This is my official protest against many composition theorists who argue that the instructor should place less focus (sometimes none) on mechanics and more focus on issues with content and organization. While I believe that content is the most important of the two, many of these theorists suggest that mechanics should play little-to-no part in the evaluation of a piece of student writing. Many of the professors I've had at this university do nothing to correct punctuation, misspellings, or errors in usage--I know that these teachers are focusing on content, but they don't seem to mind gross errors in mechanics.
I want to argue that there is a very important place in the teaching of composition for helping students to hone and master mechanical rules and skills. Just as a student can have perfect grammar and still say nothing, another student can come up with a most-profound piece of writing, riddled with obvious errors in usage and grammar, and be looked at as partially uneducated. How is the informed reader to trust anything that this writer has to say? Mastering punctuation, especially elementary symbols such as the comma and semicolon, is, to me, one of the most telling features of a skilled writer. For us to abandon this notion and focus 90 percent of our efforts toward content, how can we expect the students to come out better writers, overall? Sure, they will be able to organize their thoughts clearly and produce a well thought out analysis, but if there is no firm grammatical structure or style governing this writing, then they will likely be immediately classified as a non-credible source.
Elementary rules of usage are the first thing that employers notice when evaluating the cover letter and resume of a potential employee. If this employee's college English class made no effort toward emphasizing grammar and style, then the employer can expect to find errors in the mechanics of the writing. I don't intend to argue here that mechanics should be given equal opportunity with content, but I think there is certainly a place for more emphasis on the former in the classroom. Maybe my perspective is skewed because I come from a professional writing background, but I think that learning these rules of mechanics is very practical for student writers and should be at least touched upon in every college composition class--especially freshman composition.
So go! Tell your students about commas, semicolons, and em dashes! Spread joyfully the news of subject-pronoun agreement and verb tense consistency! Announce the sheer wonder and stark reality of misplaced modifiers and sentence fragments! Don't allow these theorists to desensitize you into thinking that grammar isn't important--for it certainly is!
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9 comments:
I want to take your comments a step further. It's not just that our students will be perceived as poorly educated or unintelligent if they have poor grammar. It's that content doesn't exist independently of form. If they can't control their grammar, they aren't controlling their meaning.
Great point, Amy! An obvious example would be with ambiguities in phrasing. The author will surely know what he or she is saying, but incorrect form or punctuation could change the meaning of a statement drastically, causing a gross misunderstanding on the part of the reader.
Would it be too much to require our students to purchase a copy of Strunk and White? The Elements of Style has many worthwhile things to say about punctuation and usage--the new illustrated edition is quite an eye-pleaser!
I do realize that grammar is not the only component of writing, and by no means do I grade that way.
I do think it's important to writing, however, and that I am responsible to help my students with their grammar.
Have I been living this philosophy, though? No, not really. I think I'm overly close to creating writers like my dad.
A lawyer who has to write all the time, he struggles a lot with just getting words out when he's writing. He says that his writing teachers almost never emphasized grammar, and as a result, he does not feel confident about his grammar. While at this point, his writing is hindered because he is unsure of how he form sentences, he feels that he would be able to relax and focus on content more if he were more familiar with grammar rules.
It may surprise you to find that people with a background in creative writing find grammar and mechanics extremely important as well. In fact, my very first textbook in a creative writing class was good ol' Strunk and White. In creative writing, having great grammar and mechanics is an undeniable advantage because it is horribly difficult to get published with poor grammar skills (it's already hard enough to get published with good grammar skills). A writer can be incredibly creative and brilliant, but their work just won't be accepted without having proper grammar and mechanics, or at least enough to render it readable. Don't get me wrong, creative writing has a stringent devotion to content, and it's completely possible to write a bad story while possessing perfect grammar and mechanics. At any rate, I just thought I would tell you that people in fields other than professional writing and rhetoric share your views.
A student could come up with the most insightful, though-provoking, and heart wrenching writing, at times. They surprise me every time. But how much less interesting would that be if you had to struggle to get through each sentence because the grammar and syntax is so bad. It just ruins the moment like somebody walking in on you during your private time with you significant other. I say here, here, Casey! Preach on brutha!
Thank you!!!! I have been appalled by comp theory that shuns grammar instruction.
You know, I know of a person who has an MA in English and is having to have tutoring at her job because she doesn't have a good enough command of grammar, punctuation, and organization.
I know another person with an MA in English who has on more than one occassion "helped" a student with a paper and actually inserted comma splices or given wrong advice about documentation.
It's a sad, sad world. I blame a lot of it on extreme relativism which suggests that there are no bad writers, that we should not force standards on our students,and that we don't teach but just walk along side students in their "transformation"(not improvement because that would imply a deficiency, and we couldn't do that).
I agree with everything you say, though I have no idea who you are! I've come to the belief that the theorists who say "don't pay attention to the grammar errors" are the same dullards who simplify comma use to "just put a comma in where you take a breath," and encourage students to put semi-colons where there should be a comma. These hippies who teach at new-age feel-gooderies need to be stopped before we have a civilization who doesn't mind homophone misuse or subject-verb agreement. We'll be stuck, my anonymous friend, with a country full of idiots.
I thought we already were.
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