English language.
Together on my channel grammar, y’all we’ll learn about the context, content, and pedagogy of American English grammar.
When I say context, I mean the people, the places, the histories, and the situations that influence how and why we use language and how and why we hear language in the ways we do.
The content is where you’ll find the explanations, the examples, and the discussions of traditional grammatical concepts. You’ll find all the classics here like the eight parts of speech, also phrases, clauses, but here you’ll also find discussions of punctuation and rhetorical purpose (that is, why do we use language in the ways that we do and what influence does it have on our writing, speaking, and listening?).
The last idea, pedagogy, is the “how” of teaching. Research has shown us over and over again that rote memorization of grammatical concepts isn’t effective–it doesn’t make people better readers or writers. So how do we teach what we know in a way that works? In a way that inspires? If you’re an English teacher, you’re going to love this section. I’m all about the teaching of language in ways that are purposeful. All of my pedagogy focuses on how we can help students become thoughtful consumers and creators of language.
Thanks for visiting grammar, y’all! I’m looking forward to our language adventures together!
