Craig,
I have no way to question the results of the program in the article. What
I question is this claim:
Certain kinds of sentences make certain kinds of meaning possible, and
students can’t read or write to the extent that they don’t understand and
can’t produce those form/meaning relationships.
As best as I can tell, nothing in that article provides any evidence this
claim is true.
And, I suspect there are a lot of people who have insight into why students
in poor high schools (in the inner city and in poor rural areas) have such
low literacy skills.
Bob Yates
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Bob,****
>
> I don’t know why routine conversations between you and I suddenly
> erupt into anger. I certainly did not intend personal attack. I said “I
> don’t think WE have a good handle…”, meaning our institutions, our shared
> discipline, myself included, ATEG included. Otherwise, why would we have so
> many dropouts? Why would so many of our students show up to college unable
> to read and write at a college level? Current practices, for the most part,
> aren’t working for everyone. ****
>
> If your experience gives you insights on ways to improve teaching
> writing, please share them. I don’t mean that as an attack. The problem is
> much bigger than you and I. When teachers like those at the New Dorp school
> implement approaches that change their success rate dramatically, we should
> take that seriously. Those approaches are similar in philosophy to those
> espoused by Graf and Birkenstein (They Say/I Say) and Stanley Fish. It
> involves much more explicit attention to how language choice contributes to
> the effectiveness of text. Since this is a list dedicated to supporting the
> teaching of grammar, this should be of interest to the list. Since we are a
> big tent organization, there should be room for differing approaches and
> different philosophies. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Craig****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Robert Yates
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 16, 2012 10:03 AM
>
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: The Atlantic Writing Articles****
>
> ** **
>
> Craig,****
>
> ** **
>
> I'm sorry I didn't address this issue.****
>
> ** **
>
> I don’t think we have a good handle on why so many students from our
> inner city schools fail to learn how to read and write.****
>
> ** **
>
> I really appreciate being told by someone who has no idea the kinds of
> students I have taught what I do and don't know. My TA position at the
> University of Illinois for six years was spent teaching writing to at-risk
> students who had graduated from Chicago public high schools. One of the
> requirements was that I had to spend 45 minutes one-on-one with each my
> students. For over twenty years, I have taught students from Kansas City
> and St. Louis public schools. However, I also have students from
> underfunded high schools in what is referred to outstate Missouri. I use
> Lee Jacobus's A World of Ideas. My students have to read and respond to
> texts by Emerson, Durkheim, Fromm, Benedict, Adam Smith, Marx, Galbraith,
> etc.****
>
> ** **
>
> Thank you for telling me with all my experience that I do not have a
> handle on the reading problems of students. Believe it or not there are
> students from underfunded rural high schools that have the same issues of
> literacy as students from the inner city. Does your failure to note that
> reflect not having any of those students in your classes?****
>
> ** **
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 8:02 AM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:****
>
> Bob,****
>
> I was equally surprised by the notion that students couldn’t use
> routine conjunctions effectively. But you are leaving out a relevant part
> of the text, this on page 7 of the on-line version. “Another teacher
> devised a quick quiz that required the students to use those conjunctions.
> To the astonishment of the staff, she reported that a sizable group of
> students could not use those words effectively.” I work with students from
> similar backgrounds, but on the college level. By the time they get to me,
> having earned high school diplomas, their problems are not that severe, but
> I would hesitate to say they are being dishonest about what they were
> finding. Nor was I trying to distort the substance of the article. Perhaps
> overuse of “and” was one of the observations.****
>
> I don’t think we have a good handle on why so many students from our
> inner city schools fail to learn how to read and write. Flowers’ work
> certainly doesn’t address that. Shaughnessy did, but at a much earlier
> point in our history, with students who had found their way to college in
> the earliest years of open admission. ****
>
> Is grammar caught or taught? How much explicit attention to language
> is helpful for students who seem to be failing by all our current measures?
> If a program can successfully help those students, I think we need to take
> its approaches seriously. ****
>
> ****
>
> Craig****
>
> ****
>
> ****
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Robert Yates
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 16, 2012 12:27 AM****
>
>
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: The Atlantic Writing Articles****
>
> ****
>
> It appears I have a reading problem. Craig tells us:****
>
> ****
>
> Believe it or not, the author of the article writes that the teachers
> found many students couldn't write sentences with simple conjunctions like
> "but" or "or." ****
>
> ****
>
> That is hard to believe, so I looked at the article. Here is what I
> found:****
>
> ****
>
> 1) A history teacher got more granular. He pointed out that the students’
> sentences were short and disjointed. What words, Scharff asked, did kids
> who wrote solid paragraphs use that the poor writers didn’t? Good essay
> writers, the history teacher noted, used coordinating conjunctions to link
> and expand on simple ideas—words like *for*, *and*, *nor*, *but*,*or*, *
> yet*, and *so*. ****
>
> ****
>
> 2) The Hochman Program, as it is sometimes called, would not be
> unfamiliar to nuns who taught in Catholic schools circa 1950. Children do
> not have to “catch” a single thing. They are explicitly taught how to turn
> ideas into simple sentences, and how to construct complex sentences from
> simple ones by supplying the answer to three prompts—*but*, *because,*
> and *so*. They are instructed on how to use appositive clauses to vary
> the way their sentences begin. ****
>
> ****
>
> One HISTORY teacher found weak students did use but or or. No examples
> are given. By the way, Flower, in her foundational paper on the
> writer-based texts and reader-based texts found that developing writers
> overuse AND. It is the weakest connection possible. My weakest college
> students use AND when a more logical connection would be more appropriate.
> ****
>
> ****
>
> In the 1950s children were given prompts that required them use but,
> because and so. ****
>
> ****
>
> (An aside: How does any sentence begin with an appositive clause? Can
> someone give us example of such an sentence?)****
>
> ****
>
> I can understand why students with very weak reading ability cannot
> understand or use the word although. I find NOTHING in the piece (again I
> may have missed something) that claims these students COULDN'T write
> sentences with "but" or "or".****
>
> ****
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri ****
>
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