Grammar
The Grammar articles really resonated with me. Mostly, because when I tell people that I am an English major, they ALWAYS reply with something to the effect of, "Oh, so you sit around and fix commas and stuff?" I am not sure why English and grammar have come to mean the same thing to people. It is probably because those concrete lessons stick out most to people when they think back on high school and grade school lessons. (Most people HATE grammar lessons, so they aren't easy to forget.) A lot of scholarship I have read of late, has made it clear that grammar exercises really do not help students to learn grammar rules. And, you know, I think that is true. Grammar laws are hard to understand because there are so many exceptions to the rules. (A word that is a noun, can also be an adjective... etc.) Plus, I think it is hard to understand grammar when it is separated from the context of writing, as I think it often is in school. I agree with the author of the first article, in that I think it should be taught always in the attempt to make writing better, not in the attempt to help students pass standerdized tests. (But, that is easier said then done. Teachers often HAVE to teach to the test.)
After reading about transformational gramar, and the other forms of grammar, I understand why teachers often just try to teach the basics, or traditional school grammar. It is simply easier to grade those kind of surface mistakes, than it is to teach students about Noam Chomsky's deep structure. At the same time though, I think Halliday's and Chomsky's views of grammar are better for helping students to understand the relationship between grammar and writing. (Halliday's especially...) Easier is not always better.
I don't know. Somehow, we need to make students realize, or make teachers realize maybe, that language is not stagnate. It is constantly evolving, at least until it is dead like Latin. Sticking to "divine" rules, and priviledging certain dialects, alienates people from the true study of composition. The way teachers teach grammar in High school and grade school, makes students think that the key to good writing is putting all your commas in the right place, and we know that isn't what composition is all about. A grammar free paper with no ideas behind it, is a waste.
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These two readings were great; but this just may be the opinion of someone who has a minor in Linguistics.
Like the authors, I encounter people who become smug and passive-aggressive when they find out that I’m an English major. If I should happen to make a “mistake,” they are quick to inform me with the hopes that my house of cards will fall and I will be revealed as the intellectual fraud that I am. Then I explain that they are being prescriptivists, and also jerks.
It’s sad that we have to carry the sins of our strict grammarian ancestors.
Back to the subject at hand, I was lucky enough to take a class that focused on grammar as part of my Linguistics minor; this helped shaped my views on the subject. As stated in the Smith article, TSG is useless at its best and harmful at its worst. If you believe in Chomsky’s view of grammar, you’d know that a child doesn’t have to be corrected in order to grow up as a proper speaker of English – if this were true, we’d have a disproportionate amount of the population talking like The Cookie Monster. Our brains are these amazing devices that can decode and learn the rules of language at a very young age.
In the past few years, I’ve taken it upon myself to tackle some of the dusty, old prescriptivist rules of English, and I’ve made a few presentations on the topic that I hope to replicate in my class. Grammar can be terrifying, and also a huge roadblock to beginning college writers. Students may be entering our classes with very prescriptivist mindsets, thinking that each and every paragraph has to be 5 sentences long (you’d be surprised how often I get that), amongst other things. I think it’s important to make fun of some of English’s absurd and dying rules (most of them having been created by lonely, angry monks and bishops) in order to get over that initial fear of language. Even when I gave a truncated presentation about grammar at ONTAP, my audience was full of questions and some even seemed to have a new sense of confidence.
I’ve probably shared this story in class before, but in a history class during my final undergraduate year, I used the word “and” to begin a sentence (GASP) in a term paper, and saw that the teacher had marked it with a message saying something like “Don’t ask me why, but you shouldn’t be doing this.” I could have pulled out a million examples of published journals, articles, and fiction where beginning a sentence with “and” was A-OK, but instead I just tolerated the fact that she wanted us to write in an archaic, unappealing form of English. And I hate having to put a lid on expressiveness out of the fear of breaking some nonsensical rule.
The professor also marked a few things that were deemed “informal,” even though the paper was about a ridiculous episode of the original Star Trek that we watched in class. I’ll let you figure out where her priorities were.
The real danger of grammar fear is letting the strict guidelines of rigid rules clamp down on your writing. I see this in my mom, whose insecurity about writing an e-mail to her English major son makes her messages look like they were created by a Russian immigrant slowly and clinically selecting words out of a dictionary.
My question is... What episode of Star Trek was it? haha
Ashley-
It was called "A Piece of the Action." You can read more about it HERE. See how useful the Internet can be?
I've seen that episode.
When I first learned of my assistantship, I was very excited and told family, who had been waiting to learn how I was going to pay for grad school. In the midst of my joy, an aunt remarked, "So we'd better watch our English." What a devastating blow. After several days (weeks) of weeping, and after I was finally able to sleep without waking to the sound of my own screams, I confronted said aunt, and wondered why she had thought that I would now assume the role of Grammar Gestapo. (Of course, I never actually confronted this aunt, as I have cut off all ties with her, and her children).
Rather, my confrontation took place somewhere else, not of this world. The matter was decided, instead, in the depths of my own soul. Had I really accepted a position that would forever separate me from the world which I came? Would the rest of my family drift from me to the side of Aunt Olga, in some sort of protest for my refusal to associate with her or to stop shooting her cats?
The problem with Olga, whose name is not really Olga, is that her experience with English teachers came primarily from an elementary and high school experience, where an emphasis was placed on all grammar all the time. As a result, she immediately assumed that I also would be consumed by the same passion for grammar that the nuns who beat her had.
While my relationship with Aunt Olga is forever scarred, I have decided to tolerate others' who share a similar mindset, if and when I encounter them in the future. I plan to assure them that indeed I care little as to whether or not they speak in accordance with standard English. I rarely do, and cannot expect the same of them.
When I first learned of my assistantship, I was very excited and told family, who had been waiting to learn how I was going to pay for grad school. In the midst of my joy, an aunt remarked, "So we'd better watch our English." What a devastating blow. After several days (weeks) of weeping, and after I was finally able to sleep without waking to the sound of my own screams, I confronted said aunt, and wondered why she had thought that I would now assume the role of Grammar Gestapo. (Of course, I never actually confronted this aunt, as I have cut off all ties with her, and her children).
Rather, my confrontation took place somewhere else, not of this world. The matter was decided, instead, in the depths of my own soul. Had I really accepted a position that would forever separate me from the world which I came? Would the rest of my family drift from me to the side of Aunt Olga, in some sort of protest for my refusal to associate with her or to stop shooting her cats?
The problem with Olga, whose name is not really Olga, is that her experience with English teachers came primarily from an elementary and high school experience, where an emphasis was placed on all grammar all the time. As a result, she immediately assumed that I also would be consumed by the same passion for grammar that the nuns who beat her had.
While my relationship with Aunt Olga is forever scarred, I have decided to tolerate others' who share a similar mindset, if and when I encounter them in the future. I plan to assure them that indeed I care little as to whether or not they speak in accordance with standard English. I rarely do, and cannot expect the same of them.
jamie, i got quite a giggle out of that little story, but sadly i do not share your (or any other classmates similar) story. People tend to laugh when they hear that i am an English teacher/major. This has its own traumatizing effects because the reason for their laughter is my lack of grammatical knowledge. So, i can completely commiserate with everyone who hates grammar and finds it mostly superfluous because i managed to get this and all the while stinking at grammar. interesting, ay?
I think for those of us in English fields, “So you fix commas and stuff?”/ “So we better watch our English?” is second only to “So what are you going to do with that?” I’m still waiting for people to stop asking me that.
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