I wasn’t allowed to use contractions in my dissertation –
but of course, few of our students are writing dissertations, and if they are,
they aren’t doing it for our classes. One thing I’ve found handy in
my grammar class, though, is to have students look at a list of contractions
and try to decide which of them are less formal than others – “can’t”
is prohibited in only the most achingly formal registers, but “I’d”
is another story (I also bring up the difference between “cannot”
and “can not”).
On the first person pronoun issue, I think students need to be able
to write without it, but shouldn’t get the impression that there’s
anything inherently wrong with a first-person style in general. The only real problem
with first-person-ing that I’ve run into in college classes is that
students who are unused to writing arguments will use first person and present
what would otherwise be an assertion of fact as if it’s an opinion
statement They’re using constructions like “I think” to
hedge, like I did in the first sentence of this paragraph; science writing uses
tons of hedges, but they operate by shifting probability (“potentially
indicates…”) rather than tying things to opinion. I’m still
trying to figure out how to politely negotiate the whole issue of opinion and
science with composition students; “your opinions really, honestly don’t
matter much, but your arguments and their validity do” seems a bit
abrupt. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had students who so
strongly believed that first person was always bad that they tried to write personal
reaction statements without ever using “I” or “me.” It’s
possible to manage that, but no one will particularly want to read the result.
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the
Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter
Adams
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 9:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: levels of formality
I've never understood some teachers' constraints on first
person, so I look forward to reading the replies to Paul's post.
I also wonder about contractions. I tell my students
that they shouldn't use them in very formal writing or when writing to an
audience that thinks they shouldn't be used. I also tell them I've never
written anything in my life that was so formal that I avoided contractions.
Where do others stand on this?
Peter Adams
On Jun 1, 2009, at 9:01 AM, Paul E. Doniger wrote:
In requiring students to write some papers in "formal
English," I often come across some gray areas. My tendancy is to be
somewhat conservative about formal language. I wonder where others draw
lines regarding levels of formality. For example, some of my students use
words that seem too informal to me, like "morph" (verb form).
Also, I know we have discussed the use of the first person before, but I think
it is sometimes valuable to challenge students to write persuasive pieces that
avoid using the first person altogether. Where do the rest of you stand on
such issues?
Thanks,
Paul E. Doniger
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as
an improbable fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128).
From: Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009
6:45:07 PM
Subject: Re: Class size
ATEG Digest - 28 May 2009 to 29 May 2009 - Special issue (#2009-127)
Herb, I wasn't clear. Currently, for seventh grade
English, I teach four groups of students for a total of 112
students. I meet with each group five times each week. I think
that I could get better results by meeting with all the groups together on
some days and with each group separately on others. This would reduce total
student contact hours for me, but not for them. With 28 total contact
hours per week next year (I teach other classes as well), I would benefit
from reducing my contact load and spending that time planning, developing
lessons, and responding to writing. Scott
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