Of the skills that produce a well-written essay, IEW’s top two, structure and style, are certainly key linchpins. Equally important, however, is the often misunderstood art of grammar.
If you express a worthy thought in a sentence but misplace the commas, it can become unintelligible or even comical. What if I had forgotten the second two commas in my first sentence above? I’m left with this confusing construction: IEW’s top two structure and style are certainly key linchpins. You could probably figure out the meaning, but it puts the burden of comprehension on the reader, who is often too busy to bother.
Likewise, if you read a well-written sentence without understanding its underlying grammatical structure, you may completely misinterpret the author’s meaning. In The War against Grammar, David Mulroy, Classics Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, relates an exercise he gives to his upper-level classics majors, asking them to paraphrase the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Granted, this is a challenging sentence, but classics majors are bright and well-read. Surprisingly, only 30% could explain the gist of the passage, even if expressed somewhat “incoherently,” as Mulroy puts it (18).
Why do intelligent students read so poorly? Mulroy laments the current pedagogical trend in the U.S. against grammar, which does not overtly discredit its value but argues that grammar is not worth the time required to teach it. Nonetheless, it is hard to paraphrase a well-written passage if one does not understand its structure. To quote Mulroy, “This kind of illiteracy boils down to an ignorance of grammar. If a student interprets the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence as an exhortation to ‘preserve the earth,’ then . . . [the only way to] demonstrate the error” is to explain the grammar of the sentence (19, emphasis added). We rob our students of a needed tool of analytic thinking if we stop teaching grammar.
To exacerbate the problem, teachers often ask students what they think about a piece of literature without requiring the harder task of figuring out the writer’s point of view. Interpretation of this kind is a pointless exercise in self-absorption. If readers cannot tease apart the sentence structure, however, they will have trouble understanding the literal meaning.
I used to teach advanced ESL adults using Fix It!® Grammar. Two of my students were from India, working in the U.S. on graduate degrees. I realized right away that they poorly understood the books they were assigned and had weak writing skills. After working through two levels of Fix It! Grammar, both demonstrated significant improvement in reading comprehension, writing, and editing.
I had expected improvement in writing but was surprised by better reading comprehension. When I asked why understanding grammar made such a difference in their reading, they explained it in two ways. Being able to tease apart the underlying structure of sentences helped them to see all parts of the sentence and to put them together comprehensibly. Further, knowing why commas, for instance, were in certain places in sentences helped them understand the meaning. Punctuation helps readers see how words interrelate.
With the proliferation of AI, the question about teaching grammar has become more pressing. Do we really need to learn grammar when machines can cure whatever ails our prose before we present it to the world? Why not let our students use AI as a tool to clean up grammar and unclear communication?
It’s tempting. AI’s grammar skills are impressive, and someday it may even produce perfect bibliographies. (Last I checked, ChatGPT could not.)
Why is it bad for students to use these tools? The answer is simple: not learning grammar and punctuation dumbs students down. Yes, AI offers undeniable benefits to adults, but it robs students of improving analytic skills and reading comprehension. Learning grammar develops synapses in the brain, which helps our minds grasp the meaning of what we read. We learn to think by processing language and analyzing data.
Not only that, but AI suffocates the life out of written communication. It has the polish of SparkNotes but is just as dead, missing the heartbeat of the writer. If I read the SparkNotes summary of a novel like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Old Man and the Sea, I know the basic plot but am not engrossed in the plot or characters and don’t remember the stories past a week or two. When I read the novels, their characters come alive. They stay with me as old friends, and I engage with the writers’ ideas. AI writing does not captivate the reader.
I do not look for AI writing in my students’ work, but without my wishing it, it jumps out at me. For one, it’s usually impeccable grammatically, which student writing rarely is. It is also simply boring. There is a lifelessness to the language, a monotony behind the ideas that deadens the language. I would rather read students’ own papers than AI, even with all the human hesitations, awkward constructions, and yes, even errors that let us know a human brain—real thought—is behind it.
Be encouraged that the effort to teach structure, style, and grammatical skills is well worth it. I took Mulroy’s lament to heart and for several years have offered the same test to my advanced IEW writing students, who have had at least two years of IEW. They have consistently outperformed Mulroy’s students, who are classics majors several years older than they are. The statistics from my last advanced IEW class are typical: 64% paraphrased the sentence sensibly in contrast to 30% of Mulroy’s students.
For students today it is vital to do all we can to develop their thinking skills through grammar and writing and not allow technology or apathy in the face of opposition to rob them of that part of their education.
by Pamela White
