8. A Great Idea for Teaching Staff

Academic staff at a college find that Grammar To Go will help them with marking poorly written assignments from their students.

Tucked away in a corner of the staffroom at High Holme Sixth Form College, Paul, Amanda and I spent half an hour leafing through their students’ work files. Paul had been quite right: in almost every case, the students’ biggest let-down was their grammar, spelling and punctuation.
“The actual content is very good”, Paul sighed, “but I just know they’ll get marked down on their writing ability. And up until now, Amanda and I just haven’t had the time or the know-how to tackle it. Grammar was never a strong area of focus in our school days, either!”

As Paul made us all a cup of tea, I fired up my laptop. “I want to take you on a tour of Grammar to Go”, I explained to Amanda. Then you’ll be able to see just how easy and fast it is to reference grammar and spelling information.”

Showing the pair around Grammar to Go didn’t take long. Not for the first time, I felt extremely proud as I demonstrated how the website provides answers to all manner of issues – from spelling and punctuation through to tricky phraseology and grammatical syntax. Paul and Amanda loved the ‘Personal Answers’ area, and when I explained how the site could be used as a self-study guide, I knew that this was the answer they were looking for.

“This is a double-whammy, Jane! Not only is it going to make our lives easier – correcting and tutoring our students on any errors – but the study guide will make their lives easier, too. If they just take the time to work through the section, they’d find their own writing improving in no time at all!”
“You bet they would. And a licence for the college – or even just for your History Department – would mean that you could run Grammar to Go on your internal computers. How many computers do you have in the college library?”
“Ten – that’s right, isn’t it, Amanda?”

The trainee teacher nodded. “Our students use those computers for research, mainly – they type up their essays at home. Of course, we couldn’t possibly give each student their own Grammar to Go log-in for home use, but a college log-in would mean that they could work through the tutorials and do any checking they need to during their free periods. And Paul and I can use Grammar to Go either before or after school – which means we get our marking done before we head off home!”

I smiled at the two teachers. “Sounds like a good solution... so, where do we go from here?”
“The college principal”, frowned Paul. “Trouble is, he’s a hard man to get hold of... and he’s very conservative with college spending. I’m not sure how we’ll convince him of this...”

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