Project 1 Intro/Conversation

         What exactly is the purpose of grammar? Are they truly useful for anyone to take, or are they optional concepts only individuals of higher education, or social status, fully understand? These are the questions I have to ponder about whenever the time comes to write about papers, where there's this disconnect of the construction of the paper and the actual material inside the paper. If I must make an observation, it seems that to a general audience, the foundation of the idea that constructs entire essays is enough for them to hold their interest, even if it goes beyond their own thinking anyways. And yet, if I were to approach, say, English teachers of various High Schools, or writers who can actually make a living out of such constructs presented in academic, it's no longer the material that matters, but now the way I approach the material--the syntax, the wording, and most importantly, the grammar--is now a part of my consideration. In other words, the tools that crafts the expression of an author into its' own idea is critically needed, no matter how important each individual tool may actually be. The result is that the focus is now blurred on whenever or not the construction is important to the writing, or the material can stand on its' own, no matter who writes it.

         So where do I go from here? In John Dawkins' "Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool," he clues that "conventional punctuation is grammar based" (141), so whenever people notice so-call mistakes in someone's writing, the problem doesn't lie on the ignorance of the author, but is instead an intentional style based on a hierarchy of different levels (or maximum, medium, and minimum). Beyond that hierarchy lies the importance of these marks, which Dawkins suggest raising (or punctuation "higher in the hierarchy" (145)) or lowering concepts, "a natural consequence of understanding the hierarchical system." (146)   

         So why is it that with various authors have all these tools, never always taking advantage of such potential, getting away from them and write material that doesn't need their assistance, and the students of such authors can not? That's where the teachers themselves come in. In “Resolution on Grammar Exercises to Teach Speaking and Writing,” written by the National Council of Teachers of English, the problem lies with a gap of students that have different background, and to uniform each of their backgrounds in one, English teachers have to conform to predetermined notions of society, and as such, has to follow rules they may not agree with. As such, they would develop "English of educated speakers", who would then pass their judgement of the teachers' subjects as law, believing that he is correct and other such writing is incorrect; a superiority to dialect itself. The result is a resolution that stated that students are allowed to write on whatever heritage he is used to working with, making teachers to "respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language."

          A similar arguments pops up in "Why Revitalize Grammar?," where Patricia A. Dunn and Kenneth Lindblom actually argue in favor for so-called grammar mistakes. To them, writing is suppose to learn through "communicating, not by memorizing rules," and yet, English teachers continue to look for grammar mistakes and grade the entire parer not by what the writer has to say on the material, but institute that the grammar can has this effect of the material. Therefore, the problem with teachers does not lie with society, but on their own dedication to the rules laid out in textbooks, and if students ever need to reach their subject, then focus at the subject, not the grammar. As they say, if popular writers continually break these rules English teachers enforce, why should they, the student, bother to do the same?  

          Marry Ehrenworth's "Grammar--Comma--a New Beginning" argues for the same purpose of mistaken grammar, but her approach is more practical compared to the observations of Dunn and Lindblom. By practical, I mean that instead of creating their own beliefs of how students should write and use those pointers to challenge what other teachers have done towards correcting grammar, Ehrenworth uses her eighth grade classroom to figure out on where the disconnect of common grammar rules and writer's own interest in those rules is, and she finds out that students simply don't want to write the tenses needed to clarify their writing; they understand how to use grammar, but they see no use to use it in their own writings. The result Ehrenworth tries is to use the structure of other passages (e.g. a passage from Nabokov's Lolita), craft them to be models for the students, and sees if the prompt given to the students will inspire them to write something that gives them a reason on why they should think about writing. In the end, the material all depended on what rhythm appealed to the young writers, and as Ehrenworth noticed, she, the teacher, was working at a "framework of genre choice, and genre-linked craft lessons," (96) leaving the grades of grammar usage useless to students. 

         Do these usage link us to a better understanding on why one prefers to learn the craft than the material? To that, I turn to an article that's in Patrick Hartwell's article "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar," where he brings up an excerpt of "The Three Meanings of Grammar" from W. Nelson Francis's to "go about the business of defying grammar rather carefully." In the article, Francis talks about three different usage of "grammar," where one is aware of "'the set of formal patterns in which the words of a language are arranged in order to convey larger meanings'" (109), another as "'the branch of linguistic science which is concerned with the description, analysis, and formalization of formal language patterns'" (109), and "'linguistic etiquette'," or a way where "we say that the expression 'he ain't here' is 'bad grammar'." (109) Using these rules, Hartwell suggest that, going beyond that the first two grammar statement go beyond arguing either for control or authority, each of these meanings "forces us to posit multiple literates, used for multiple purposes, rather than a single static literacy, engraved in 'rules of grammar.'" (123) Thereby, grammar can open up more possibilities writers can go with their material, so instead of sticking by the original purpose, expansion can occur, extending the original purpose into something much more complex that can satisfy those who seek better grammar in papers.

Sources:
Conference on College Composition and Communication. “Students' Right to Their Own Language.” CCC 25 (1974): n. p. NCTE.org. Conference on College Composition and Communication. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. 

Dunn, Patricia A., and Kenneth Lindblom. “Why Revitalize Grammar?” The English Journal 92.3 (2003): 43–50. 

Ehrenworth, Mary. “Grammar—Comma—A New Beginning.” The English Journal 92.3 (2003): 90–96.  

Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” College English 47.2 (1985): 105–27. 

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print. 140-153