What the Lansford/Connors study deomstrates is that there was a great deal of uncertainty in the 1980's about appropriate ways to respond to writing. In the 1960's, it was simply understood that English teachers were supposed to "correct" student papers, so much so that "correcting papers" was the usual term for it. In the 1970's, I was trained to "respond" to student writing "in process," and the professional consensus, however limited its reach might have been, is that it is not necessary and probably not useful to correct all the "errors" in a paper. Error could be dealt with in the context of higher order concerns. There was also a sense that individual students would find their own path toward correctness. that they would "acquire" a standard English while attention was on other things. The discovery that teachers varied enormously in what errors they attended to didn't surprise me at the time.
Hillocks' meta-analysis of research (1986) focuses on those interventions that have proven to improve overall writing. They tossed out all studies that did not measure writing improvement through holistic assessment with well trained teachers and threw out studies that did not have control plus treatment groups. They tended to diminish the importance of surface level features.
Here's an interesting passage from Hillocks about the Elley study (p. 138): "The grammar groups did outperform the no-grammar classes on a test of usage an mechanics. However, the researchers analyzed the items of the test to determine the precise nature of the differences. They found that the differences appeared in items on the use of capitals, commas in lists, the apostrophe, possessives and contractions, commas for appositives, and so forth--all of which appear to be amenable to direct, discreet instruction." This seems to me typical of the general bias in the field at this time away from any kind of systematic instruction in grammar. The evidence seemed to show that this sort of instruction did have effects that most of us would embrace (admittedly, in a grammar test, not in actual writing), but this is dismissed on the untested assumption that these could be addressed within the context of writing. The Elley study is typical in that the treatment group was given instruction in grammar while the control group was given instruction in reading and creative writing. The fact that the grammar group did better on a grammar test but not on actual writing shouldn't lead us to conclude that grammar study doesn't improve writing, particularly iof we think of literacy as something that develops through a wide range of experiences, practice in writing being absolutely essential.
Hillocks does go on to say that there is no consensus on what level of mechanical performance is "acceptable" and no proven techniques for accomplishing that.
The Graham and Perrin meta-analysis (2007) pretty much echoes Hillocks in saying that formal grammar, taught in isolation, does not demonstrably improve writing when pre and post tested against control groups. Both studies say that sentence combining does work and there seems evidence that it works best when accompanied by conversation about language.
As Myhill points out in her essay in "Beyond the Grammar Wars" (locke, 2010), "Perhaps the absence of a cogent rationale for advocating grammar to improve children's writing is because, as yet, therre is no theoretical framework within which to locate the discussion." In other words, you first have to theorize a connection and then test the efficacy of that when put into practice. Myhill does exactly that in the Exeter study. (http://education.exeter.ac.uk/projects.php?id=419). Students and teachers are led to pay explicit attention to language within the context of their language, and the imporvments are statistically significant.
My position for a long time has been that you cannot teach writing by remediating deficiencies. On the other hand, students can benefit enormously from knowing about the hurdles they are expected to clear and knowing enough about language to meet those challenges, or at least place them within context. The operative question for me has been what knowledge about language can help students negotiate the complex language tasks that matter to them. I try to frame this in terms of constructing competence. To the extent that we treat language as a "behavior" that needs to be "corrected" we will fail, especially when we try to avoid a deeper understanding of the dynamics of language as we do so.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Robert Yates [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2012 10:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 20 most common usage errors--research? evidence?
Scott,
I think this is probably the most carefully done research on usage errors in American university student writing.
http://www.inventio.us/ccc/1988/12/robert-j-connors-and-andrea-a.html
Connors, Robert J., and Andrea A. Lunsford. "Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research." CCC 39.4 (1988): 395-409.
Bob Yates
University of Central Missouri
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear Group,
Is anyone familiar with research on usage errors and methods for reducing them in students' work? What really works for reducing usage errors? What doesn't work? How should we think of usage errors? Do error reduction efforts work? What do they give us? While I don't want my students to make errors, I'm much more interested in improving their writing than in reducing their errors.
Thanks,
Scott Woods
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