Re: Yahoo has no staff tech writers
I'm not sure who called a need for uniform grammar a "neurosis" because I haven't kept track.
I was the one who used the word "neurosis."
However, I did NOT say that a need for uniform grammar was a neurosis.
I said that to be more concerned about grammatical correctness than content is a neurosis.
That doesn't mean that grammar is unimportant, or that a high level of consistency isn't necessary. What it does mean is that grammar should be seen as a tool or a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself. All too often, however, a typo or grammatical lapse is used as reason for dismissing what is said, as if knowledge of Standard English was a pre-requisite for thinking.
> However, I have some experience teaching English
> writing and composition to disadvantaged students in an urban >university, and the departmental policy I found there disparaged the teaching of grammar entirely. Their policy was "Ignore grammar, let the student write,
This approach is often disparaged. It's just as often an excuse for slack teaching. However, it's a reasonable policy in the early stages,when students feel uncomfortable with the mere act of writing. It makes writing a less stressful experience, and, so long as students write enough and long enough (and, ideally, read enough), their familiarity with writing will tend to improve their grammar.
During my seven years as a university instructor, I always assigned a daily journal in my composition class. I didn't grade the contents; I simply gave a small percentage of the final grade based on whether the assignment was done.
My approach to Standard English was simple: people are going to judge you by your ability to write Standard English,especially in university. For this reason, you should know something about what its expectations are. However, I explained, Standard English is simply an unusually influential dialect of English, and, despite the claims made for it, no more definitive than any other dialect.
These approaches worked extremely well. I could see marked improvements in students' writing over a semester, and students in my classes had a low failure rate.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
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RE: Yahoo has no staff tech writers: From: John Posada
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