Steve Cohen wrote:

> > There are some implications for teaching grammar to students, but this
> >  post is already too long.
> >
> I would love to hear what some of those implications are.

The key question is whether in one of the most goals in teaching of
writing one is to show students that it is not a visual representation
of the oral language.

This is the crucial assumption that Perera makes in reviewing the
literature on the acquisition of writing.

If that is the case, then it would follow that mazes, representation of
false starts in a student's writing, use of structures only found in the
oral language (well, you know, go as a verb to report speech, and
dialect forms should probably be noted and commented on by a teacher.

Now, the use of structures no normally found in the oral language pose
an entirely different problem.  Here, I would think that having students
only write narratives do not push the student to writing texts which may
push the student to use more "mature" structures.

Further, I would think that some emphasis on punctuation, especially
commas and period, would be important because they do not necessary
accord with oral speech contours.  However, I would be very careful
about simplifying students' sentences.  Rather, I would try to see
whether their "non-standard" punctuation was attempting to show complex
relations between ideas and who those relations are actually done in the
"standard."

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University