Introduction

When Michelle taught her first high school class, she fit the stereotype of the uptight English teacher obsessed with correct grammar use. Though her teacher pens were full of purple and green ink instead of red, the result was the same: her students’ papers marked with every error she could find. That, she thought, was good grammar instruction. After all, that was how her own teachers had taught grammar so many years earlier: identify the mistakes in student writing relentlessly and follow that with worksheets, lots of worksheets, to hammer home correct usage.