grammar vs. usage

Let me begin by giving Williams an Emphatic “YES” to his first statement in this chapter in which he says that most English teachers are unprepared to teach grammar effectively. I feel completely unprepared to teach grammar simply because I have not had a grammar course in more years than I care to remember. Oh I understand grammar; it is just that I don’t why I do what I do with grammar enough to be able to verbalize it. I had an instructor in one of my classes ask us to diagram a sentence, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember what that meant. I ended up having to go back and re-teach myself the process. I truly expected to see grammar instruction as a part of the curriculum when I began my college career, and I am still surprised that it is not. I did have a linguistics class, but really that class was more about the science of language (morphemes and phonemes come to mind) rather than the nuts and bolts of grammar. I find that because of this omission in my curriculum, I have to re-teach myself quite a bit as far as grammar is concerned simply because it has been so long since I’ve needed it that I have forgotten the rules. As for usage vs. grammar; Williams is right here too when he says that there is an overall failure to differentiate between the two. I readily admit that until reading this chapter. I used both terms interchangeable. So, according to Williams, grammar is how words work together as well as their common patterns, while usage is about word choice and meaning.
Williams goes on to say that teaching grammar does not lead to improved writing. As I looked at this statement (and looked at my newly acquired definitions of grammar and usage) I had to agree. On the one hand, I agree that my knowledge and ability to diagram a sentence will not determine my ability to write well. We all have a basic idea of grammar since we write similarly to the way we speak. We don’t say “Macarena caked the bake” so we won’t write it that way either. However, if I am an English language learner I will not have had the experience of hearing the language and acquiring that language as a child when my ability to duplicate language is developing. It is in this instance where I would say that grammar knowledge can improve writing.Last week we had an animated discussion on which was more important, grading for grammar or grading for meaning.I believe that meaning is more important in our writing, but grammar cannot be completely overlooked either. I think we'll be grappling with this debate for a very long time.