Teaching Grammar Enhances Writing: Impacts of Grammar on Students Writing Skills - Essay Example

This paper inquires if teaching grammar enhances writing abilities. It determines if teaching grammar impacts writing, the roles of grammar teaching in writing, and the effective ways of teaching grammar that can enhance writing skills. Its scope is grammar teaching that encompasses instructional techniques, which enable learners to concentrate on specific grammatical forms. Grammar teaching can help students understand grammar metalinguistically and to comprehend them for internalization that aids their production of written works.

This research uses secondary research design. It uses Google, JSTOR, and EBSCO databases in finding relevant studies using the key words, “grammar”, “writing,” and “teaching.” Selected studies employed different cohorts, from grade school to post-graduate students and included native and/or non-native English speakers. Findings showed that teaching grammar can positively affect writing, but the effects are mediated by grammar teaching approaches and the knowledge and ability of teachers in using creative and contextual grammar teaching approaches.

In addition, grammar has the roles of offering the basic structure for writing, deepening critical thinking, and linking language to meaning-making. Furthermore, some effective approaches to teaching grammar are those that respond to both form and meaning and that follow process-based methods that are aligned with learners’ language knowledge and skills and communication needs and purposes. The paper concludes that teaching grammar can only improve students’ writing abilities if it allows them to write critically and contextually.

Grammar approaches and methods that work are reflective of students’ needs to express themselves in empowering and liberating ways.