Johanna Rubba wrote:

> Ed raises a good question: what kind of writing do we want our students
> to do 'effectively'? I would say every kind, from personal letters to
> short stories to expository texts of various genres.

I would not answer this question this way.  I think at lower levels it
is probably good for students to try to write short stories and letters
and poems.  I teach at a university.  I don't care whether university
graduates can write a short story, a poem, a love letter, a letter of
thank you to a grandparent, or just any kind of expository text.

I think the goal of writing instruction from high school on should be to
provide the student with an understanding of how to make generalizations
and support them.  This means an ability to move from the general to the
specific and back again.  (I think it was Mina Shaunessey who talked
about the problem basic writers have in doing this.)

One of the important goals of any writing instruction from middle school
on must be to have students control grammatical structures which are
rare in the spoken language.  Because narratives can be effective with
essentially the grammar of spoken English, they must not be the MAIN
focus of any instruction on writing for students.

One of the most difficult problems students who do not control
grammatical structures that occur in writing have is in integrating
written sources into their writing.  (See that last sentence for an
example of a construction very rare in the oral language.)  Jim Kenkel
and I gave a paper on this topic several years ago at ATEG.  It seems to
me that every college graduate should have some facility in integrating
written sources into their writing.

Finally, I think we should have as a goal to provide high school
graduates enough linguistic security to understand prescriptions about
writing.  For example, I think about the Plain English movement in
writing documents.  At a minimum, every college (high school?) graduate
should have enough metalinguistic knowledge of English grammar to
understand the prescriptions of Plain English and when those
prescriptions can not be followed.  Another example would be for every
high school graduate not to be baffled by the comments a grammar checker
makes.

> In spite of the
> popular approach of teaching 'comparison & contrast' vs. 'process' etc.,
> I find that actual formal writing varies pretty widely. Business texts,
> material in magazines and newspapers, books ... there is great variety
> out there, much of which does not conform to these rhetorical categories.

Although the traditional rhetorical approach has limitations, it does
provide students with a hook for organizing ideas in a particular kind
of writing or within longer texts.  Again, I would observe that no
college educated person has to be capable of being able to write a
magazine article, let alone, a newspaper column.

>
> My vision, and I think that of some other 3S committee members, is
> broader. The reason we want to re-examine and reformulate the whole
> curriculum, K-12, is to achieve a broader goal for what grammar
> instruction will be useful for. Grammar instruction, if it begins at the
> appropriately early age and continues _consistently_ and in step with
> children's developmental stages, will develop language awareness in
> children. Mainly, it will equip them with the terminology and analytical
> skills they can use to understand, evaluate, and improve every kind of
> writing they do, from poems to business reports.

This vision is very similar to the vision I have about grammar
instruction for all students.  In the end, as writers, we all have
choices.  To the degree we understand the range of choices available to
us (I have to believe even in the absence of research) the choices that
we make will be better.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University