Freed from scowling linguistic admonitions, students develop a careful eye in exploring the patterns of our living language in its myriad manifestations, from speaking, writing, reading literature, and finally, in our language reference works.

Introduction by Rebecca S. Wheeler Beyond Grammar of the Traditional Kind Grammar, Tradition and the Living Language by David B. Umbach The Persistence of Traditional Grammar by Edwin Battistella Prestige English Is not a Natural Language by Nicholas Sobin New Ways in the Classroom Dialect Awareness Programs in the School and Community by Walt Wolfram Linguistics Is for Kids by Jeannine M. Donna Looking at Life Through Language by Patricia MacGregor-Mendoza In Front of Our Eyes: Undergraduates Reflecting on Language Change by Anca Nemoianu Grammar Teaching Is Dead--NOT! by Richard Hudson Language and Writing Writing Standard English IS Acquiring a Second Language by Susan K. Heck Reading, Writing and Linguistics: Principles from the Little Red Schoolhouse by Gail Brandel Viechnicki Copious Reasoning: The Student Writer as an Astute Observer of Language by Todd Oakley Writing Well in an Unknown Language: Linguistics and Composition in an English Department by Victor Raskin Language and Literature Waterships All the Way Down: Using Science Fiction to Teach Linguistics by Suzette Haden Elgin In Fiction, Whose Speech, Whose Vision? by Elizabeth Closs Traugott The Poetics of Everyday Conversation by Deborah Tannen On Dictionaries and Grammars Who Wrote Your Dictionary?: Demystifying the Contents and Construction of Dictionaries by Sylvia Shaw Online Resources for Grammar Teaching and Learning: The Internet Grammar of English by Bas Aarts, Gerald Nelson, and Justin Buckley Index

Authors describe dynamic learning of grammar and writing in classrooms where students explore the Ocracoke brogue and dialects of Appalachia, pursue billiard-ball models of meaning in text, and examine the language of science fiction.