Grammar and Writing Skills: Applying Behavior Analysis

Publisher Summary This chapter describes an approach in which the principles of behavioral science and the larger construct of performance are applied to improve instruction in both the process of writing, and in its underpinnings of grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and style. Some educators contend that reading and writing are best taught together from kindergarten upward. An approach based on the principles of science turns the usual instructional methodology around 180 degrees. Students learn how logic can explain those conventions of usage and punctuation that seemed arbitrary when reduced to rules. The behavioral paradigm forces educators to define the antecedents of actions that students need to identify, and it reminds them to arrange the conditions so that the students' efforts will be meaningful to them. Several principles and practices of behavioral science can be applied to the design of the writing instruction to make it more efficient and therefore more effective. The principal method of a behavioral approach to writing instruction is shaping, as it is in the instruction of many other highly developed behaviors in both animals and people.