Re: The last of a Series of Grammatical Corrections...


Subject: Re: The last of a Series of Grammatical Corrections...
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 23:41:12 GMT


Dear All, I quite agree with Scottie's placement of theory (and
Johnson) in context. I just think we look at error like a disease
when it's really life and certainly part of language. I'm about to
read and comment on 35 short essays from first-year college writers.
I will alert my students to "challenges" like avoiding vague pronouns
or structuring sentences or shifting person unnecessarily (You
grammar hooligan, you--who let you into school?).

(pun intended--exclamation deleted--lowercase continued)

However, I will spend much of more of my commenting pencil's lead on
simply praising particular points and good insights. I will nurture a
sense of "talking" with sources and guide my young writer's
experience using the MLA citation style. I'll be careful to note
effort and caring as part of the process that produced the texts, and
I'll praise honesty, directness, creativity, and critical
intelligence.

I'm saying this in direct opposition to Scottie's approach. Talented
teachers improve literacy all the time and not just their own, though
I'm only half joking. "The truest things are said in jest"
Shakespeare said. I continue to be jazzed by writing. Trying to write
English correctly is rarely smooth, easy and natural for me. But if
I can use Jazz as verb, I can improvise and this dance with feelings,
ideas and the language, and that keeps finding me finding new voices
to try, new ideas to explore. Whether it's my own improvement or that
of the students I'm privileged to work with, English is changing.
It's no longer a king's language. Democracy has taken English from
the English people and made it more of a people's language. It may
have taken several centuries and the Internet, but it's time to give
it up Scottie. Correctness counts in academic worlds, but it's not
about writing talent. Yeah, correctness is part of good writing, but
whose correctness counts? Great writers do "incorrect" things so well
they become correct all the time...all the time.

!

will

-- 
	Will Hochman

Assistant Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024

http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html

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