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Putting Grammar in its Place
By Linda LaDuc, School of Management, UMass Amherst
As I typed up this article I recalled the management professor's face when he said to me, "Yes, I do want to participate in WAC [Writing Across the Curriculum] again this semester. Could you read one or two of the assignments to catch those things that drive me crazy -- that I obsess over even when I have other things to look for and grade? You know, you look for grammar so I can focus on content. In fact, how would you feel about giving them a grade for it?"
I sensed he was uncomfortable asking me to do this, but I agreed to work with him to find a way to give appropriate feedback to his students about grammar, without making it the focus on the course. After discussion we decided to meet again to devise criteria for evaluating the writing quality of his students' papers, and in the end, the WAC consultant assigned to his class read for a limited number of grammatical and syntactical problems, as well as basic argument construction. Despite having worked this situation out satisfactorily, I kept seeing that frustrated look on his face and knew that his frustration was shared by several management faculty, who were not participating in the WAC component of our JYW Program. As I have several times over the past three years, I wondered what else I could do to address grammar concerns, while at the same time realizing that I continued to struggle with this thorny problem in my own classes.
The Nature of Our Obsession
It continually surprises me that whether we are composition specialists, or chemical engineers, or forestry experts, or choreographers, many of us still obsess over grammar. We worry that if we don't correct each and every instance of mechanical imperfection that students will continue to make the same mistakes forever. We worry that we are not meeting others' expectations about correcting grammar and syntax in students' writing (whether those others are peers, parents, or students themselves). We worry that we are over-editing, or that we are spending too much class time teaching grammar when there is so much else to cover. And some of us worry that we don't know enough about grammar and syntax to teach these things effectively. After all, we're not all English teachers, right?
Fortunately, through our School of Management WAC project, part of our JYW program, I could help my frustrated colleague -- the WAC consultant would simply read one or two sets of his students' briefs, looking for specific grammar problems. Fortunately, however, during our discussion my colleague also came to the conclusion that grammar is not the real problem, but rather a symptom of students' lack of practice in constructing the kinds of arguments he expects. Because they are attempting to add new skills to their writing repertoires, they are fumbling with old ones -- in part because time to do the assignments is so limited that something has to flex, and that something was grammar. Despite knowing this is a side effect, he still wants the students to pay attention to grammar. And so do I. And many of us find ourselves in this same position . . .
So, how do we address grammar, yet not get entangled in our obsessions about it -- obsessions that are often grounded in impossible and conflicting expectations? While teaching Business Writing, I've grappled with this problem and articulated a philosophy that works for me as well as a few tips for addressing the problem. One of the first steps I had to take was to admit that grammar and syntax matter -- a lot. Professionals must pay attention to the fundamentals of writing, and my colleagues expect me to address the problem. Yet, I believe that grammar and syntax problems indicate, like the proverbial canary in the mine, that students need more oxygen in the form of writing practice, and not necessarily more grammar-focused instruction. Students can't get all the grammar, syntax, and usage instruction they need in just two writing courses (First Year and Junior Year writing), and students who ordinarily write well may suddenly demonstrate poor grammar when grappling with new course material and concepts. So to what degree and at what times should we insist on correctness?
In my effort to negotiate between Scylla and Charybdis, I decided to limit scope, take a multi-tasking approach, broadcast my aims, and limit my evaluating/responding...
My new philosophy is that instruction for grammar and syntax should be limited in scope to that which is most prominent in each writing task or assignment. My method: Focus on one or two problems that seem, based on past experience, to be endemic to a particular assignment -- in the context of the specific audience, purpose, content requirements, and constraints of the situation. For example, my students are asked to write resumes and cover letters in an effort to build a job search portfolio. Parallel structure is essential for readable resumes (in short phrases, fragments, and/or sentences), but students frequently demonstrate difficulty conveying their skills, awards, etc., in parallel fashion under each category heading. So I ask them to participate in exercises in which they not only come up with material for writing, but also learn how to construct parallel lists and sentences with parallel phrases, and to respect parallelism as a powerful tool for making writing more forceful (and more logical). Perhaps this is best demonstrated by an example from my students' writing. The following example demonstrates how one student revised for parallel structure:
Original segment:
Night Manager, Big Y Market, Southampton, MA
I was responsible for inventory and reporting security problems.
Reconciled register accounts.
Reports to management about traffic.
Given 5 people to supervise.
From this list we get only a glimmer of the skills and attributes that make this person a potentially strong manager. Note how much better the skills are conveyed by the revision below:
Revised Segment:
Night Manager, Big Y Market, Southampton, MA
* Supervised inventory takers
* Reported security problems to management and to law enforcement personnel
* Reconciled register reports and produced inventory reports for management
* Recorded traffic and buyer preferences
* Managed 5 employees, including preparing their pay and promotion reports
It was actually exciting to see this student's face light up when she discovered herself through parallel structure -- after revising two faulty sentences to create parallelism, she was suddenly able to appear on paper as competent as she was in reality. Explaining the logical role of words and ideas in sentences, in grammatical form, made sense to her in ways that it never had before, because it was immediately relevant and useful. Of course not all grammar can be taught so efficiently, but we can do much to make the teaching we do more effective.
For example, resume-writing lends itself well to providing relevant instruction about capitalization, but also about the importance of overall mechanical correctness. Addressing problems with active and passive voice fits well with business letter-writing instruction; problems with style such as wordiness, jargon, and repetition are effectively addressed by asking students to write executive summaries of reports or abstracts of articles; and problems with semi-colons and colons seem to appear out of nowhere in issue or position papers and can be used to motivate discussions of how to write more complex sentences that are logical and readable.
The satisfaction that comes from infusing relevant grammar instruction when it is most needed - in these and other ways -- allows me to obsess a bit less about it, but there are additional, systemic ways to address grammar, too. Some of these include getting more faculty feedback on what matters to them, setting instructional objectives that incorporate feedback, specifying student responsibility while also providing students with necessary resources, deciding on achievable goals for reading and editing that limit scope, disclaiming, and setting criteria for grading that takes grammar and syntax into account. Let's take each of these in order . . .
Getting faculty feedback
I haven't yet tried this, but I think it would be a great idea to distribute a questionnaire to my colleagues asking them to list 3-5 specific problems that they see in student writing and then asking them to prioritize the problems: Which bother them the most, and which do they think are most important to address immediately? Then I imagine that I would collect the forms and summarize the results of this feedback and distribute them back to the faculty with the following text: "Thank you for your valuable feedback. Our instructional objectives for writing have been refined to focus more attention on these persistent problems. Some students simply need practice and gentle reminding; others may need additional instruction. You can help us to help them by pointing out these particularly resistant problems to students when you see them appear in their papers, asking them to either seek out instruction from the [Writing Program], or to work on eliminating the problem if they were merely being careless."
Note that my strategy provides text that indicates I will be providing instruction; the text also assumes that faculty will assign writing in their courses, and the text asks for their collegial assistance. So they know you are doing your job, and you can feel less defensive --and relax a bit in your obsession because you've created a team and spread the responsibility around.
Preparing instructional objectives
I have taken some real steps of course: I created a list of 4-5 macro-instructional (big picture) objectives for my writing course (worded so that results are measurable). My list of objectives includes "demonstrating improvement in grammar and syntax" as one objective, listing it at the end where it is visible, yet of lower priority than objectives that are discipline-specific (such as demonstrating critical thinking about issues in accounting or performing analysis of cultural differences in business letter writing). I include the objectives in the syllabus, and note that circulating the syllabus makes the grammar objective prominent to students and colleagues. Its presence says, "this matters."
Specifying student responsibility and providing resources
Instructors in the SOM 491 Business Writing course regularly point out the grammar and syntax-focused objective to students and discuss the fact that correctness is a mutual responsibility. They and I provide relevant instruction and opportunity for practice and targeted feedback; students should get and use a grammar handbook, spell-check their documents, seek out peer edits, and visit the writing center if one is available. Distributing copies of editors' mark-up symbols for them to use in self and peer editing is a good idea we use. And we also insist that students get peer edits on prior drafts for high-stakes writing, such as graded assignments that count more than 15% of a students' overall grade for a course. When peer editing is feasible, we require peer editors' signatures on accompanying drafts when final projects are handed in. Note that this step encourages a more professional approach to the peer editing process, placing responsibility on students not only for proofreading for mechanics, but for getting feedback on their thinking-writing strategies.
Limiting scope in reading and editing
Before responding to student writing, I've discovered that it is very helpful to decide first on a reading-editing strategy. For example, upon assigning a paper, I tell students specifically that I'll be looking to see that they demonstrate one skill in particular: paragraph development, for example. Or I tell them that I'll be paying special attention to introductory clauses of sentences. Or I'll read an entire set of papers, pick out the most common grammatical error, and show ways to eliminate it next time. In each of these cases, I've found it helpful to limit my feedback to the one element only and limit the related instruction to 5 minutes or less. Over time, this strategy covers a lot of grammatical territory, and is less overwhelming to students than the results of obsessive editing: papers that are so marked up that students get discouraged at the results and the teacher is exhausted by the effort. Finally, I also remind myself that if I feel compelled to point out additional grammar or syntax problems on some papers, I can merely place checks or use wavy lines and ask students to find the problems themselves.
Disclaiming:
I try to let students know that it is neither possible nor desirable that I edit their papers for everything. I'd like to stamp a disclaimer on their papers that said: "This edit/response is not exhaustive. A check mark indicates that there are additional problems which affected your grade. You should find and correct these, and if recurring, see me for help." Maybe I'll order that stamp today!
Setting criteria for grading:
Peter Elbow has written about high stakes versus low stakes writing and makes a cogent case for setting reasonable yet clear criteria for grading. In my experience I've found that it is helpful to students if I decide in advance whether the writing I've assigned is high stakes or low stakes and what level of correctness is fair to ask them to achieve given the constraints of the particular assignment. Low stakes writing and preliminary drafts that must be written quickly may well be awkward and ungrammatical; I need to stress to myself that I am looking for ideas, for thinking, in such pieces. Alternatively, it is fair to stress correctness -- even impeccability -- on a heavily weighted, high-stakes paper, for which drafting and editing time have been allowed in the syllabus and for which I have had an opportunity to help students think through content and writing strategies in advance. In the latter case, I find it helpful to provide students with a grid that specifies the criteria by which they will be graded and often will ask them to contribute to the criteria listing, by asking: "What 4-5 elements are critical for evaluating the overall effectiveness of this assignment?" Almost always they will include correctness, at which point I can specify particular elements that are apt to be problematic in this assignment: run-on sentences, passive voice, parallel structure, punctuation, etc. Or I could simply provide a grid that specifies 3-4 important items, such as: uses strong verbs, demonstrates coherent paragraph development, and so forth. Writing these so that they address a limited number of measurable elements makes my grading seem fairer, more accurate, and more helpful, but also limits me -- after all, it is my obsession that I am trying to manage, as I also try to teach writing.
Conclusion
I hope these ideas have provided you with some hope that our glorious but frustrating obsession with correctness can be managed in a lot of ways that make teaching writing not only more productive, but more fun. After all, Junior Year Writing is about much more than grammar, syntax, usage, and style, regardless of their acknowledged importance. The ideas I suggest may not work for everyone, but modifications of them may prove useful for some, and many of you may be prompted to come up with altogether new ideas of your own.
Updated September 3, 2008
