Pedagogical Tool Review

Pedagogical Tool Review

Introduction:

            Next semester, I will begin teaching an accelerated-learning course (ALP) in which developmental writing students are integrated into a college-writing class and asked to do college-level work. The developmental students will receive additional support, and one of my goals is to provide much of this support in a way consistent with a blended online/face-to-face classroom.

            I have taught developmental writing for a little more than a decade, and one of the key ways I have found that developmental students lag behind their college-level counterparts is in their command of standard written grammar (SWG). While the power dynamics and even the existence of a “standard” written grammar have been challenged (Barbier; Smitherman), it has also been well established that students—especially those who already come from outside the culture of power—are disadvantaged in the workplace and academia by their uncertain command of generally accepted grammatical conventions (Beason; Delpit). I choose to move forward by stressing to my students that so-called standard grammar is something they should learn for a specific purpose: to get ahead in school and work. They should employ it in much the same way they employ their good set of clothes for a job interview—SWG can get them in the door and set them up for success.

            Unfortunately, I have been frustrated by how challenging it is to teach SWG. Even when students accept my rationale for learning it, they exhibit resistance and fear inculcated by years of inept and often punitive grammar instruction. I have responded in several ways, including writing my own handbook on basic grammatical ideas and punctuation that grounds the concepts in rhetorical context and draws its examples from articles we read in class. My methods have been well received, but I am still searching for better ways to address grammar.

            In keeping with my goals to make my ALP class a blended environment, I decided to search for free computer-based games that addressed basic grammar. While there are numerous grammar resources online, most of them (including those offered by the major textbook companies) are strongly reminiscent of the blue mimeographed worksheets I remember (with nausea) from my youth. I do not want a drill-and-kill approach; instead, I want relaxed, fun learning that does not remind students of their past grammar instruction. It took a surprisingly long time to find non-worksheet-based grammar games that might be applicable for a college developmental student, but I did find two worth exploring: one on the web, and one for the iPad, which I included because of the prevalence of i-devices among my students and my school’s current project to explore student and instructor iPad usage.

Description:

            Grammar Ninja: This game is featured on multiple sites; the one I reviewed was at http://www.wordgames.com/grammar-ninja.html. The purpose of the game is to help players learn parts of a sentence, such as nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc. The premise is that you are a ninja who throws stars at the parts of speech that are called for in a sample sentence. You can choose from three levels of difficulty—the higher ones add in additional parts of speech—scribble notes on the screen, ask for a hint, and finally throw your star into the correct word. The game will indicate whether you are correct or not and will provide help if you are incorrect. At the end of a question set, the game provides feedback based on how long it took you and the percentage of correct answers and gives you a “ninja rank.” The game also features fun music and decent graphics.

Grammar Ninja Front Page
                            

Grammar Ninja Game Page

Grammar Ninja Final Score

            wiseHopper: This is a free iPad or iPhone app. The game allows you to play with math, words, or grammar. The basic premise is that you are an insect trying to hop across a stream before being eaten by a giant frog. In the grammar game, you progress in order from verbs to pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions. The game gives you a sequence of sentences that scroll across the stream in opposite directions; it then prompts you to identify, for instance, verbs, and you, as the insect, have to hop on the appropriate word in each sentence. After you make it across a few sentences, the giant frog appears and begins to hop after you, increasing the pressure to decide on the right word to hop to. If you choose the wrong word, your insect falls into the river. If the frog catches you, you get eaten. (For those readers of a certain age, the game is very reminiscent of Frogger on the Atari.) Once you make it across the stream, the game tells you your time, and you can try to beat your best time. The graphics have limited animation but are quite pleasing.

                          

wiseHopper Front Page                     

wiseHopper Game Play

Review:

            Grammar Ninja: This game seems targeted to the middle-school level, judging by the level of the graphics, which are cartoonish (albeit well done) and the task itself. Additionally, the sentences are not based in the students’ own writing, nor in the context of a finished piece by another writer. This lack of rhetorical context makes the game problematic. Research has suggested that direct skill instruction has little, if any, positive effect on student writing (Hartwell; Tchudi and Mitchell).

            However, many of the students in developmental courses have around a middle-school understanding of basic grammar. Discussions of relatively simple, yet important, concepts such as complete sentences are made more complex by students’ limited understandings. As Beason demonstrated, it is important for writers’ ethos that they learn to write complete sentences and to avoid fused sentences reliably. In past classes, when I have tried to reduce complete-sentence tests to simple formulations (“Look for a noun, verb, and complete idea.”), I have encountered difficulty because students are not able to identify nouns and verbs. I have decided that some basic understandings of parts of speech may be necessary for us to have a productive conversation.

            As one of my principle goals with the ALP course is to help students to conceive of themselves as college material, the level of the game concerns me. They have work to do to get to the college level; however, I worry that the basic nature of the game may serve to highlight for them how far they need to come. I do not want them to think that I conceive of them as middle-school students. However, it is difficult to predict student perceptions. A colleague of mine has used Grammar Ninja in her developmental writing classes and reports that many of the students, especially the males, love it. They found the rankings at the end to be motivational, and got competitive with each other to attain the highest scores.

            wiseHopper: This game is similarly targeted to much lower than a college-level student. However, I found myself more engaged than with Grammar Ninja; somehow, the pursuit of the frog intensified the game for me and made me more focused. (Or maybe it’s because I always liked Frogger.) The quality of the graphics was pleasing and did not seem insulting, and the pressure of the frog increased the difficulty in a positive way. The game does not give hints or the same quality of feedback for missed answers as Grammar Ninja, but if you fall off into the river because you answered something wrong, it highlights your correct answers in the previous sentences, making it easy to hop back to where you messed up.

            Somewhat confusingly, wiseHopper does not recognize helping verbs. For example, in the sentence “I am writing an essay,” wiseHopper would count hopping onto “am” to be a mistake and “writing” to be the only correct option. While this is not a deal-killer for the app, it would require a “grammar-speak” explanation to the students, which is one thing I am trying to avoid.

            Like Grammar Ninja, wiseHopper does not provide any rhetorical context for the sentences it includes, and it suffers from the same pitfalls as other methods of direct skill instruction. However, it might serve as a precursor to more effective grammar instruction by helping students learn basic grammar vocabulary and the ability to recognize parts of speech.

Discussion:

            We know that grammar usage can serve as a socioeconomic marker and influence how others see us (Beason; Gorrell; Lynch-Biniek). We also know that grammar is best addressed rhetorically—as an element of the transaction of meaning between writer and reader—and not with piecemeal sentences divorced from context (Dawkins; Williams). Neither of these programs follows these best practices, and both are more closely aligned with the teaching of grammar as a series of isolated and absolute rules.

            However, I plan to try them this fall, and I would urge other teachers of developmental writing to give them a careful look. When used narrowly as a relatively painless way to build a common grammatical vocabulary and improve sentence recognition, they may have merit. The competition and video-game-like feel might engage students in an otherwise boring subject, and when used for a short time early in the class, the software might provide a scaffold for basic writers to engage grammar in a deeper, more rhetorical way as the class progresses.

Works Cited

Barbier, Stuart.  “The Reflection of ‘Students’ Right to Their Own Language’ in First-Year Composition Course Objectives and Descriptions.” TETYC 30.3 (March 2003): 257-67. Print.

Beason, Larry. “Ethos and Error: How Business People React to Errors.” CCC 53:1 (September 2001): 33-64. Print.

Dawkins, John. “Teaching Meaning-Based Punctuation.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 31:2 (December 2003): 154-162. Print.

Delpit, Lisa. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press, 2006. Print.

Gorrell, Donna. “Style and Identity: Students Writing like the Professionals.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 32:4 (May 2005): 393-402. Print.

Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” College English 47 (February 1985): 105-27. Rpt. in The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing. Eds. Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn. 3^rd ed. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995: 370-393. Print.

Lynch-Biniek, Amy. “Bemoans, Belittles and Leaves.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College. 33.1 (2005): 29-37. Print.

Smitherman, Geneva. "CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights." CCC 50.3 (1999): 349-376. Print.

Tchudi, Steven, and Diana Mitchell. Explorations in the Teaching of English. 3^rd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Print.

Williams, Joseph M. “The Phenomenology of Error.” CCC 32 (1981): 152-68. Rpt. in Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View: Mayfield, 1996: 163-175. Print.