How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Understand the rules of punctuation
How to teach writing – Part 1

Over the years, the teaching of punctuation has suffered some bad press. The SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) lesson was often frowned on because it was seen as lazy. In some eyes, if it isn’t active, physical or flamboyant then it isn’t teaching. A teacher simply pulls out a grammar textbook and students proceed to complete the task. Where was the teacher acting out at the front of the class? Where was the card sort? The essentials were lost in entertainment pretending to be teaching. Punctuation got a rough deal. It wasn’t sexy. Yes, people might have a penchant for semicolons or colons because they appear as if they might be difficult. But, you wouldn’t see teachers planning a lesson on comma usage if they wanted it to be ’outstanding’.

Punctuation, love it or hate it, is an integral part of writing and communication. We all know how a comma in the wrong place makes it sound like someone is going to eat their granny, but there is something important about learning the function of pieces of punctuation, or even how they can have multiple functions. Without this level of precision, we end up just telling students to chuck in an exclamation mark because Ros Wilson’s ’Punctuation Pyramid’ tells us it’s better than a comma.⁷ Or just use a comma when there is a pause. Punctuation has been simplified, neglected and misused.

We have even got to the stage where we have endless battles between the pro- and anti-teaching-grammar camps on Twitter. Personally, I think you need a healthy balance of both explicit grammar teaching and implicit learning through reading. They go hand in hand, not arm against arm. Learning what a conditional sentence⁸ is will not instantaneously make you the greatest writer, but it will help you to notice the different ways writers use it. Later, you will be able to adopt it in your own writing. I don’t agree with the vocal (mainly children’s) writers who spout how the learning of grammar rules is actually detrimental to expression. Some of our greatest Victorian writers had the most rigid and explicit grammar teaching and they turned out alright. To an extent, English teaching has always been a battle between order and chaos — or simply, rules and freedom. We want students to be creative, but we also want them to follow the rules of language. It is far better for this to happen from a place of knowledge rather than by happenstance, serendipity and ignorance.

Grammar is like the rules behind a game. You could still play without them, but you wouldn’t do it properly and chaos would ensue. Yeah, you might score a goal, but how do you know what a goal is, or what skill and finesse look like. You’ll most likely be disqualified in any case because you didn’t follow the rules. When you have the rules clear in your head, you can use them to your advantage, use them to find the shortcuts and, ultimately, to win. Plus, rules help narrow the parameters. There is less chaos and fewer variables, so what you effectively work on is a narrow band of skills.

There’s a glut of people in society, often famous writers, who argue that they weren’t explicitly taught grammar but look at how successful they are. A group of people who seem to have had an education on a Lord of the Flies style island devoid of adult supervision and rules. Like the boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, it seems idyllic and fun, but I don’t think Piggy would agree. Explicit teaching of grammar ensures that students, like Piggy, are not let down and have a chance to succeed.

It is our job to help our students master the rules of writing, and those jobs may be forfeited if Tiny Tim decides to write his story without any punctuation because he wants to symbolise the way the education system has stymied his creativity. Yes, it might be lovely and beautiful that a student can express his ideas through a rhyming couplet, but if that student can’t write a competent letter of application then the couplet is unlikely to be of much use. There is a moral dimension to grammar. We want students to better themselves and understanding grammar is one way to do that. All too often, those protesting about explicit grammar teaching are not interacting with students day in, day out. So what would they know?

Take the simple exclamation mark: a mark that editors hate and that has been abused for decades. In lessons, it is used with gleeful abandon to show shock. But doesn’t it have another purpose? To show disgust? To show disbelief? To show surprise? Young writers overuse the exclamation mark because social media has made it acceptable.

What is that!

I am not going to touch it!

Not again!

The exclamation mark is used for different effects. The function is the same, yet the purpose is different. Teach the function of the punctuation, then explore its purpose. We know that single inverted commas are used to separate words from the original text, yet the purpose of inverted commas can also be to show sarcasm, humour, exaggeration, shock, disgust, etc.

I often get students to use punctuation with purpose. Well, effect really, because I blur the two together. Telling students to use different pieces from the ’Punctuation Pyramid’ is helpful to develop variety, but it is pretty useless when you are trying to use punctuation to any sophisticated level. Therefore, I get students to use punctuation with a particular effect in mind.

Use inverted commas to be sarcastic.

The dress was incredibly ’fashionable’.

Use ellipses to show you have forgotten something.

I walked down the stairs thinking about something to do with … with … something I couldn’t remember.

Use a colon for dramatic effect by referring back to something that was hinted at before.

The room was empty apart from a dark figure: a statue whose eyes looked directly at me and blinked.

Use two dashes to add a parenthetical comment and change the tone of the writing.

The journey back home had been surprisingly quiet — I later realised I had forgotten to put the baby in the car when I left the shopping centre — as I plodded through my daily routine.

Always link punctuation to effect and to function. Students need to be explicitly taught these functions. We want students to write with clear purpose and this needs to be drip-fed to them all the time. Punctuation has a job and an effect.