Deborah Dean's writing on Shifting Perspective About Grammar is one of the sincere revelation of the
evolution of teaching language and grammar. I find this writing quite liberating in the sense that it reveal the
fact that teaching is not meant to be stereotype, fixed or maintain a statue-quo, but that there will always be a
continuous progression that help us in what and how we teach language and grammar.
In stating that language is connected to who and what we are and everything we do, it is for this reason that we cannot just see language as a matter of right or wrong though most teachers have been trained in this way. Some of those who see language issue as right or wrong, according to Dean, they "look at issue of language in stark contrast instead of in relation to context. Although Dean was expected to feed her students this same information she was taught regarding grammar. Flexibility played a major role in the process of her development as her perspectives to teaching began to shift through her years of teaching. She noted that shifting perspective s is one of the first challenges to seeing language instruction from a more effective position.
The writing was divided into three parts, The Past Tense, The present Tense and The Future Tense.
In The Past grammar was regarded as terminology unrelated to writing; grammar as right or wrong and language as answer in the textbook - totally removed from what the students wrote or spoke. what they were learning does not improve their writing or speaking. The introduction of the idea of imitation and sentence combining brought about a shift in perspective as the students are taught to match language practices or instructions to genre as much as possible.
In The Present, she made the progress in her teaching as she moved the students to match the sentences they are imitating and combining with the genre they are writing. At this stage, grammar is taught in the context of reading and writing, in which case they were also learning how grammar can be more intimately connected to meaning. Grammar is no longer a single construction and is bigger than identifying parts of speech but rather students are beginning to see that language is like most life, just as we make the best choice out of options available in our particular situation. Worthy of note is the fact that the writing in relation to situation and genre will require the skill of code-switching and the need to adjust their language for different genres.
