Abstract
There are two broad approaches to thinking about grammar. A prescriptivist views grammar as a normative set of rules that a speaker or writer should adhere to. In this view, the study of grammar is about establishing standards of correctness. A descriptivist, on the other hand, is interested in language in all its forms, including non-standard usage. A descriptive study of grammar seeks to understand and describe how language operates as a complex system rooted in human cognition. Both approaches have their place: Descriptive grammar is a science, while prescriptive grammar is a social construct. In this Teaching Practice presentation, I share an activity I developed to help students understand the distinction between prescriptivism and descriptivism and to stimulate conversation about the social function of grammar. In the activity, I provide students with a list of sentences that contain prescriptive “errors” that educated people might disagree on, such as split infinitives, sentences that end with a preposition, and the use of who (instead of whom) as a direct object. The students are asked to identify the prescriptive error and then “vote with their feet,” with one side of the room designated for those who find a sentence acceptable and the other side for students who find it unacceptable (and the middle for ambivalence). I find this activity useful because it gets students moving (kinesthetic learning), it invites them to participate actively in making their own acceptability judgments, and it illustrates dramatically that standards of correctness in language are not necessarily absolute but rather socially conditioned. The first purpose of this Teaching Practice presentation is to share the activity and get the audience thinking about grammar in new ways. Secondarily, the audience will be invited to consider ways in which the general template may be applied in their own fields.