Subject: Re: comfort ye, my peepul
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Sat May 11 2002 - 23:31:31 GMT
sigh.
thinking more, I have to post a couple disclaimers to my glowing
agreement with you, will :) I still agree in principle, though. I get
the feeling we're arguing both ends against the middle...
The students I'm teaching now are generally among the better writers --
they've either had AP or IB English or scored pretty highly on the SAT.
But out of 15 students, maybe two or three really WRITE, you know? --
demonstrate the markers of thought and ease with the language. The rest
need to be "unshackled" from their writing -- I would ideally be a
liberator -- but not by allowing them to continue in bad habits, but by
giving them the tools to more fully and more clearly express themselves.
Almost all my students are capable of drawing valid inferences from their
reading and making good observations (maybe just one lacks in this -- GOD
I'm blessed :) ).
You should see what they said about Thomas Pynchon after I had them read
the introduction to Slow Learner :). HAW.
At any rate, I think addressing grammatical rules and basic sentence
structure issues can give students the tools to really say what they want
to say. If they stay stuck in their language of birth -- their dialect
-- they often don't have the tools or vocabulary to express the more
sophisticated ideas found in academic discourse. It's a disservice to
leave them there.
Jim
Will Hochman wrote:
> Jim, if you noted some of the url's I posted earlier in this
> discussion, you might guess that I spend quite a bit of time teaching
> standard English. I think we are actually close to agreement. I think
> learning how to write standard English is important...it's just not
> the big kahuna for me. I don't think students learn how to care about
> rules of language until they care about making meaning, and I know
> from closely observing students' composing processes that fear of
> rules doesn't motivate learners. I just spent close to 40 hours
> responding to student essays and challenging students to learn about
> sentence structure, using the MLA, and specifying with details, so
> please know I work hard on the front lines of college literacy
> struggles. So let's get real. I think you know as well I do that
> teachers can use power poorly. I see it all the time. Sniping about
> grammar and punctuation when a student is saying something important
> isn't always wise. I do find opportunities to instruct students about
> proper English and I create class activities to show students how to
> teach themselves to use a handbook and to use their own critical
> thinking to improve language use. But I often see learning "scars"
> like students just trying to do what the teacher wants, or believing
> that correctness is intelligence. Like you, I know I'm teaching a
> dialect called standard English, but I also respect other dialects
> and don't think that rejecting them helps college students learn to
> write. Peter Elbow, a writing teacher whose scholarship I've found
> instructive talked about dialects and "mother tongues" as part of a
> composing process at last year's College Conference on Composition
> and Communication. It makes sense to me to respect the languages and
> ideas of my students. When we "enforce" standard English, we tend to
> lose sight of that respect. Rereading Foucault may not work...how
> about reading Paulo Freire instead? I'll be happy to send you a xerox
> of his essay "'The Banking' Concept of Education" which I'm teaching
> today. And since you mention Foucault, I'm guessing you might know
> about the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis...that language is connected to the
> realities of cultures...if we are teaching standard English and not
> listening closely to ideas that are not expressed in our academic
> dialect, we may be missing out on opportunities for students to teach
> teachers about our culture. You are right to nail me on too much
> polarization in my rhetoric, but I'm not letting go of this argument.
> We both agree knowing and using rules of English makes sense and it's
> part of much of my teaching effort, but I don't think careful grammar
> and punctuation happen without caring about ideas and meaning.
> Teaching students to care about their ideas and to strengthen them is
> a large job--following rules is part of it, but not my focus. 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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