Job Discussion Forums

[jotham]

[Kilgore Trout]

[Kilgore Trout]

[jotham]

[Kilgore Trout]

I suppose the tone of my post must appear to be that harsh, and I apologize for that.

However, I have found that teaching writing to groups of 18 and 19 year olds generally calls for some very direct instruction, particularly when they are writing in a second language. I truly think that a 16 week class hardly provides the forum for this to be accomplished in most cases. Thus, the pass/fail standard suffers immensely and even a C provides enough incentive for some to boast of success. The writings and the classes are never very difficult, so the standard has to be, or there is nothing to provide incentive.

Unfortunately, I do not subscribe to much more with these students than a rather rigid discipline to reinforce fundamental skills through repetition, proofreading and self editing. I hope at least to ingrain some sense of responsibility in their writing approach if nothing else.

I take this approach for several reasons, but the most important is that many of them have little or no writing skill and even less motivation.

I certainly do not blame them, but I find that at some point in their academic careers they will need these skills to perform, and of course, they will need to hone those skills to utilize them in their work.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I would rather make sure they can write functionally (though this may not be a strong issue either way) and I only hope to get through to a relatively small percentage, but I always hold out hope for a larger number.

Conversational was probably a poor choice of words and jargon may actually be more accurate. However, I would point out that the state of academic writing today may be at its worst at anytime in recent history and certainly is neither prefrable nor desirable for me any longer. I have taught alongside many wannabes with various eclectic approaches to basic writing, but I rarely see any of them do what I do, which is roll up my sleeves and roll around in the mess to help these people make some sense of what they are attempting to compose. When I do come up for air, I see that many students, at least, appreciate the effort and that helps motivate me to attemptmore clarity in explanation.

From the amount of Linguisitcs Journal articles I have read over the past year, I woudl definitely say that their are definite differences in American and British styles. Of course, we are talking the pinnacle of writing in that regard, and it may not be a fair comparison.

Though we are straying a bit from the point here, I always pride myself in modeling these methods for students and certainly try not to insult them.

Uncouth and unmitigated certainly are not terms I would ever choose when speaking to a group of non-native writers in a composition course because I am fairly sure that 99% would never understand (and this is not meant to poke fun or be petty).

In the end, the issue clearly is one of much debate and has found no further resolution here.

A former Generative Transformational Grammar professor applied the only technique I can remember to be effective in deciding unclear rules of grammar. He had the class vote with only two choices available and remarked, "Well, that settles it, at least in this class, today".

[Henry_Cowell]

There is a widespread belief -- one with no historical or grammatical foundation -- that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. Charles Allen Lloyd's 1938 words fairly sum up the situation as it stands even today:

"Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most wide-spread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with 'but' or 'and.' As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves."

---Chicago Manual of Style [the premier style and usage reference for academic writing and publishing in the United States]

[jotham]

[Henry_Cowell]

There is a well-known prescription prohibiting the use of coordinators at the beginning of a sentence. Nevertheless, coordination often occurs in this position. Sentence-initial or turn-initial coordination is most common at the beginning of a turn in conversation.... However, it is also relatively common in writing....

Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English

[JonnyB61]

And now for something completely different.

A man flogging a dead horse.

[jotham]

[Henry_Cowell]