Grammar Text 
EN/ED325 Syllabus

EN/ED325 – Grammar for Teachers
Spring 2000, Dr. Glauner

1. Parts of Speech.

Initial Assessment: 14 students. 114 correct responses 168 possible (68%).
Final Examination: 13 students. 111 correct responses out of 156 possible (71%).

Note: On the initial assessment no student was incorrect on more than six items. On the final exam, one student missed 11 of 12 and another missed 9 of 12. Both took the initial assessment. In both of these cases, the students underlined multiword phrases and marked them as subject, predicate, prepositional phrase, etc. Eliminating these two scores as complete misreading of the item, and, in statistical fairness, eliminating these two students from the initial assessment on this item, the statistics on this item are as follows:

Initial Assessment: 12 Students: 97 correct responses out of 144 possible (67%).
Final Examination: 11 students: 107 correct responses out of 132 possible (81%).

 2. Complete Subject (Subject Noun Phrase) Vs. Complete Predicate (Predicate Verb Phrase).

Initial Assessment: 11 correct responses out of 28 possible (39%).
Final Examination: 20 correct responses out of 26 possible (77%).

3. Infinitive, Participial, and Gerund Phrases.

Initial Assessment: 15 correct responses out of 42 possible (36%).
Final Examination: 23 correct responses out of 39 possible (59%).

Note: Since the items differ, it is difficult to judge precisely the usefulness of the comparison. But two things emerge. 1) The students did not learn as much about verbal phrases as I would have liked. 2) They knew more at the end of the semester than they did at the beginning.

4. Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences.

Initial Assessment: 25 correct responses out of 42 possible (60%).
Final Examination: 30 correct responses out of 39 possible (77%).

Item 2:

Initial Assessment: 24 correct responses out of 56 possible (43%).
Final Examination: 32 correct responses out of 39 possible (82%).

Note: Final examination Item 2 is reworded in a way that makes it easier than the initial assessment Item 2. The extreme increase in percentage of correct responses seems, however, to provide some assurance of learning between the two assessments.

Note on the entire course: The above items were not necessarily of primary concern in the course. For instance, I spent only one class period specifically covering parts of speech and less than one on verbal phrases. Approximately half of the class time during the semester was spent on basic sentence patterns (which I chose not to cover on the initial assessment because few of the students had ever heard of such a grammatical phenomenon). Another quarter of the time was spent on methods of teaching grammar. Thus, to a large extent, learning in regard to the above assessment items is a product of incidental contact during the discussion of other grammatical matters. Had I included basic sentence patterns, elaboration of basic sentence patterns, transformations, or pedagogical techniques in the initial assessment, the gulf between the scores on the initial assessment and the final examination would, undoubtedly, be much broader.