Thanks, Craig, for your comments and for your steering me toward some
helpful texts after the ATEG meeting Saturday evening in Nashville.
Your helpful remarks that day went a long way toward clarifying the
ideas and positions in this discussion.
I am reading Hillock's book on teaching writing (1995), and it is a
page-turner for me today (on the planes back to Salt Lake).
It was good to meet you and several others Saturday.
Gordon Hultberg
Salt Lake City
At 01:10 PM 11/20/2006, you wrote:
>Peter,
> In some ways...and it can be painful at times...we need to take some
>responsibility for the misunderstandings our students come away with.
>We need to do the same thing as conversationalists and as writers, so
>I'll try to be more articulate this time around. I apologize that I'm
>working these ideas through from a few intuitions that I am taking away
>from Nashville.
> I know that's not a direct response to your point. In this case, the
>student gave this as the core of what she learned about grammar, by
>which she meant that this is what the teacher wanted her to change
>about her writing. She learned how to take the contractions out and
>thought she was learning grammar by doing that. The point I was hoping
>to make is that this is what passed for grammar, but should really be
>thought of as bad writing advice, not grammar at all. There's nothing I
>know of in the study of grammar that would support the idea of avoiding
>contractions, even in fairly formal registers.
> To me, this would parallel lots of prescriptive advice about writing,
>such as the idea that a paragraph has to have a certain amount of
>sentences. If you ask your students what a paragraph is, you will find
>out quickly what they believe from what they have been taught, and much
>of it seems fairly silly. The only way to counter it is to say that
>it's advice that is not based on a close look at how language works,
>but simply on the idiosyncratic prejudices or misunderstandings of the
>teacher.
> "Grammar at the point of need" (grammar in context) in many cases is
>not bad grammar teaching, but bad advice about writing passing itself
>off as grammar. If it's dysfunctional, then the argument might be
>whether we should allow the teaching of writing.
> To teach grammar well, we need to look closely at the way effective
>text operates. This is from Debra Myhill: "The real power of looking at
>language is in making connections for the learner between what a text
>means and how it achieves that meaning. Both are important focuses and
>both are mutually complementary."
> So, to me at least, the question is whether writing teaching should
>focus on asking students to follow formal rules that have no basis in
>the real world, or should it ask them to emulate the work of effective
>writers. It's not a question about whether grammar helps or hurts
>writing, but about whether students should be allowed to be real
>writers.
> If the only thing the student is worried about is being "correct" and
>the notions of correctness are idiosyncratic, then we have a model for
>terrible teaching. To blame that on "Grammar" is absurd.
> In a true study of gramamr, the errors in this approach would be
>readily apparent. The practice continues because we are avoiding
>grammar, not because we are embracing it.
> So that's what I would say today if I were in Herb's place. Without a
>strong grounding in how language works (how meaning happens), most
>teachers will give terrible advice about writing, much of it in the
>name of "grammar".
> Without knowledge about how language works, the teaching of writing
>cannot progress very far. Without that knowledge base, teachers may in
>fact do great damage.
> We can make a parallel argument for reading.
>
>Craig
>
>Craig,
> >
> > Your example about the ban on contractions was telling, but it also
> > reminded
> > me of an experience I had a couple of years ago. Early in the semester
> > in a
> > freshman comp course, a student reported that she had been told never to
> > use
> > the pronoun "you" in college writing. Perhaps with an edge of
> > indignation in
> > my voice, I asked, "Who told you that?" She replied, "You did last
> > semester
> > in developmental writing."
> >
> > Now, I would never tell anyone they can't use the pronoun "you," but
> > clearly
> > this student thought I had. . . . Sometimes what students is hear is
> > different from what we think we said.
> >
> >
> > Peter Adams
> >
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> >
>
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