Edith, I was reminded of exactly the same thing! My children did this, as well.  And as many people have remarked here, this kind of preposition—hmmm—behavior? error?  change? seems to occur increasingly in my students’ papers. (I couldn’t dissuade my children from using this in their oral expression as children—either with good-natured teasing or with serious explanations. However, I don’t find them using this in their speech OR their writing as adults. My point, I guess, is that children’s—and even the younger college students’—language behavior is still evolving.  Maybe it isn’t so much a change in language as an indication of stages in language awareness?  I don’t know.)

 

I strongly agree with several here who have remarked that much of our students’ difficulty—with this and other matters—comes from the decrease over the past several decades in exposure to reading (and writing) in children’s early years.  Of course, they are going to write as they speak—and as they hear the language spoken in the media.  You may have seen a brief letter to the editor (in the NYT) responding to the interesting article cited recently on this listserv, the one that quoted Martha Kolln on diagramming, among other things.  The writer made the excellent point that writing is learned from reading; he recalled having been an avid reader in his childhood and having, therefore, learned to write well without the pain or tedium that often seems to be assumed as a necessary part of that process (and that, for our students, often IS a part of it). 

 

While this letter-writer certainly states an obvious—though often overlooked—truth, he also brings up (obliquely) an essential piece of my frustration as a writing teacher: the question of what REALLY works to fill in those gaps left in the development of a student who clearly hasn’t had reading or being read to as a part of the childhood experiences that determined the components of the “language toolbox” that s/he brought to my writing classroom.  (To complicate the situation, I seriously doubt that the same--mass-produced or mass-applied--techniques can be absolutely counted upon to work equally well with any two such students.  The gaps, alas, are not identical.  And we lowly writing teachers don’t have time for as much one-on-one work as we might consider ideal. Yes, I do conferences—I swear by ‘em—but it’s not enough.  And, with four entry-level comp classes, they’re breaking my back!)

 

[By the way, as though this post didn’t already cover a large and baggy territory (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?), I, too, would like more info on the sentence-combining material that Shirl mentioned a few days ago.  I’ve also used some stuff from William Strong in my comp classes—though not recently—and I usually use some of Kolln’s material on combining—supplemented with some of my own—as  I try to get my soph-level grammar folks to apply more intensively the theory they’ve learned, as we conclude the course.]

 

(An added aside that some of you might enjoy:  There’s been recent discussion here on helping students to “own” their language. Along this line, the community college/tech-voc school where I’ve taught for the last several years once had as its motto: “Education you can use.”  A colleague waggishly amended that to “Education so you can be used.”  I think that’s not a bad description of the kind of education students sometimes receive.  And it disturbs me. Does this strike a chord with anyone else?)

 

Barbara Muller

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wollin, Edith
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 2:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: preposition changes?

 

-----Original Message-----
From: PAUL E. DONIGER [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2004 7:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: preposition changes?

Dear ATEGers,

 

A few English teachers in my school, including myself, have been noticing what seems to be a new phenomenon. I'm wondering if it is localized in my region, state, or district, or if this is more universal. Our students seem to have trouble using "correct" prepositions. For example, I'm finding sentences like this:

 

"We know he had no intentions ON doing what he did and now regrets everything that happened."

 

This sort of misuse of a preposition is becoming a regular occurrence in the papers I'm seeing. The students who write them are NOT ELL students, but grew up in average middle-class American homes where English is the first language. Is anyone else out there finding this to be an issue?

 

Also, does anyone have any good lesson ideas for raising awareness and correcting the error?

 

Thanks,

 

Paul E. Doniger

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