RE: grammar

[Charlotte Gale <c.gale@pcps.edu>]

I'm interested in what Joan said about getting students to pay attention to
their writing.  It seems more and more to me that this is a very large part
of what we're doing with our students at the Writing Center, especially
those who are our "regulars"--those who have weekly appointments leading up
to a chance to take a writing proficiency equivalency exam (an extemporanous
essay).  At first, this attention to what they see as minor details of
diction, punctuation, and grammar strikes them as nit-picking; they see
writing primarily as self-expression, with little thought of their readers'
likely response.  As we doggedly question them about why they chose a
particular word or put a comma in a certain place, they begin to realize
that they need to think harder about (pay more attention to) what they
really mean, which begins to have possibilities that they never imagined; in
other words, the range of ideas available to them expands almost
frighteningly.  They also begin to think about the reader's perspective;
hearing us stumble over their sentences makes them more and more sensitive
to the need to avoid those errors that cause unrealized expectations and
confusion.  Errors of grammar and punctuation lead to these problems.  

        I also think that paying attention is related to developing an ear
for the language.  Our ESL students, of course, have the most problems in
this area.  But the students I worry most about are native speakers of
English who don't seem to have developed a sense of the sound of the
language.  They will consistently use the wrong preposition, for example,
and say that they can't hear what is right.  I would be interested in
hearing about strategies of helping such students.

Charlotte Gale
Director, Writing Center
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science
c.gale@pcps.edu


At 12:59 PM 5/5/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Betsy and Eric get at exactly what interests me.  I tell students that a lot
>of sentence structure is more about developing an ear than anything else.
>Someone with a good ear may break rules for language use, and we don't mind
>at all.  Someone else with a less reliable ear may write grammatically and
>stylistically "correct" prose that we don't like.  But how is that ear
>developed?  I've compiled my list of thoughts below, but I'd like to know
>more about what others think.  
>
>1.  _In-practice_ knowledge of rules helps, I think.  By that I mean the
>ability to recognize correctness/incorrectness in your own writing, rather
>than the ability to do grammar correctly in test exercises.  
>
>2.  I think a lot of it is reading and writing and paying attention while
>you're doing both.  And the paying attention part is absolutely crucial.
>And difficult.  
>
>3.  Time and maturity and subject matter competence combine to make a huge
>difference in success w/ grammar and style.  Sometimes what I see in the
>Writing Center, I think, is adequate writers trying to do something a bit
>above themselves.  I figure they'll grow into their own writing in time.
>
>4.  Closely related to #3 is peer group.  Teen-aged peer groups reinforce
>oral language habits that are seen as wrong by most of the adult world, and
>those oral habits are often evident in written work as well.  Most
>teen-agers develop a different style of oral language once they spend more
>time with mixed age adults (this often happens on the job).
>
>But what I really want -- what everybody wants -- is a way to make the
>process faster and less dependent on serendipity.  You notice how little
>control we have over any of this stuff?  That doesn't make me feel useless,
>but it does give me a particular perspective on the limits of what I can do.
>Fortunately, Writing Center work fits perfectly within those limits.
>
>Joan Hawthorne
>Univ. of North Dakota
>
>
>