Grammar or Usage?

Apparently like most people, I lumped grammar and usage into one thing—grammar. Even though I have taken a grammar course in college, I still didn’t know there was a difference. I think the reason for this is the way we are taught grammar in grade school. Even teachers lump grammar and usage together. I was always taught that correcting comma errors and other such things was considered grammar. I can see where this presents a problem. In that case, I would say that teaching grammar isn’t all that important because I agree that every native speaker of a language already knows the grammar on an implicit level. There are some cases where learning grammar would be helpful with writing. You have those words that sound the same when you say them, like “capital” and “capitol,” but provide two different contexts when used in a sentence. I think a lesson on these types of words would be very helpful for students instead of learning which words are nouns, adjectives, etc. When you think about it, it is not all that important to know the terms as long as you put them in the correct order when you speak and write.
I think the idea of communicative competence is interesting—the ability to switch registers when speaking comes with maturity. Most young children speak in the same register all the time no matter who they are talking to, but adults are able to switch registers with no problem. For example, I talk completely different to my friends than I talk to my professors. This idea goes along with the idea of Standard English. I don’t believe people need to speak the same way. African Americans are constantly criticized for the way they talk. People from the South have a different dialect, and people from the west also have a different dialect. I do agree with the fact that Standard English is more appropriate in a wide range of situations, like school and the workplace. Students should be encouraged to speak and write the way they usually would, and a good way to encourage them would be to give them the opportunity to free write and socialize in school. On the other hand, it is essential that they learn Standard English in order to receive good grades on essays and looking further into the future, get hired for jobs. I watched a video in my college grammar class where a teacher was teaching a class of African Americans Standard English, and I loved the way that it was being taught. The teacher made a game out of it. He split the class into two groups. He would put an example of Black Vernacular Language on the board, such as “Dat ain’t right.” The students would have to correct the sentence to make it Standard English, and they had a lot of fun with it. The teacher made sure to tell the class that it wasn’t unacceptable to talk or write like that, but there are many situations when Standard English is very necessary. I think this activity would be really helpful to students because it is being applied to their own lives. It could also be done with other dialects or slangs. I think an activity like this gets rid of the impressions that people who are supporters of all Standard English are elitists.
I agree that grammar instruction does not improve writing. How could it? What is the point of sentence diagrams and all of that other stuff that always seems like busy work? Although I enjoy sentence diagramming (I know, I’m a nerd), I know it does not help me with anything. You get too caught up with where the lines go and if you put a backslash or a forward slash for the object of the sentence or whatever else, and you don’t really get the concept of the activity then. But is there really a concept? Usage, on the other hand, does improve writing. Having missing commas or misplaced commas could change the meaning of a sentence and how it is read. I think there should be more emphasis on usage because that is where most of the issues lie in student writing. The concepts of the different types of grammars are rather confusing, and I found myself getting them very confused while I was reading. Sometimes I think people make things more complicated than they need to be. As with most other theories on different things, I think ideas from each type of grammar could be implemented in the classroom. That would be very challenging to decipher from one or the other; I could see me standing there thinking to myself, “Now is this transformational-generative grammar or cognitive grammar? I have no idea!” I just know that grammar does need to be taught differently. Grammar exercises out of a workbook are counterproductive but besides the activities mentioned before, what all can you do to teach grammar? It seems like there’s not a lot of options because it is so cut and dry.