Grammar in the Classroom

As someone who enjoys learning grammar, I found the readings for this week particularly interesting.  I spent my undergraduate career studying grammar intensive languages like Latin (a language that insists upon and continually examines its own grammar) and Ancient Greek (an exceedingly frustrating language that seems to break its own rules more often that it follows them). In light of this experience with the grammar systems of other languages, I agree completely with Micciche that it is entirely senseless and almost silly to think that grammar doesn’t generate or alter meaning and that it therefore should not occupy a privileged place in the composition classroom.

I thought that Micciche’s definition of rhetorical grammar as distinct from the prescriptivists’ slavish obedience to the rules purely for the sake of the rules and the descriptivists’ insistence that usage alone should govern the rule made sense for the unique environment of the composition classroom. I think that spending at least a week considering how grammatical choices create meaning would be quite useful for students.  I understand the ability to make informed grammatical choice as an element of rhetorical flexibility, and therefore, the goals of the composition class.  I found Williams’ discussion of the ‘phenomenology of error’ similarly interesting, and the article makes a solid case against the relevance of prescriptive grammar in the composition classroom.  It seems his discussion of the often arbitrary nature of grammar rules reinforces Micciche’s argument for the use of a rhetorical, rather than either a prescriptive or a descriptive approach to grammar for beginning composition students.

Country Grammar

"Thinking of language as correct or incorrect distorts it into an objective medium consisting of ahistorical rules and truths, obscuring the living quality of language," (Micciche 724). I should teach that idea to my students. I should also remind myself of that from time to time.

Practical application that I've been craving: enter The Orwell. George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language," is one of the most astute essays I've ever read. Although its first few pages are rather dull, Orwell's discussion of word choices and their social and political implications still feels fresh some sixty years after he wrote it. I've thought about how I could incorporate this essay into teaching freshmen composition before, but I somehow hadn't thought about it as a way to teach grammar (rhetorical or otherwise). Micciche's idea for using this essay struck a chord with me:

Now, in a new progressive turn, I know how to utilize the words of our forefathers to educate and inspire the youth of today to become the informed and active citizens of tomorrow!

(Get it? Get it?! Exclamation points courtesy of Upton Sinclair.)

This could even be - dare I say - fun for the students. I can envision teaching this to students and having an in-class assignment where we make grammatical choices that, say, blatantly manipulate  people's emotions or cover up flaws in an argument. I like the idea of teaching rhetorical grammar and the power of words in a way that darkly embraces the absurdity behind lots of political speech.  Perhaps I could also utilize some variation on the idea of the commonplace books.

I wonder if Orwell and Upton Sinclair ever had a conversation about rhetorical grammar. I bet it would have come to blows. I mean blows!!!

Descriptive Linguistics

Since Micciche seems to be covered, I will take up Williams. Williams is the first real example of descriptive linguistics, as I understand it via DFW, outside of its rather paradoxically proscriptive spawn "political correctness." Overall, I am impressed that he presents a plausible model for mapping our observance and violations proscriptive usage rules. However, I don't really know how to use his advice in grading other to be more systematic in noticing what I notice. I also am not sure of what to do with the implications of Chomsky's non-rhetorical sentence, or even what those implications are. Basically, language is one of those big big things like space that I will only get with several different kinds of examples and a fair amount of guidance and pointing at the limits of our understanding.

However, I think I have used one thing that Williams suggests in teaching situation before. He says that we shouldn't take everything we find in grammar books as God's word. In undergraduate, I co-taught a course with a teacher who was often unfairly called a Grammar-Nazi. One of the reasons for this ahistorical hyperbole was her instance on teaching grammar in a writing course. (Facist! I know.) We took turns turns leading a short five minute section of every class where we took on a grammar rule that the class seemed to be struggling with. But, I was weary about teaching the students from the holy scripture without doing some exegesis of my own. A couple times, I would teach the grammar rules and then refute it or call it into question based on historical research or contradictions of other good usage rules. I don't know if I convinced my co-teacher with any of my arguments, but she always allowed me to present my evidence (provided that I ran it by her first). I think we should read and interpret the scriptures of lexicographers as well as Nature's Book of Language  (other texts) and not necessarily surrender the privilege of being an experts on usage. That being said, I am not no expert and there are probably many errors in this post. Who wants to spend the time becoming an expert lexicographer?

I would like to question, following Wallace, whether the tone of the usage dictionaries that Williams chooses is most objectionable to him. I mean, he chooses all proscriptive grammarian and no liberal texts like Webster's which he may or may not have found equally objectionable. Self-identifying SNOOT, Wallace reviews Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and claims that his use of rhetoric smooths the waters between these camps and is less galling to the ears of modern writers because he gains our trust by acting reasonable instead of calling people names. Judging by the fact that Williams opens with comments about the tone of these books it would seem to have some relevance. Does Williams just not want to be talked down to, or does his model that more or less facilitates much more rapid changes in good English usage have some utility for the writer as well as rigor for the scholar?

Are We Hang up on the Wrong Thing?

I’d say the most common request I receive in the Writing Center is to proofread for grammar and spelling.  Of course after explaining that I can not do this, we procede to go over the student’s paper anyway where we usually find larger concerns dealing with thesis, organzation, and conclusion among others.  The point is, students seem so hung up on making sure lower order concerns like gramar are correct that they are seemingly unaware of the larger order concerns that should take president. 

In her article “The Phenomenology of Error”, Joseph Williams argues this point, claiming that universities, publishers, and composition society as a whole are too hung up on gramtical perfection and we’re mssing the bigger picture.  Worse yet, this structure is training students to focus on grammar in lue of larger content issues.  He wrote, “When we read for typos, letters constitute the field of attention; content becomes virtually inaccessible.  When we read for content, [typos]… for the most part—recede from consciousness,” (154).  This is how we’ve been trained at the Writing Center and until we stop seeing higher order continent issues all together, I think this is the right way to tackle writing.  When that day comes, I’ll happy to proofread for grammar… well, maybe not completely happy…  I tell tudees that the most important thing is their ideas and conveying those ideas.  grammar and spelling only concern me when they impede those things.  As Williams sites in his nitty-gritty appraisal of White and Orwell’s works, no one searches (or should search} for grammatical mistakes when trying to divine meaning from their works. 

However, there is a whole land of gray between overvaluing grammar and undervaluing it.  Therefore, I can’t completely disagree with Micciche’s points either.  Without some basis of grammar there ceases to be language and no ideas are being conveyed.  Still I agree with Williams that if forced to choose between whether grammar is overvalued or undervalued today, I’m going with overvalued, thus making Williams point the president to follow—don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

Practical Use

            I didn’t agree with everything Micciche said. I had trouble swallowing “theoretical writing creates a ‘disturbing sense of disorientation,’ a point that nicely describes the way grammar and content work together in theoretical writing to disturb settled or ‘natural’ ways of thinking” (722). This seemed to be very wide sweeping and didn’t include the many examples of bumbling, rambling, abstruse, and poor prose that theorists produce that disturb us but not in a productive way.*
            But while I disagreed with a few things, I was struck by her idea for the commonplace book. In designing the assignment we are turning in tomorrow, I had thought of something similar: students were to take a chunk of well written text, copy it for a few sentences, then begin to write on their own. The goal was to have them get into the crafted sentences of professionals and then take over with their own voice. I scraped it since it seemed difficult to justify and poorly planned out. But here, Micciche has a very similar idea in her commonplace book. I love that students have to hand write these sentences down and that they also have to reflect on them. Students are active readers and writers in this activity. I think it can also encourage the students to include writing in their own fields and begin to understand how to construct a proper sentence for a lab report or marketing plan—or whatever it is that non-humanities folks do.
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* Here’s a clunker:
            “The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the thankless effort to discipline the viewer).”
            That’s courtesy of Fredric Jameson in his 1992 Signatures of the Visible. It actually won the “First Prize in the Worlds Worst Writing Contest” in 1997. Despite this claptrap, Jameson can actually be a good writer. It is a shame he “wrote” the monster you see above.

A Little Appreciation for Grammar's Long-Awaited Champion

Micciche's call for "a discourse that takes seriously the connection between writing and thinking, the interwoven relationship between what we say and how we say it" rang true for me.  Anyone who has worked in the Writing Center can attest that it's difficult to talk about meaning with a student who is hung up on grammar.  "No, I just want this paper checked over," they'll say, and they feel more comfortable when we question their periods and commas than when we engage critically with their overarching ideas.  This is because they are comfortable with the idea that they don't understand the nuts and bolts of grammar.  When it comes to their words, however, and more significantly to their meaning, they often think that, so long as they've got their ideas somewhere on the paper, they've done the best they can do.  They don't understand that the way an idea is laid out can often be more important than the content of the idea itself in getting a message across to a reader.

What I liked most about this article is the way Micciche sees a shortcoming in her students' grasp of grammar and doesn't immediately place blame on high schools for not equipping students with basic language skills.  Neither does she find herself overwhelmed with the thought of teaching grammar to her students.  Rather, she sees not only a responsibility but a bright opportunity for teaching her students that grammar is not about abiding by confusing and restrictive rules, but rather about arming yourself with different rhetorical possibilities in order to better solidify and articulate an argument.  By linking what is being said with the way it is being said, Micciche’s proposed method will not only strengthen students’ abilities to express themselves and their own ideas more effectively, but also their aptitude for analyzing the rhetorical choices authors of other texts have used.

Their, They're, and There

Grammar, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult issues to address during a tutoring session.  I am constantly questioning my decision to address a grammatical error - is it really impeding my understanding of the sentence?  Is it an error that the student repeats throughout the paper?  Grammar errors used to be my pet peeve - I couldn't stand when others didn't "get" the grammar rules that were drilled into my head in middle school.  Needless to say, I've had to let go of this anger towards grammar mistakes since I began tutoring.

My relationship with grammar had already been uneasy before I started at the Writing Center, however.  It all started when I found out that the designation of "its" as a possessive instead of "it's" was an arbitrary decision made by some editor that stuck.  That was probably the first time that I realized that grammar rules are quite often arbitrary and probably shouldn't be considered strictly.  Williams, I think, illustrates this point perfectly with his examples of authors violating the same rules they are trying to explain.

Even so, I also found myself agreeing with many of Micciche's points.  Even though many of the rules are arbitrary, we have to follow the most basic ones in order to adopt an "academic" voice and want others to take our written work seriously.  Grammar can be rhetorical - why else do we use dashes and commas in our writing?  Tone is not only established by word choice - grammar plays a huge part, too. I think examining grammar rhetorically is a great teaching tool - even if we can't agree on all of the grammar rules, our students should at least be able to follow the most basic ones (it is a part of understanding, too).  Even if it is not our central focus, grammar needs to be a part of the conversation, and Micciche provides an interesting way to discuss it with our students.