Linda,

 This is a very productive line of inquiry, starting with the notion that
reading doesn't automatically carry over on the basis of mere exposure.
And reading can, of course, mean so many different things.
   What I find troubling as a college teacher is that students who have
had huge exposure to literary texts are not particularly attentive to
how they work. Bill's description of how reading is sold relates to
that. Quite often, reading is a stepping off point for discussion of
great ideas, or it's treated as using "literary elements", which seem
to have relevance to this otherworldly discourse, but not the work of
our everyday lives. "Grammar", by contrast, is thought of as some sort
of pedestrian nuisance, one that pulls our attention from great ideas
to "errors" in our behavior.
   I remember a grammar student telling me that he couldn't find any
grammar in the work of his favorite writer. That was baffling to me,
until I realized he was looking for mistakes.
   A great story is a story, which is to say an arrangement of words. A
great essay is a different kind of arrangement precisely because the
work of the genre is different. I like what the Australians are doing,
using genre as the focus and bringing in grammar as it relates to the
work of the text.
   Do we copy sentences in the hope they will rub off? Do we copy them to
help us bring to conscious attention the way that language works when
it's working well?
   On Wednesday this week, in my literature class, we looked at the use of
"would" and two kinds of verb patterns in Tim O'Brien's "The things
They Carried." As the story opens, Lt. Cross is daydreaming his day
away. As the story ends, after the death of one of his men which he
believes relates to his own carelessness, he is determined to stop
dreaming and lead. The opening "would"'s relate to a past tense
pattern, and the verbs are verbs like "imagine", "hope", "pretend." 
Later, the "would" is an expression of resolution, and the verbs are
very active and decisive. ("perform", "dispose", "impose", "prevent",
"insist", "confiscate", and so on.) The writer's choices and the
story's meaning are deeply interconnected, and looking at the first
moves us into the heart of the second. Unfortunately, since my students
don't have much background in grammar, these see like observations, not
a systematic look at the way grammar allows us to mean.
   One exercise I have in my grammar class is to look at the opening
paragraph to Hemingway's "The Old Man and The Sea" and discuss the
places where his own punctuation differs (in a patterned way) from
mainstream conventions. But you can't have that kind of discussion
until later stages of the course.
   I know I can teach punctuation within the context of a deeper
understanding of language.
   Even students who are fairly good writers and don't make gross mistakes
often have patterns of deviance when it comes to commas, semi-colons,
full colons, and so on. Or perhaps it would be better to say they
haven't laid hold of all the possibilities. There are nuances of choice
that seem to go far beyond what they can grasp intuitively.
   I don't think reading just rubs off on people, and I think it's harmful
to assume that it will.

Craig

"The accurate readers have looked at texts carefully, the others
> haven't."
>
> I would just add to your questions, Scott, that reading comprehension
> involves a lot more cognitive activity than just spending time focused on
> what  is
> actually on the page.  The cognitive processing that occurs depends on
> all
> sorts of things (e.g. frameworks already established in the brain for
> conceptualizing abstractions in units, or something like that).  Some of
> these
> cognitive structures are idiosyncratic.  Otherwise, we would also  expect
> people who
> are good readers to be able to spell accurately, and that  is not always
> the
> case.  So in addition to the actual physical act of  reading, you'd need
> to look
> at research in cognition and language  processing.
>
> Linda
>
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