Writing Should Come With A Manual

     As much as we would like to think that the English language has a set of strict guidelines that apply to all writing, Hjortshoj refers to our language as a “wonderfully complicated, living system” (81) with varying rules and exceptions for nearly every situation.  The continually evolving nature of English, however, can put a serious strain on students as they attempt to establish a definite set of rules for writing their essays.  Comments teachers make in the margins are oftentimes vague, and confused students may believe that those corrections are all-encompassing and apply to every essay they will ever write.  When various teachers offer contradicting critiques, writers become frustrated and wonder why a common standard for all English writing still eludes us.

     In this chapter, Hjortshoj explains the two different ways through which we learn the proper patterns of the English language: primary knowledge and secondary knowledge.  The former is almost instinctive – we have learned what is and is not grammatically correct by reading and listening to basic patterns of speech.  The latter, however, must be taught, as it involves all of the complex names for grammatical concepts that many forget shortly after leaving their middle school English classes.  We typically rely upon primary knowledge when drafting and revising our writing, mainly because, as Hjortshoj explains, we can “hear and correct the error before we can explain it.” (84)

     This concept of audibly catching mistakes is an extremely useful one that I have seen applied successfully in numerous situations.  In my high school’s writing center, we would frequently have the younger students who needed help with their grammar go out into the hallway with their paper and read it aloud.  When they re-entered the room, they would immediately take a pen and fix half of the mistakes without the consultants having to say or do anything at all.  I have also witnessed firsthand the usefulness of this technique here at Richmond.  During my observation last week, I noticed that the consultant read much of the paper out loud – it was remarkable how many times the writer would interject mid-sentence to admit that something sounded awkward or needed to be rephrased.

     Although this verbal editing technique is indispensable, it still does not address the larger issue of the English language’s lack of an absolute standard for writing.  Yes, reading aloud will enable you to detect subject-verb agreement errors, but how will it help guide you when your history teacher comments that your sentences are too cumbersome, yet your English teacher notes that your sentences are underdeveloped?  While I am in no way trying to insult educators who merely seek to improve their students’ writing, the tendency of individual professors to act as if their rules are absolute and universal is a great disservice to developing writers.  Many students want to approach writing as a rigid step-by-step process that can be applied to any essay and result in a desirable grade, but the absence of one generally accepted writing guide combined with teachers’ my-way-is-the-only-way attitude makes a “formula for success” unattainable.  Although I embrace the notion that language should be flexible and subject to change, I believe that these ambiguous yet authoritative corrections are what cause many students to become frustrated and declare writing to be one ridiculous game that is impossible to play due to the absence of a rule book.  Just as Hjortshoj discussed in an earlier chapter, students oftentimes find themselves “writing for a specific professor” because no one in the academic world can seem to agree once and for all as to what constitutes proper English.  While I can appreciate that each teacher has his or her own stylistic preferences, they need to help students understand when a correction is a mere personal preference and when an error violates a conventional grammatical rule.  If educators are going to force students to adhere to one strict set of rules for that class, then they should write something more specific than simply “awkward” or “unclear” in the margins.

Madeline Smedley      

"The Study of Error"

In reading “The Study of Error” by David Bartholomae I found that I gained a more informed judgment of how to deal with the shortcomings of basic writing. Bartholomae tries to examine the basis of basic writing, how we critique it, and whether it is really a shortfall on the writer’s part or just a misunderstanding of the task at hand.

I understand, from the article, that the correct way to approach basic writing is to not come at it as a lesson that we can teach students, but rather it should be looked at as an opportunity to examine the errors made by the writer when he is faced with tasks that are beyond his current ability. We as consultants need to approach papers with eyes that can recognize errors the writer has made and try to evaluate those mistakes based on where they originated. As Bartholomae states basic writers do make choices and struggle to find strategy as they deal with “the varied demands of a task, a language, and a rhetoric” (257). Basic writing is not uninformed or unintellectual, rather its confused and misguided so we must be sensitive to that as we give advice to our writers. I believe the value in this is that once we recognize the errors the writer has made we can begin the consultation by acknowledging the things the writer has done, giving him some confidence in his ability, and then come at it with a critical eye helping the writer to see what mistakes he made.

One lesson within the article that I found to be important, on our part, is the assertion that we must be proficient readers. When we look at the papers with careful eyes we can at times overlook the miscues within the writing and see the bigger picture of the writers argument. Bartholomae argues that good readers are able to see the “sense” of the passage and can make better corrections within the essay if they overlook the small errors and try to see the core of the argument. We saw this when we were editing the “Is Chance Wise” paper, as we skillfully read the paper we were able to catch a glimpse of what the writer truly meant and could give better feedback.

            This is no easy feat, and I believe that this requires a lot to be accomplished in the one-hour meeting we have with our writers. Yet, what I believe to be a valuable lesson is that in our understanding of Bartholomae’s argument we can act as better, more careful consultants because we understand the ways in which student’s shortcomings can appear within their writing. 

Emily Chadwick