Peter,
   I think you and I are in agreement in lots of ways, so I welcome this
formulation of it. I would tend to rephrase it a little. I believe it's
important for students to gain a working feel for Standard English and
for the routine conventions of writing, including punctuation. I don't
think that just "happens", but I also don't think just correcting
errors on a paper is an effective approach. A more operative question
might be "what do students need to know" to accomplish those goals.
  Writing effectively involves moving closer and closer to an unreachable
target. In that larger sense, error will always be a part of it. We need
ways to talk about revising sentences, looking at grammatical choices
and their contribution to the unfolding purposes of the text. If we
reduce gramamr to "error", we will miss that.
   I am trying to teach writing without "error" or "correct" in the
vocabulary. Language can be grammatical or ungrammatical, standard or
non-standard, effective or ineffective, and I try to use those as
separate lenses.
  But I would agree very much with your premises. If our students are
expected to gain some facility with standard English, then we should
find out how to get them there. If they are expected to punctuate
effectively, then we should try to figure out the best ways to help them
accomplish that. If they are expected to be able to present their own
views within the ongoing conversation of a discipline, then we should
know how to mentor that process as well.
   What I like about what you're doing (how's the book coming?) is that
you are trying to demystify the process. As you work that out over
time, I expect that many of us will find it useful,

Craig


 Craig writes, "If our primary concern is with error, then a great deal
> never surfaces, for teacher or student alike."
>
> I worry that to some on the list this may sound like we should not be
> concerned with surface error.  Based on past discussions with Craig,
> I'm fairly certain he doesn't mean this, but only means that to limit
> our concern to surface error is to leave out much that is rich and
> interesting about how the language works.  I would argue that helping
> students gain control over "error" is an important task, that we
> should not neglect, but that it certainly isn't the whole task.
>
> Peter Adams
>
>
>
> On Feb 23, 2009, at 12:22 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>
>> f our primary concern is with error, then a great deal never
>> surfaces, for teacher or student alike.
>
>
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