After reading the Brodkey ,Hartwell, and Witte and Faigley, I feel that teaching English has just become more complicated. I have more questions than answers at this point in time. There are a few things (okay…more than a “few”) that I struggle with in my teaching, grammar and coherence. Although many of my students are considered English Language Proficient, I continue to struggle teaching them “proper writing” and coherence.
After reading Brodkey, I question what I consider to be proper? Is it the way in which I was taught? And how is that an injustice to my English Language Learners? As Brodkey states “each institutionalized discourse privileges some people and not others by generating uneven and unequal subject positions as various as sterotypes and agents” (127). As teachers, we find ourselves in a bind between the institutionalization of education (standards/testing/district curriculum maps) and what we believe to be beneficial for our students. Within our classrooms, we continue to do what we believe is beneficial, not falling prey to the easy robotics of standardization. However, I must wonder after reading the Brodkey article, do I transcend class, race, and gender in my classroom? Can I truly understand all the issues of my students? Am I responding to their needs “properly”? And then the bigger question: How can or do I unify the experience of my students? Should we transcend these realms or do we unify them, so that they can feel the connection between what we teach and how we live?
On grammar…many of my colleagues would agree, grammar must be addressed, students should learn the rules, and we must bring awareness to their grammatical errors. Our struggle becomes…HOW? Hartwell states that “seventy-five years of experimental research has for all practical purposes told us nothing” and, within my own classroom, I find that the various way in which I teach grammar has led me to believe that it has made little difference in the writing of my students (or at least it feels this way). In the article, it was concluded that “the formal study of grammar, whether transformational or traditional, improved neither writing quality nor control over surface correctness” (107). So, what are we to do? As Hartwell discusses the three meanings of grammar, I wonder how exactly do I define grammar in my students writing? Do I know all the rules of grammar? Or is my grammar based simply on usage and how have I come to know what is “proper”? In the section titled, “Grammar in our heads,” I agree with Hartwell in that students often know what seems to be proper without knowing the rules, but how do we know these rules? I am far from being a grammarian or a linguist, so how does one bring awareness to students when grammar 2 is unconnected to productive control over grammar 1? Furthermore, when Seliger states that he “found no correlation between the ability to state the rule and the ability to apply it correctly, either with native or non-native speakers, how do we address the difficulties presented in our native and non-native speakers? One thing I did understand is the need to bring awareness to our students, especially in our assessing. I have found that since the beginning of this semester, I have made more efforts to NOT correct all the grammatical errors I “see”, but rather provide a comments and check marks where there are errors, and have them review them and make the revisions. Instead of giving them the correct form, they are now aware that there is an error, and must figure out how to correct it themselves. Is this more effective? So far, it seems to be a move in a positive direction.
On coherence, cohesion, and writing quality…This article brought to light a few things that I have forgotten over the years. I have spent much time basing the quality of student work on examining errors and syntactic features. Of course these two things are important, but more importantly is how to examine and give proper feedback to their work. I often find that students lack the cohesion and coherence that is needed to produce a good work. In that, reading this article enlightened me on the different types of cohesion and coherence. By analyzing these types, we can see where students are disjointed in their writing. Determining lack of or misplacement of transitions allows us to take notice of patterns in students ‘writings to help them improve. It is much more complicated than spelling errors and grammar rules. On page 197, when the authors discuss their studies on cohesion and invention, the lower papers tended to reiterate the same pieces of information, unlike the higher papers where students were able to elaborate and extend concepts. By analyzing cohesion, teachers can provide more feedback on directing lower student to create more unity and coherence in their writing. In my classes, I have used the sentence-combining exercises that were discussed in the article, and they worked for some. I encounter the same issues in doing this as with grammar rules…they are fabulous with exercises, but they do not internalize it. If anyone has any other ideas for cohesion and coherence, let me know.
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