As I spoke of previously, I had a phenomenal group of teachers to learn from when at the MTA in Sioux Falls. One of which was Reva Potter of Belle Fourche Middle School. Reva teaches Middle School English and has explored Grammar Checker. You know Grammar Checker, even if you think you don’t. The little squiggly lines below your words, phrases, or even entire paragraphs because you did something wrong– as defined by the higher authority. Well, it was great to listen to Reva talk about Grammar Checker (and numerous other teaching strategies- THANK YOU!).

I have had my own personal beef with Grammar Checker and semicolons. Cory over at Madville Times posted about suitable semicolon usage about a year ago, and it pushed me to write a special unit simply on colon and semicolon usage for my Senior English class. I often find it hard to believe that a senior term paper that ranges in length from 10- 12 pages should contain 15 semicolons. There are more effective ways of writing that make it less haughty, but that is just my rant. It seems as though, when in doubt about sentence structure, Grammar Checker just inserts a semicolon. And, as most of my students cannot wait to get through the term paper, they right click and go to the top ‘fix’ that Grammar Checker recommends.

While working with the National Writing Project, Reva worked with Education Professor Dorothy Fuller to write about the newest English teacher in every classroom. Potter and Fuller Article pdf

One of the main points that Reva stressed was that our most commonly used Grammar Checker is actually about 40 percent correct. FORTY PERCENT! That is failing on any grading scale that I have ever used or have been subjected to. Students automatically fall back to the fact that the computer is always correct, and that is not always true, as stated by Reva. I remember after the first ‘Character Analysis Essay’ that I assigned during my first year of teaching. A highly talented Senior was upset that I had deducted points from her scoring rubric for marking a comma usage as incorrect. She brought her computer up to me, showed me the paper, and explained that, “Well, the computer does not say that it is incorrect– how could you mark it wrong?” I directed her to a grammar handbook, but she still wasn’t buying it. It was a difficult situation for me to work through and I really did not know what I was going to do. I grew up with computers and trusted computers too. I do not actually remember what we did to resolve the conflict (I think we split the difference on the rubric), but it was a gut-wrenching, stomach jump into my throat moment that I will not soon forget. Everything that I knew what being counted wrong– on the first paper assignment! (By the way, this senior is going to school to be an English teacher now, and I know she will be fantastic!)

The theoretical lightbulb gleamed at full wattage as I heard Reva talk about Grammar Checker– again, thank you Reva! The concept of looking at Grammar Checker as a tool and not the end-all-be-all of grammar education is great approach. I think that this year I will do as Reva did in her research project and look at essays in both grammar checked and non-checked form. We will also partner up and then evaluate the differences.

So next time you are conflicted with Grammar Checker, look at it again from this new view…