Hi, everybody.  We (at ATEG Listserv HQ) are having trouble getting
Rebecca's account squared away, so I thought I'd forward her interesting
response to the list.  Here it is:
 
 
> Subject:      Re: here's a conundrum I'm dealing with
>
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> > This student needs training in proofreading, not a grammar lesson.
> >
> >         --Bill Murdick
 
 
> This is a fascinating and persuasive analysis, but now I'm afraid to
> write to this group!
 
> Mieke
 
 
Chuckle, well, I do know what you mean, but isn't that sort of like when people
say to us, "oh! an English teacher! I'll have to watch my grammar"?
 
 
While I did find Bill's analysis very well presented, I don't actually know
that I fully believe it. I wish that student were returning next quarter; he's
not. He's off  to California, having found Utah a bit too unlively for
his tastes.
 
I'm not totally convinced that all this student stumbled over was proof
reading. The frequence of the kinds of errors, or whatever those were ("not
human language" or some such, Bill said?), suggested to me that the problem may
well have gone beyond mere proofreading. Maybe I'm influenced by knowing that
this person seemed not to know very well how to use a pen -- I mean, the
hand-coordination of it.  His printing reminded me of the printing of a first
grader who was learning how to shape letters. Very wavy and stumbly. That may
be unrelated, but it spoke of some deeper discomfort with expression, at the
least.
 
 
But, hey! Proof reading is a GOOD thing to take a run with. Next time, I'll try
that, and see if I can get beyond being so daunted by language non-structures
that baffle me.
 
 
ciao,
 
rebecca wheeler
 
 
p.s.  In Bill's analysis, he pointed to an ungrammaticalityy (speech-like
error) in a sentence I had written and conjectured I hadn't noticed.
then he used that as evidence for the presence of speech error like things
in writing. and then used that to say it was a proofing problem.
 
Well, although maybe it could've been, what I wrote wasn't a speech-error
ungrammaticality; it was indeed a failure of proofing, but from a different
vantage.
 
What I did was revise and then fail to delete the previous
version.  I'd written a sentence using "the interaction of X and Y"
and then I went back and used a wh-clause with verb "how X and Y mix" instead
of the nominalization, but silly me, forgot to then, ahem, like delete the
first version.    yup, proofing indeed is a good idea.
 
And If I feel like I have to explain this, for pete's sake, HOW on earth must
students feel?  quite instructive.
 
:)
rsw