That's intriguing. Things have certainly changed--for good or bad, I'm not sure (though of course I have a bias towards the way I and the teachers I know do things). If I may ask, in the course you're describing, would a freshmen English paper--if it was supposed to have an argument--also have failed for not making a clear, focused and arguable claim; not supporting its claim effectively; not being organized intelligibly; or not using sources properly? Also, would a paper with many and various beautifully constructed sentences but one comma splice fail while a paper that consisted of a string of short, simple sentences--or a few grammatically correct yet interminable and convoluted sentences--passed?
I'm not presuming to know the answers to these questions, and I hope I don't sound combative; I just wrote a stern message to a group of students, so I may still be in the wrong rhetorical key!
I'm interested because the lore and institutional history of writing teachers tells us that we realized, sometime in the last half century, that we'd been over-prioritizing correctness at the expense of clear, effective communication and argumentation. But, not having been there when "we" realized that, I don't want to close my mind to the possibility that we've actually only gotten lax.
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of DD Farms
Sent: Thu 4/9/2009 7:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Comma splice = F
At 03:27 PM 4/9/2009, O'Sullivan, Brian P wrote:
>An F for one comma splice? As my students would say: "Duuuude!
>That's pretty intense!"
DD: An F on the paper, not on the course, of course. That was the
rule in Freshman English at the University of Tennessee, summer quarter, 1948.
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
