Welcome to the wonderful world of teaching things you never had to learn.<\/p>\n
Why do I say that? Because if you\u2019re anything like the 99% of English teachers I\u2019ve known, you grew up reading books, needing them like others need air. This need probably resulted in lots of positive outcomes, like high SAT scores<\/a> (Verbal, anyway . . .) and a life-long love of literature, but it probably also resulted in some not-so-positive outcomes, like an inability to avoid sneering when you see an incorrectly used apostrophe and a growing frustration over why your students insist on driving you crazy with their written conventions<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re reading this book, chances are, you never had to learn how to use a comma. Nobody ever had to teach you that \u201ca lot\u201d is two words. But you know what? The vast majority of our students DO need to be taught these things, and it\u2019s your job to teach them. Not because the world will stop spinning if your students continue to splice sentences with commas, but because they deserve every advantage you can give them, and this you can do. The truth is, nobody else is going to do it, and the students who need to learn correct conventions are not going to learn them like you did, through reading.<\/p>\n Teaching conventions<\/a> is not always barrel-of-monkeys fun, but it is satisfying. It also gives you and your students the opportunity to enjoy something not common in the world of Literature and Language Arts: OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT. Yes\u2013you, too, can employ the \u201cright or wrong\u201d method of assessing at least this small part of teaching English. The arts of \u201clanguage arts\u201d still include the heartbreakingly subjective assessment of and response to all types of student writing, but if you choose to incorporate conventions into your course, you can\u2013at least in this small way\u2013be cheerleader and coach instead of judge and jury. And you can give your students valuable and necessary knowledge and skills they will use for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n Before you start using this book, you should probably know that it\u2019s not 100% correct. What I mean is, I teach my students that \u201caffect\u201d means \u201calter\u201d and that \u201ceffect\u201d means \u201coutcome.\u201d But the truth is, sometimes \u201caffect\u201d is a noun that doesn\u2019t mean \u201calter\u201d at all, and sometimes \u201ceffect\u201d is a verb. I don\u2019t tell my students that (and this book doesn\u2019t teach that) because the only people who will look down on them for making that error are people whose opinions they should not be concerned about. (Yes, I did just end a sentence with a preposition<\/a>, and if that bothers you, this book isn\u2019t right for you, although it might be just right for your students.)<\/p>\n There are tens of thousands of grammar textbooks out there. What makes this one different? Glad you asked. I think it\u2019s different in three ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About this book<\/h3>\n