Dear Cyndi et al.:

First, let me apologize for taking so long to react to your original
email, Cyndi -- I've gotten far behind on my ATEG reading (I am foolish
enough to require papers in my 50-student sections, and nothing much
else gets done while I cope with those). 

I suspect there could be a complex set of reasons underlying problems
like you're observing in your eighth-grader. Part of the problem, as
mentioned in the discussion earlier, is that punctuation is not
"natural," at least, not in the sense language is. Intonation *is*
natural, but punctuation only reflects select bits of intonation, and
sometimes does not reflect intonation at all (e.g., the comma that, by
custom, separates the name of a city from that of the state it's in). 

However, there may also be effects from some of the reading strategies
that the student uses -- if, for example, your eighth-grader is adopting
*too* much of a bottom-up strategy, working out the words and then
trying to fit them together into sentences without thinking about the
context, she may be finding it difficult to work punctuation into her
method at all, since punctuation marks aren't words. Proficient readers
tend to work from both ends towards the middle -- we decode words and
assemble them, but at the same time both limit and extend our
interpretations based on expectations, with many of those expectations
being determined by the context. If the student is basically approaching
reading as a "word puzzle" activity, it's going to be very difficult for
her to add punctuation to the equation. When the student tries reading
aloud, does she sometimes sound like she's saying a list of words? 

As a side comment, I think we should not underestimate the extent to
which reading strategies affect students' later writing strategies --
these domains are in no way separate. A student who doesn't routinely go
about guessing what would fit the context next while reading may have
trouble putting him/herself in the shoes of another reader who is trying
to guess what comes next, something one has to do for cohesive (and
coherent) writing.


In the earlier discussion, I started out by arguing that reading led to
"good punctuation." I had to limit the claim when others pointed out,
quite rightly, that reading didn't *automatically* lead to good
punctuation. Even if the claim is just that reading is a "necessary but
not sufficient condition" for learning punctuation, I suppose it should
be further limited to certain *types* of reading. Students spending long
hours struggling through texts they don't really understand will not
internalize much about punctuation from them -- as Craig points out,
it's the relationship between the punctuation and what the text is
*doing* that's the basis for learning. 



Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 9:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: knowledge about language

Ed,
  Your thoughtful response to Cyndi reinforces what I have been thinking
lately in response to those "tests" of grammar which measure impact on
writing over the short term. An understanding of grammar is not easy to
acquire or easy to apply, and it may very well be that it takes time for
the full benefits to mature. Once we begin to look at the whole grammar
of real world sentences (not just an error hunt) we begin to pay close
attention to what and how those sentences mean. Menaing isn't cast into
grammar, but built through it. The relevance to reading is obvious.

Craig
 Dear Cyndi,
>     To an extent, I agree with Bill when he says that non-readers will
> not develop an "innate" knowledge of punctuation. I do, however,
believe
> that systematic instruction in grammar can help non-readers develop
that
> knowledge. The instruction, however, has to do what most current
grammar
> textbooks do not even attempt--it has to enable students to analyze
the
> grammar of real sentences. Such instruction, moreover, cannot "fit"
> within a single grade level.
>      At the KISS Grammar site, we are developing a grammar curriculum
> for grades two through eleven. Exercises are almost all based on
> sentences from real texts. The second grade workbook introduces
students
> to subjects and verbs. Then it adds complements, then adjectives and
> adverbs, then prepositional phrases. It is still being developed, but
> you can see the current work at:
> http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G02_WB1.htm
> Each grade will build on the next, and by eleventh grade students
> should be able to explain how any word fits into any sentence. Along
the
> way, students will be studying punctuation in real texts. They will
also
> be exploring how various grammatical constructions affect the meaning
of
> sentences.
>      Exactly how effective this approach will be in improving reading
> remains to be seen, but I have already seen some improvements in my
> students and have received a few anecdotal reports from members of the
> KISS list. As I understand it, poor readers read words, not phrases,
and
> the KISS approach helps them sees texts as combinations of meaningful
> phrases.
> Ed
>
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 11/12/2006 10:54:22 PM >>>
>
> Dear Bill,
>
> I know this is an old post of yours, but it struck a chord with me.
> I've previously posted what I think is an oversight in this "grammar"
> discussion--we seem to focus on grammar and writing and focus less on
> grammar and reading, which I am seeing is a real lapse.
>
> I have been working one-on-one with a struggling 8th grade reader who
> to save her life cannot decode basic punctuation--she doesn't
recognize
> end stops, she doesn't know intonation for questions or
> exclamations--why not, I ask?  All I know is that conventional
> punctuation is not "innate."  She can comprehend a text that she and I
> have read, but she cannot read on her own, yet I do not see an obvious
> learning disability.  I do think that conventional grammar
> knowledge-grammar of the 21st century complete with 21st century
> punctuation rules, however invented they may seem to us--has a great
> impact on reading comprehension.
>
> I find this reading/grammar connection to be an interesting intrusion
> on what has heretofore been a grammar/writing discussion on our
> listserve and I am hoping that experts like you will respond to my
> questions.
>
> Yours in language,
>
> Cyndi
>
> "Spruiell, William C" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I may be digging up a dead horse here just to beat it, but if we're
> going to be approaching comma splices, run-ons, and fragments in
> connection with the notion of "what native speakers know about
> grammar,"
> it's crucial to keep in mind those particular types of problems are
> artifacts of our punctuation system, not of our language. There *are*
> no
> sentence fragments or run-ons in normal speech; there are highly
> complex
> sequences of clause units. Decisions about where to break up those
> sequences in writing, and about which punctuation mark to use for each
> division, are based on practices which have developed over the past
> two
> millennia among European writers. The early Romans didn't even put
> spaces between words -- a text was a big rectangle formed of lines of
> consecutive letters.
>
> This is why, for example, having a student read aloud through a paper
> at
> normal speed will seldom help that student spot fragments or run-ons
> --
> s/he will simply adopt the right intonation to make the text work,
> ignoring the punctuation. The only luck I've had with "read-aloud"
> approaches to spotting fragments is to have the student read each
> sentence in the text starting from the end and going backwards (it
> destroys the ongoing flow of the context, so the student has to
> evaluate
> each sentence as if it is in a new context).
>
> Even if one takes a very, very strong position on the side of innate
> knowledge of grammar, fragments and run-ons will always be outside of
> that "innate" zone. Instead, students who have read avidly will, by
> the
> time they are in their late teens, have developed an "innate"
> knowledge
> of punctuation, from exposure to the written texts where punctuation
> lives. Non-readers won't, period.
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
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