Contextualize Grammar | Plain English | Rhetorical Choices | Sample Assignments
Additional Resources
Why Can't They Write?
For centuries, professors (and the public) have been lamenting students' inability to write correctly and gracefully. Consider the following quotation:
Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscripts written in an examination room...have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy 12 years old. (46) ["An Answer to the Cry for More English" (1879), Harvard University professor Adams Sherman Hill, qtd. in The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College: 1875-1925, John C. Bereton, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.]
Still, since there is only cold comfort in knowing that our struggles are not new, what can we do? Since the 1970s, studies of formal grammar instruction have repeatedly shown that direct instruction (i.e., grammar "drills" divorced from students' own writing contexts) does little good in improving the overall quality of student writing. However, targeted practice in skills and sentence patterns is clearly important in a writer's education, and students may be motivated to engage in such practice once they realize that errors in mechanics and usage damage an author's credibility. The following suggestions and sample exercises should provide a few starting points.
Back to the Top
Contextualize Instruction in Grammar/Usage
The best research suggests that students are more likely to master the subtleties of usage when they learn to see patterns of expression (and error) in their own writing. Therefore, whenever possible, consider using sample sentences or paragraphs from student work. You can draw from informal or formal writing assignments for such examples.
Back to the Top
Provide "Plain English" Definitions for Grammatical Terms
Students are often confused by technical terms like "misplaced modifier" - they may have a vague recollection of the term, but have no idea how to correct the mistake. It can be helpful to refer students to specific sections of a grammar handbook for examples or practice in particular skills. In addition, pointing out and correcting the first instance of a mistake can help a student see what to do in the future. (This is especially effective if followed by a required revision for the recurring error.)
Back to the Top
Grammar as Rhetorical Choice
Philosophically, those who “do” grammar fall into two camps: prescriptive grammarians who are concerned with the “rules” of the game, and descriptive grammarians who seek to explain how language is used by actual speakers. While both types are likely to notice the appearance of the word “ain’t” in a student's essay, the former group might simply condemn it (for violating the rules of contraction for the verb "to be"), while the latter group might describe the social, economic, and cultural environments that surrounded the word’s production.
In any given case, we may not be sure whether a student's use of "ain't" was deliberate or artless - the product of habit or of a conscious rhetorical choice. To the prescriptive grammarian, the distinction may be of no importance. Many writing instructors, however, will encourage students to experiment with and become conscious manipulators of grammatical conventions. To use a good sentence fragment here and there.
Back to the Top
Sample Assignments
Back to the Top
Additional Resources
- > The Internet Grammar of English
- > Common Errors in English
- > "Passive is Spoken Here" by William Germano (Chronicle of Higher Education) - From the introduction: "Silver spoons, real ones anyway, owe a lot of their charm to the hallmarks on the back of the stem. Academic writing has its own system of validation, its own hallmarks, and one is the passive voice. This is a strange development, considering how vigilant we are about overuse of the passive when we teach writing, and how insistent writing guides can be on this point."
- > Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar. 4th edition. New York: Longman, 2003.
- > Jack Lynch, "Guide to Grammar and Style" - This guide offers clear explanations of various matters of mechanics, style and usage. The site has a basic search engine and offers clear explanations of terms and rhetorical choices.
- > Joseph Williams, "The Phenomenology of Error" (pdf article) - Considering examples of “professional” writers who violate a number of grammatical conventions, Williams concludes that the rules by which we judge grammaticality are arbitrary. He locates error (physically) in two places – in students’ papers and in grammar handbooks – and in three experiences – the writer’s creation of error, the teacher’s identification of error, and the grammarian’s proposition of the rule for the error. Noticing these patterns, Williams suggests that we reconsider how we judge and respond to our students’ (and our own) “errors.”
Back to the Top
|
