Rhetorical Questions Part Two - Grammar - Integration or Isolation?

In an attempt to determine which topic the Argumentative Research Paper for the class will be, the stases invention process outlined by Sharon Crowley in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students was used with the following results:

Potential Topic #2 - Grammar - Integration or Isolation?

Should Grammar be taught as a stand-alone skill, or should it be taught informally through the writing process? Should it be a primarily emphasis of the teaching of English, or have current word processing programs and internet searches made it an increasingly archaic remnant of days gone by?

Thesis (general) or Hypothesis (specific)

• My choice:  Thesis (general): 
• What is the best way to teach grammar in a high school English classroom?

Thesis framed in Practical Terms:

• Should grammar be taught in isolation as a separate unit, or integrated into all aspects of the English curriculum in grades 9-12?

Which of the four stases best describes the point at issue in the rhetorical situation at hand?

Conjecture

• Is grammar instruction important in the digital, word processing, auto-correct age of enlightenment, or is it obsolete?
• What are historic and current trends in grammar instruction?
• What is the best way to teach it?

Definition

• What exactly is grammar in the 21st century?
• How does grammar normally fit into English curriculum?
• What does grammar taught in isolation look like?
• What does grammar taught as an integrated part of the curriculum, rather than a stand-alone unit, look like?

Quality

• Why does grammar matter?
• Is the goal of proficiency in grammar to generate better writers or better test takers? Is it possible to do both?
• How?
• Is there a third way? A hybrid version?

Procedure

• How could this be implemented in a classroom?

In this assessment of how to approach the topic of the best way to teach grammar, using Crowley’s Stases Theory, the most applicable stasis in Hermagora’s Questions is Definition – defining what exactly grammar is in the 21st century, because in determining that answer, I think it will also answer a lot of the other questions under Definition (ways to teach it in the two ways) and other stases - like Conjecture - current and historic trends in grammar instruction; Quality - the goals of grammar instruction, and Procedure - implementation.

I also think it is complex enough to be a doctoral thesis, so it will take some narrowing down, which is the risk of a thesis vs. a hypothesis. I couldn't figure out how to answer my question under what I considered the narrower constraints of the Hypothesis, but I may be wrong.  I began this two-fold assignment fairly certain that this is the topic I wanted to write about (discerned through our invention processes in class last week), so to be honest I thought about it a lot more than my topic #1.  However, the biggest surprise for me came in the Hermagora's Questions analysis under Quality. I hadn't even though about the ramifications of one way of teaching grammar vs. another in classrooms as skewed to testing as they are in the current educational and political environment. That prompted me to think about the question in a new way - not just about best teaching practices but best test results. I don't think the two are necessarily compatible, or attainable, in the constraints of common core assessments and all the other commercially-profitable practices tearing up our schools today. 

As I begin my research that will be an underlying thought, but not the focus. I am really concerned, at this point in my newly sprouted teaching career, with the best way to actually teach, not test, students, so that they have the skills they need in life long after the tests are over.

(But I digress, and rant..... I'll climb off the soapbox and get back to work on the next phase of the process.)