grammar and mechanics

Exploring Grammar in Food Reviews: A Critical Language Awareness Approach

Activities, Critical Language Awareness, genre and discourse community, grammar and mechanics, linguistic diversity, rhetorical situation, Style, translingualism, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Lyn Westergard and Chloe de los Reyes Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity uses food reviews as an entry point for teaching grammatical awareness, specifically adjective strings and intensifiers, within a multilingual undergraduate writing course. Grounded in critical language awareness, the activity positions grammar as a rhetorical resource rather than a set of […]

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Clause Patterns, Clause Meanings

Activities, Critical Language Awareness, drafting and revising, grammar and mechanics, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, reflection /

Mark Shea Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description In my writing classroom, I want students to approach revising and polishing with the idea that there is benefit to trying different phrasings and sentence structures. Even if their current writing works, the only way to know if there’s a better version is to try new versions

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Framing Bad News: Hedging, Voice, and HR Memos

Activities, collaboration and group work, Critical Language Awareness, drafting and revising, genre and discourse community, grammar and mechanics, peer review, professional writing, reflection, rhetorical situation, technical writing /

Chris Mayer Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This two-class sequence, which is an ideal fit for professional writing or business communication courses, helps students see how grammatical and lexical choices shape the ethical and practical work of workplace communication. The project culminates in students drafting a one-page memo delivering bad news through announcing policy

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Experimenting with Style: Cyborg Voices

Activities, genAI, grammar and mechanics, Process, rhetorical situation, Style /

Benjamin Hojem and Rhiannon Scharnhorst Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description From Aristotle’s correctness to Quintilian’s purity to Campbell’s nationality, rhetorical instruction in the formal qualities of writing has long emphasized stylistic “virtues” that serve to exclude language variants and their speakers. With this history in mind, how should we understand the capabilities and affordances

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Beautiful Sentences

Activities, Critical Language Awareness, grammar and mechanics, linguistic difference, punctuation, Style /

Mark Shea Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description We often associate metalinguistic terminology with an adherence to normative language standards in students’ writing. Basing metalinguistic practice on students’ own writing can also evoke demotivating and damaging episodes in prior educational contexts. A more productive way to incorporate a focus on metalinguistic language into writing courses

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The Grammar of Text Messaging: Analyzing Non-Standard English to Develop Genre Awareness

Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, grammar and mechanics, language bias, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity /

Kristen Vogel Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In every course I teach, I work to instill in students the understanding that Standard English is merely one variety among many, rather than a superior form. In this assignment, students are asked to write an essay that analyzes the “grammar” of their own writing in a

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Concise Writing Strategies

Activities, drafting and revising, grammar and mechanics, Style /

Elizabeth Blomstedt Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Students often rely on writing strategies that make their writing wordy and bloated—sometimes subconsciously, sometimes to make their writing sound more sophisticated, and sometimes to meet word count. Presenting students with concrete strategies for making their writing more direct, clear, and concise increases student awareness of their

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Non-standardized Grammar Assignment

Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Assignments, critical thought and analysis, grammar and mechanics, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, narrative and storytelling, prewriting and invention, Racial Literacy /

Cheyenne Franklin Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description “… dont nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them ‘vulnerable to prejudice.’ It’s ATTITUDES” (Young 110). Vershawn Ashanti Young, along with Asao Inoue, Geneva Smitherman, and more recently April Baker-Bell, have long fought against oppressive language standards in education. It is not enough, they have jointly argued,

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Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style

grammar and mechanics, rhetorical appeals and argument, Volume 3 /

Craig Hulst Volume 3 Chapter Description This chapter focuses on grammar, specifically on understanding that grammar is much more than just the rules that we have been taught. Rather, grammar can be used rhetorically—with an understanding of the writing situation and making appropriate choices regarding the structure of the sentences, the use of punctuation, using

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