This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 74 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode we're going to talk about the best way to deal with student grammar errors.

It happens at the start of every school year. Teachers decide that once and for all,

they are going to fix the problem of student grammar errors. These kids can't write, they say.

They don't know their parts of speech. They can't spell. They write in text language.

Their writing is full of run-on sentences. They don't even put capital letters at the beginning

of sentences anymore. I mean, what did they teach them last year anyway? And so it is decided.

Before getting into any curriculum this year, before having students write a single thing,

they are going to get back to basics. One, two, three, four weeks of nothing but parts of speech

lessons, grammar drills, punctuation exercises. Surely, if they teach it hard enough,

that ought to take care of it. Except it doesn't. As the school year wears on, despite all those

drills, students continue to make the same mistakes. And all across the land, their teacher's voices

rise in chorus, I taught you this. We went over this. Don't you remember?

In this episode, we're going to talk about why teaching grammar in this way doesn't work

and what you should do instead. Today's sponsor is a perfect platform for teachers who want to get

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