RE: grammar

["Elizabeth D. Burris" <edbur@conncoll.edu>]

Hear, hear Eric!  I like how you think about teaching *and* intuition;
your comments about both make me wonder how some people develop intuitions
about, say, grammar and why others don't.  Surely it's not the "teaching"
they have received, as most of us have been drilled in grammar to one
degree or another (and drilling seems to have been the default approach to
grammar instruction at least for my generation)--it's undoubtedly the
"learning" each of us has done, the participation in complex interactions 
"in different conditions" (as you say) out of which such a felt sense
gradually emerged.  What does it take, I wonder, to facilitate such
learning, to support the development, the cultivation, of intuitions about
grammar (or about organization, for that matter)? Seems to me that the 
answer to that question could revolutionize composition instruction, not
to mention the field of teaching.

Betsy Burris
Director of the Writing Center
Connecticut College

On Mon, 4 May 1998, Eric Crump wrote:

> On Mon, 4 May 1998, Kuhne, David wrote:
> ->It still seems to me that if we can't teach writers to use correct
> ->constructions then maybe our "community" needs to take a close look at what
> ->we "really" do.  And no, I'm not joking.  Dave Kuhne
> 
> Great idea, Dave! We really *should* look closely at what we *really* do
> (and we should look rather oftener than we do). And we ought to be open to
> the possibility that our assumptions (even the most basic) are open to
> question.
> 
> For instance, you open up the possibility of questioning "teaching" 
> itself. Perhaps we can't teach anyone to use correct constructions. 
> Perhaps we can't teach anyone anything. Perhaps we never could and only
> believed in a myth of our own construction and for our self-justification.
> 
> I've been wondering for some time whether teaching, as I was taught to
> understand it, isn't just a name we give for a process that happens in
> different conditions and because of different influences than we assume.
> That is, when people learn something, it's the result of a complex of
> attitudes, assumptions, social conditions, motivations, and resources.
> Learning is a product of the interaction between various people, present
> or not, and all sorts of unaccountable forces. The old model of teacher
> giving students knowledge or access to it is such a vast
> oversimplification that it rather misses the mark entirely!
> 
> Maybe teaching, as such, doesn't really exist!
> 
> Whatcha think?
> 
> --Eric Crump
> 
>