Product Theory

I'll start with my favorite article this week, Hartwell's "Grammar." I found this piece lively, informative and clever. Also, it may be one of the few articles I will remember a week from now. His description of the 5 types of grammar was very helpful and changed my understanding of what grammar actually is. I've never really had a firm grasp on types II and IV as my grammar education stopped in middle school. I took Principles of Modern Grammar in college which did not teach me anything other than how to diagram sentences and I don't even remember that anymore. I've always wondered how the heck am I supposed to write good sentences if I don't have a grasp on all these advanced technical terms I hear every once in a while like modals, conditions and the hundreds of different verb types. Then Hartwell hit me, mastery of type II and IV grammar does not correlate with type I grammar. I can write, maybe, complicated and deeply embedded sentences without knowing the names of the techniques I'm using, and that's OK.

Although Hartwell does well to shatter the myth of grammar, he offers only vague, idealistic alternatives. This is something I've noticed in almost every article I've read in class so far. They all do a good job of proving some specific idea wrong, but are very vague in what ought to be done. Hartwell says, "Those of us who dismiss the teaching of formal grammar have a model of composition instruction that makes the grammar issue 'uninteresting.'" And what is this model? One that "predicts a rich and complex interaction of learner and environment in mastering literacy." That's nice, but I have a better one. It is one where all student writers will leave prepared to write the next Great American Novel, or write treatises which will lead to world happiness, or discover a cure for cancer through discourse, etc. I know all the secrets, just don't ask me to elaborate.

Sommers does a good job in "Responding to Student Writing" of at least showing us how to grade better. The important thing I took from this article is the confusion and ambiguity of the average comment on student papers. Teachers simultaneously nitpick comma placement and spelling while asking the student to fundamentally restructure and rewrite their entire paper. Sommers offers a clear strategy for grading papers that will better serve the student: "Our goal in commenting on early drafts should be to engage students with the issues they are considering and help clarify their purposes and reasons in writing their specific text." She then explains clearly what was wrong with one of the examples and offers us an example of what could have specifically been said to that student. I imagine a course in which the student will be asked to write three drafts of a paper, each one focusing on a different thing. The first one on structure and general development of ideas. The next on flow of logic and one sentence smoothly transitioning from one to another. And the last, after a good paper has already been written, will focus on punctuation, spelling and diction. Thus reversing the old mode of thinking that grammar is the foundation of good writing and the most important first step.

I tried reading "Teachers' Rhetorical Comments on Student Papers," but the research aspect of it was dull and the subject even more so. It seems that the general conclusions of these papers are always echoed in the other readings anyway. If I save 25% of my time by NOT reading the paper, but only miss out on a 5% increase in knowledge, then it is worth, in my opinion, not to read the danged thing and just listen to the people that did ;)

Connors' article was a little more interesting to me, even though the subject was not. Anything told in narrative or a historical perspective can usually hold my attention. I found it to be a good review on the history of composition with a focus on grammar, but did not add much to my knowledge that I didn't already get from the historical readings from earlier in the course. I always like a good quote before an article or chapter or anything. But I wondered if any variation of the opening quote might not also be true. "He that loveth little things shall grow little by little." Or, "He that despiseth big things shall perish in large degrees." Or, "One shall grow or perish in relation to his stock in things."

Finally, I was confused by Elbow's article. It was too long for its seemingly narrow scope. All I got out of it is that we ought to include nonacademic discourse in our students' education to make them more well-rounded in their post-academic life (perhaps a hard pill to swallow for those whose lives are entirely academic).