Tutoring a Graduate Student in Grammar

Tutoring my someone like my graduate student is the kind of experience every teacher should have. This man WANTS to learn grammar. Yep, grammar. He writes a lot now and wants to be able to proof and edit his own papers.

An intelligent and educated man, he missed or forgot the grammar rules. Listening to news reporters and anchors makes me believe a lot of people in his generation missed out on the basics. As a retired military man he knows about rules and structure.

What's the big deal with the grammar rules? There are rules to allow you to communicate in an effective manner with anyone who speaks your language. Even now people have their children study Latin or a different language because studying those languages involves learning grammar rules. Why not learn the rules of your own language?

Some folks refuse to learn formal usage or correct sentence structure because they already know English. What if you learned the wrong structure, the wrong words for things you need?

Would you argue with a French teacher about learning the right words to use or the correct sentence structure? If you did you'd fail the class in French. That is true of any language. If you use the wrong French words around a Frenchman you might end up with your face rearranged or a bad stomach ache from eat the wrong dish.

If you wanted to build a boat, you'd need to know about carpentry and the structure of boats. You'd need to know the rules before you could break them, unless you wanted to launch your boat into the water and see it sink or enter it in a race and lose because you didn't learn about shape and design for speed. Are their different designs for a motor boat or a sail boat? I would need to find out if I planned to build either kind of boat.

Many people can't perform simple repairs on their homes because they don't have the right tools or don't know how to use them. What's the difference between a nail and a screw? Would you use a sledge hammer to hammer a nail? Would you use a nail file as a screw driver? (Some of us have, but it doesn't always work. You can't always pick a lock with a hair pin, either.)

I plan to present the tools for anyone to improve his or her grammar. Check back often and feel free to ask questions.