RE: grammar

[Carl Glover <glover@msmary.edu>]

Dear Betsy,
	Thank you for that lovely post.  Clearly kairos and intuition
share much in common, and your post focuses on the practical activity, not
to mention the passion, that helped you develop your intuitive sense and
your relationship with language.  Both intuition and kairos, though part
magical and mystical, grow in soil that has been well-tilled.
	I suppose the ideal writing center tutorial model would form a
triangle whose points are the student, the tutor, and the essay, with the
driving lines between these points being the fond relationship with
words, which you described below.
					Warm regards,



					Carl W. Glover
					glover@msmary.edu

On Tue, 5 May 1998, Elizabeth D. Burris wrote:

> Joan,
> I think "paying attention" is crucial to developing intuition.  I also
> think caring matters.  When I think about my own intuitive sense of
> grammar and writing, my "ear," as you put it, I think it developed through
> reading books I absolutely loved--and then trying to imitate them by
> writing my own versions.  That care, even love, of reading tuned my
> attention, I believe, so that I noticed spellings and constructions (not
> in so many words) and lilts and effects that characterized a particular,
> fond relationship with words and the worlds they can create.
> And--there--relationship is another thing
> that matters, I think: establishing a genuinely caring relationship that
> fuels attuned attention to the nuances of language and the feelings
> language both creates and labels is the basis, I believe, of my intuitions
> about writing.
> 
> I think.
> 
> Betsy Burris
> Director of the Writing Center
> Connecticut College
> 
>