Grammar In Isolation
The prevailing theory in the modern university classroom, as developed by education bigwigs and based upon their unequivocal research, is that teachers must never give their classes lessons on grammar isolated from other aspects of text. The reasons why sound very compelling to a young teacher or teacher-candidate. The student is easily bored and therefore apt to immediately forget whatever was taught, especially when returning to the realm of available modern technology, where a blind trust in the authority of spell-checkers enables adolescents (and too many adults also) to tolerably get by in the world without looking too much the fools. Education gurus therefore assert that we address grammar as a secondary tier upon methods and concepts that are more likely to hold the students' attention because of their deeper involvement with the text. Perhaps while examining an author's point-of-view (first or third-person) we should look for subject-verb agreement. Perhaps in a wider discourse on description we should find a teachable moment in which to caution against the comma-splice.
