>     I have, by the way, reread the relevant parts of the Braddock and
>Hillocks
>reports, and I now find that, to a large extent, I agree with them. It
>seems to me
>that most of the members of ATEG, although they clothe it in new terms,
>are going
>back to the "traditional" memorization, definition, kill-and-drill
>approach of the
>textbooks. In essence, fill the students with definitions, rules, exceptions,
>etc., and then wonder why their writing doesn't improve. If anyone can
>explain why
>I'm wrong, I'm interested.
>Ed V.
>

Ed,

I will send you some suggestions for your exercises privately, after I've
had a chance to work on the idea a bit.

I think you're right, though, about what is happening with at least some of
the members of ATEG. You're probably referring to the "Susan needs help"
series, which struck me as distinctly retro. After all the discussions we
have had about the problems of the traditional approaches, those approaches
are still recommended. I looked in vain for someone to tell Susan to sit
down with her son and a draft of the paper, go through about half of it
with him to show how punctuation should be corrected, and challenge him to
correct the rest on his own. Then she can check over the rest, discuss the
corrections with her son, and go from there. (Or, if she regards this as
giving her son too much help--a form of cheating, perhaps--she could work
with final drafts that have already been graded by the child's teacher.)

This approach is labor-intensive but probably will work if there is a
decent amount of rapport between child and parent--or student and teacher,
as the case may be.

As for aspects of style, there still is no better approach than sentence
combining, though sentence imitation and several other approaches can also
work.

Yes, these approaches can be seen as "newfangled." One of them is an aspect
of the process approach to teaching composition. Editing is often advocated
as one of the "stages" of the writing process. Furthermore, teaching during
the process of writing--rather than before, afterward, or as a separate
track--is the essence of the process approach.

However, Donald Murray's essay "Teach Writing as Process Not Product" dates
back to the early 70's, if I remember correctly. That's thirty years ago.
And sentence combining predates even that. If these approaches still seem
newfangled, that's only because we continue to do a miserable job of
educating our writing teachers.

Bill


William J. McCleary
3247 Bronson Hill Road
Livonia, NY 14487
716-346-6859

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