On Sat, 15 Mar 1997, REBECCA S. WHEELER wrote:
 
> I'm perplexed at why spelling, punctuation and capitalization should be
 grouped
> with complete sentences and "no run-ons". The former deal with rather
> superficial matters of the written (as opposed to spoken) form while the
 latter
> deal with grammaticality and issues of what makes a utterance/grammatical unit
> in the language. Mixes apples and oranges, seems to me.
 
I think we all find most areas of writing important: spelling,
punctuation, and sentence form. I'm not sure that words like
'superficial' really equate with 'trivial'. In any case, I don't agree
that any part of writing is trivial; but I think it is helpful for
students to focus on different elements of writing at different points in
the process.
 
I think we need to realize _why_ it is that students have trouble with
'conventions': they _aren't_ conventions for the students!! they are
conventions for somebody else: a different discourse community that
students are supposed to join through their schooling; the community that
uses formal, standard, mostly written English with relative fluency and ease.
 
It is very difficult to join a discourse community through classroom
lessons and lists of rules. As with any kind of language learning, the
learner must be immersed in the target language for many hours a week;
this allows the learner to _internalize_ the rules. I believe that most
of us who can use formal English fluently learned _most_ of it this way,
with occasional help from memorized rules (such as whether to put a
period inside or outside of quotation marks). Children are very, very
good at internalizing rules. I believe most of the difficulty many
children have with learning 'conventions' is the small amount of time per
week they spend engaged in reading and writing a variety of texts. I
doubt very much that editing alone will allow them to internalize the
rules to
the point where they can spontaneously produce a good formal text,
without the need for much editing.
 
By the time someone reaches college age, if they haven't internalized the
'conventions' of formal English, it's going to be very difficult for
them. They are essentially having to learn a second dialect.
 
I also think we need to take a very serious look at the now
well-researched differences between writing and speech. Fragments, run-ons,
and things like faulty parallelism are not 'ungrammatical' in some
absolute sense. Fragments and run-ons are characteristic of speech, where
they cause little to no disruption of discourse. They are not acceptable
in formal writing, for both stylistic and communicative reasons. In
speech, the speaker is available to the hearer to clarify any missed
connections among related ideas. In writing, the author is absent, and
the reader needs maximum cues as to the connectedness of ideas. Stylistic
preferences for rhythm and number of ideas 'packaged' into a given
stretch of prose change over time (Old and Middle English had no problem
with run-ons, and indeed preferred coordinate over subordinate structures
a lot of the time), making run-ons unacceptable.
 
I think yet another factor at work in students' difficulties with
'conventions' is the inevitable changes in the language -- including the
formal language -- that are underway, and that are held back only by explicit
instruction in the traditions of writing for a particular society. It is
clear that our language is changing its subject-verb agreement rules, and
also its hyphenation and apostrophe-use rules (again, look back at
earlier stages of English, such as colonial American or Early Modern, of
Shakespeare's time for some astonishing differences). Even the top-notch
students in my courses consistenlty make certain 'errors' now, and I am
sure that we will soon all give up on those to focus on more egregious ones.
 
I think the most important thing to do in writing classes is to focus on
writing as an exchange of meaning, and to work very explicitly with
students on how every aspect of their writing -- word choice,
punctuation, and sentence structure -- either facilitates or obstructs
the passage of the writer's meaning to the mind of the reader. We also
need to make them aware of writing and reading as two of the many ways
school expands their horizons and allows them to interact with ever wider
audiences of people. And yes, I believe we should talk explicitly with
them about generational differences in writing conventions caused by
language change, and that sometimes the reason why something is or is not
acceptable is merely 'tradition'.
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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