Re: Writing in the workplace (long)

[Eric Crump <eric@serv1.ncte.org>]

Leigh said (via Paula):
"It is my opinion that grammar should come first, because everyone
writes..."

I'd like to agree with her, but I have to tweak the statement a bit first:

"Grammar should come [to writers' attention], because everyone writes
publicly sometimes..." *

It's just that 'first' that I worry about. Seems to me that putting
emphasis on grammar as *preparatory* to good writing is, ironically
perhaps, exactly what thwarts the developmentof grammar competency.
Grammar skill is *simultaneous* to writing development. It is intertwined
in the process and in writing's speech ancestry. By foregrounding it,
abstracting it, emphasizing it, we yank it out if its natural context and
make it a Big Deal. People freak out about it & paralyze their own
well-developed literacy skills. We *make* grammar a problem by putting too
much stress on it.

The grammar question really is not a matter of *whether* but of *how* and
*when*. And from the perspective of teachers, tutors, and trainers, it's a
more matter of pedagogy than composition. Should people who write in
public be concerned about the rhetorical effect of their grammar? Yes.
Should we put grammar *first* and concentrate on it in writing education?
No. 

Grammar competency comes with experience, with attention to and
understanding of rhetorical situations, and with the motivation to account
for audience expectations. It comes *with* those things, not before them.

--Eric Crump