Janet,
Thanks so much for sharing this - and Craig, as usual I appreciate your
insight! I love it. I'll start teaching a grammar and writing class for
low-intermediate ESL students at a community college next week. May I share
it with them?
Terre
Teresa Lintner
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Cambridge University Press
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"Castilleja,
Janet"
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ITAGE.EDU> [log in to unmask]
Sent by: Assembly cc
for the Teaching
of English Subject
Grammar Re: grammar, writing, and discourse
<[log in to unmask]
OHIO.EDU>
08/26/2009 06:07
PM
Please respond to
Assembly for the
Teaching of
English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]
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Hello ATEGers
After reading this post, I had to share something a student wrote
yesterday. Yesterday was the very first day of the semester, and the
student is in a developmental ESL writing class, so there are some
errors. The assignment was to describe what the experience of writing
has been like for them previously.
"Writing for me takes time I have to brain storm first to see what I
want to write about. But I hate brain storming it takes time and when
you start to write your ideas change and you have to go back and think
about them one more time. When you're writing all you could think about
is the subject and what is about".
I think she really illustrated what Craig is saying.
Janet
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 11:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: grammar, writing, and discourse
This has been an interestinng thread, and I have regretted being so
caught up in other work to be an active part of it. But here are some
thoughts.
If there is one thing we have learned in composition over the past few
decades, a position shared by many who would disagree with each other in
other ways, it's that writing cannot and should not be thought of as the
mere "expression of ideas", especially if those ideas are thought of as
pre-existing the actual writing. For Don Murray, my own mentor and
teacher, writing is not just writing and revising, but discovery and
rediscovery. The thinking happens in and through the writing. A writing
project starts out often as not with a question-what is the nature of
grammar, for example, and what are effective ways to teach it or teach
about it in our schools-and the answers turn out to be very elusive and
complex, and this involves reading other people's writing about these
same issues, and, in turn, trying to enter into a conversation with
those
very same people, who may or may not have views that resemble your own.
Certainly our job as writing teachers involves helping students engage
complex writing projects with elusive and complex answers and to do so
in
an academic or public conversation. We shouldn't be vested in answers of
our own to the extent that we create the impression that we favor one
view over another, but we also need to pass on valuing of listening and
graciousness and collegiality. If a student writes a paper saying we
shouldn't support Obama's nazi health care program because of the "death
panels", or perhaps if another student says "everyone who opposes this
bill is in the pocket of special interests", we have a responsibility to
ask for revision. One key to being a good writer on projects like this
is
the ability to see an opposing side sympathetically. That's one reason
why "a review of the literature" is such a key part of so much academic
and professional writing. We need to cultivate the ability to
sympathetically understand positions different from our own and we have
an obligation to represent them fairly in our own writing. Cultivating
that ability is part of the work of being a writing teacher. It's hard
work, particularly on issues about which we ourselves already hold
strong
positions. But we should embrace it as central to our mission.
It's interesting that "Writing summaries" is an activity that has
been
shown to strongly improve writing. (See, for example, the Graham and
Perin meta-study). I suspect that is at least in part because it
reinforces critical reading and careful listening.
The other point that Herb has made recently is that grammar is not
merely a matter of correctness and not at all separate from the
lexicon. This is a point, unfortunately, not well understood within
composition as a discipline, which too often relegates grammar to
surface level correctness. Even the structural grammarians (see, for
example, CC Fries) see grammar as adding structural meaning to
discourse. Chomsky may say semantics and pragmatics cannot help us
understand grammar, but he seems to be saying that grammar has a great
to deal to offer semantics and pragmatics. And all the more recent
grammars, as far as I can see, seem to be saying that there is no hard
and fast line between grammar and the lexicon. That would include
functional grammar, cognitive grammar, the more important corpus
grammars (Biber et. al.), even lexical-functional grammar as far as I
understand it. Every statement is a construal of experience. That
doesn't mean that we should stop trying to be "objective", but that we
should pay careful attention to the relationship between the way
something is said and the nuances of meaning that come with that,
including the interactive meanings inevitably at play in public
discourse.
Trying to dissociate grammar from discourse trivializes both grammar
and discourse. Or, it may be more accurate to say that it reinforces
the trivialization that is already entrenched in much education and in
the mind of the general public.
Craig
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