Ship of Fools: US English as she is wrote

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Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

I’ve recently agreed to teach again at the local community college, beginning in the fall term (starts Aug. 31). This time, however, I’ve been recruited to teach an entirely different discipline (despite having no degrees in said field; I did major in English Lit as an undergraduate, but pursued a graduate degree in a field where I might reasonably expect employment).

Anyway, due to my having contributed some guest editorials to the local paper, the head of the English Department got in touch with me and asked me to teach English Composition to a group of incoming freshers. (I do have a few publications in my own field as well, for anyone as aghast as I initially was at this invitation).

As a result, I am now reading writing samples from those who administer placement tests to new students. The samples are from students who will be placed in my section of the course. Mind you, I know nothing about these students save their names (and based on those, reasonable guesses as to gender for many). I’m told to expect that most will be recent high school graduates, with a small sprinkle of mid-life career changers and international students to spice things up.

I’m frankly appalled at the usage, punctuation, and spelling displayed in these samples from people who are mostly presumably graduates of US high schools, and begin to regret having signed my contract. These students seem barely literate, and one sample actually brags about having made it through 4 years of high school without ever reading a book (!!).

Can anyone tell me if this is fairly typical? Do people with more teaching experience, especially in English Composition, find recent school graduates incapable of plain written communication in their first language? Yikes!

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

You're teaching community college, not ordinary four year college. Community colleges take all comers. And when it comes to recent high school grads, you are drawing from the pool of people who did NOT go on to four year universities--some for financial or other incidental reasons, but some because they couldn't make the grade.

Given that reality, there's more. I don't know how your students have been selected for your class, but I found in my own teaching that there were at least two things that affected student quality. The first was the time of year (the closer it is to end-of-registration, the more likely you are to get poor quality students--because these are the ones who wait till the last minute or beyond to sign up). The second was time of day--students generally prefer NOT to get up at o-dark-hundred, which means that the earliest classes are filled last--guess with whom? Although you get some shining stars in 8 a.m. too, who are natural morning people or who are really, really dedicated.

[ 15. July 2015, 14:07: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Yes, you will have to teach the basics. No, they are all like that. I would hit on grammar, spelling and punctuation. Composition is merely the venue for practice with them. Furbelows like theme, tone and message can be left until way later.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You're teaching community college, not ordinary four year college. Community colleges take all comers.

I've encountered people with advanced degrees whose spelling, grammar and writing skills were atrocious. I cannot claim they were representative, but I can tell you they exist.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

That said, it's a venue where you can really do a lot of good. Many of these people are the first in their families to go to college, or even to graduate from high school. They also tend to have a much more interesting mix of life experiences (also more horrifying, for socioeconomic reasons, but still, it makes for more interesting compositions to read, if you set your topics wisely).

Figure out what you want to do, and hammer that home. I myself don't spend a whole lot of time on spelling/grammar/etc. on the theory that you can pay a proofreader, but you can never pay someone to do your thinking for you. My goal for first year composition students is to teach them to write in a way that makes sense to their readers (not incoherent, not babbling, not leaving out half the necessary information, not spaghetti-style lack of organization).

If reading/analysis/thinking is required (and it usually is, in these classes), my goal is to get them to think slightly more deeply than a frog pond in August, and with less gullibility than a three-year-old. I'm trying to think of what will serve them best in their adult lives where they're going to be exposed to huge amounts of disinformation and advertising, and also have to write understandable notes to their children's teachers, as well as letters, memos, and emails in the course of business.

It's an intro course. Those who actually intend to go further than just taking a couple courses to keep Mom and Dad happy while they figure out what to do next with their lives--well, they'll have lots of opportunity to pick up stuff beyond the basics. But if this is the only composition class a student's ever going to have, I want that student to leave with the ability to make sense on at least a basic level.

Posted by Mere Nick (# 11827) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[QB] That said, it's a venue where you can really do a lot of good. Many of these people are the first in their families to go to college, or even to graduate from high school.

That's probably not near as true as it may have been for earlier generations.

I suspect that grammar and spelling is suffering because of how most kids communicate these days. It is rare that anything is written by hand and text messaging is almost a different language.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

0 teaching experience, so take this for what it is worth...

Because one spelling error or bad sentence can get your resume thrown out, I would emphasize the importance of spelling and grammar.

In fact, I might even have them work on a few cover letters. Find a job posting that you would like to be qualified for after you graduate, and draft a cover letter, incorporating key words and concepts from the posting. Then have them do it again a week later for a different posting, so that they can learn how to take the basic form of a cover letter and change it up for a different posting. That's a practical skill they may need down the line.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

Sometimes, if people can't spell well in English, I have the feeling that it is more the fault of the language than theirs.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I've encountered people with advanced degrees whose spelling, grammar and writing skills were atrocious. I cannot claim they were representative, but I can tell you they exist.

As someone whose daily work requires reading Medicaid regulations and similar documents, I whole-heartedly agree that people with advanced degrees are not always competent writers. (I have an advanced degree, and am probably only a bit above average in this skill.) Often the primary competence among the highly-educated seems to be in obfuscation.

That said, I don't often find among such writers errors in spelling very commonplace words (isn't that what spellcheck is for?), in punctuating very ordinary expressions (capitalizing the first letters of sentences and proper nouns, for example, though I suppose this is a habit acquired from much texting), and forming very basic sentences.

One sample starts every new sentence in the left-hand margin (and no, not from the writer who read no books).

And is it really possible to acquire a diploma from a US high school without ever reading a book?!

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

I know that in my HS, we didn't do most of our lit reading for whole novels. A person who did the assignments and then just fakes it on the books? I bet such a person could do just fine, particularly if they got some of the details of the book from class discussion/plot summaries.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Could I suggest you take the line,
"Do you want to be able to think clearly? Do you want to be able to persuade people. Because if so, you need to express yourself clearly.

If you can't say what you think or want clearly, so that I can understand it, then,
a. You aren't thinking clearly and
b. Why should I or anyone else bother to listen to you?"

It's quite possible that they have never realised this fact of life. That is probably because nobody before you has ever had the guts to spell it out to them.

Perhaps this is your calling really to make a difference to somebody else's life.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I used to teach report writing to engineering and science students, Gordon Bennett, what a labour of that guy with the stone.

But we did come up with a solution, as we boiled the basic structure of reports down to a few categories, and drilled them in those. I think some of them got the hang of it.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I don't know any high schools where not reading is acceptable--but as said above, plenty of people will do their darndest to cheat their way through, even if they do twice the labor that way.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[QB] That said, it's a venue where you can really do a lot of good. Many of these people are the first in their families to go to college, or even to graduate from high school.
That's probably not near as true as it may have been for earlier generations.

I suspect that grammar and spelling is suffering because of how most kids communicate these days. It is rare that anything is written by hand and text messaging is almost a different language.

It might be the fact that I live in a major metro area, but I think this was true for at least half of the students I worked with. Some were immigrants from places with no opportunity, but many others were simply poor or from non-college oriented backgrounds.

The main problem with focusing on grammar and spelling in college (and I say this as one who has taught quite a bit) is that there simply isn't time to reproduce what they should have been getting from first grade on up. English spelling is very irregular, our punctuation system is a pain, and when it comes to grammar, most adults' best bet is to learn to say it aloud and see if it sounds right. Prescriptive grammar is a study of several years for most people. In a course lasting between eight and sixteen weeks, you aren't going to be able to make a dent in these issues--certainly not enough to make them resume-safe. Better to teach them what you MIGHT have a hope of--namely, how to be comprehensible--and recommend most strongly that they have someone proofread their important documents. (Which is not to say that you should totally ignore such errors, but I wouldn't make them the focus of your way-too-short classtime.)

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
That said, I don't often find among such writers errors in spelling very commonplace words (isn't that what spellcheck is for?)

And remember that spell check will only get you so far. I'd come up with a usage test as well.

In my first year of law school, we had to take a grammar and usage test, and anyone who didn't achieve a certain score had to re-take until they achieved that score. I passed the first time around, probably because I wrote a lot of papers in college for demanding professors. Other folks who did well enough in high school to get into a good college, and well enough in college to get into a decent law school were struggling. So I think it comes down to practice; the more you write (and more importantly, the more you re-write after getting your paper back), the better you get. I had a Harvard and Princeton educated English professor who swore that he learned more about writing by working for a newspaper and having his drafts sent back to him marked to hell with an hour to make them right before the deadline than he did in all of his formal education.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

In my final under-graduate honours seminar some decades back, the professor in charge had us justify our first reports line by line, word by word. The goal was that when we got to grad school we'd know to do this to our own writing. I found it stressful, by I am grateful to the professor, rest his soul. I have this role with graduate students and interns presently, and find it both rewarding and frustrating. Rewarding when improvement is shown, and frustration that we are not to yell at them when they fail to do so.

I think with a large group, and first year group it is not possible to do such things - there were only 5 of us in the class to which I referred - you can only get the students of buy one of the relatively cheap writing guides and hope some of them read and put it into practice.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
...isn't that what spellcheck is for?

Someone recently shared with me an advertisement for a mattress. Spellcheck "corrected" it to extol the benefits of sleeping on a new mistress for a comfortable night's sleep.
[Snigger]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
As someone whose daily work requires reading Medicaid regulations and similar documents, I whole-heartedly agree that people with advanced degrees are not always competent writers. (I have an advanced degree, and am probably only a bit above average in this skill.) Often the primary competence among the highly-educated seems to be in obfuscation.

I recall reading a book, by an author whose name I've forgotten, arguing that the language of science, deliberately or not, tended towards sentences that are unnecessarily hard to process.

The issue isn't technical terms (which are unavoidable), but what the author called 'grammatical metaphor'. English teachers at school always teach us that nouns are naming words, verbs are doing words, adjectives are describing words, and so on. 'Grammatical metaphor' is then when you use a noun instead of a verb to describe an action ('on his arrival' instead of 'when he arrived') or a verb instead of a preposition or conjunction for a logical relation ('preceded' instead of some sentence using 'before').

The author's thesis was that 'grammatical metaphor' is difficult for the linguistic bits of the brain to process and unnecessarily prevalent in the language of science.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I had a Harvard and Princeton educated English professor who swore that he learned more about writing by working for a newspaper and having his drafts sent back to him marked to hell with an hour to make them right before the deadline than he did in all of his formal education.

Oh yes! Having been the red-pen wielder at a publishing house, I can totally believe this.
[Devil]

It would really be great if the community colleges would hire a person or three to do this sort of thing for students, with the provision that they could not get their final grades for a class until all the major written assignments were down to one error per page.

In my experience, nobody does this. Teachers haven't got the time (I had about 25 per class) and the only college resource is the so-called Writing Center--which IME flatly refuses to proofread and will only work with issues of content, organization or style guide format on a "let me show you how" once or twice kind of way. The students need so much more.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I recall reading a book, by an author whose name I've forgotten, arguing that the language of science, deliberately or not, tended towards sentences that are unnecessarily hard to process.

For the last 50-100 years, a strong preference for the passive voice has been observed in scientific papers. As a consequence of the often poor use of this grammatical construction, the natural flow of the English language is often obfuscated. A relatively recent development has been the increasing popularity of the active voice. It's easier for most people to write clear prose in the active voice, because it matches the way that most people think, so they are less likely to fall into some of the contorted traps Ricardus mentions.

Having said that, when I publish papers, my co-authors and I spend probably more time than we should arguing about the precise wording in such-and-such a paragraph, but what we are usually arguing over is precision of meaning rather than simplicity. I think that's probably right, though - ambiguity is a greater sin than unnecessary complexity.

[ 15. July 2015, 19:42: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I have a paperback book which I carry to writing classes. It is the poster child for why you do not trust spellcheck. It is a horror novel, the standard child-of-demons kind of thing, and on the back cover is a summary of the plot. Demon seed, portents of evil, screams in the night, you know. And in the middle is this line, in larger type:

LAY DOWN ON THE ALTER OF DEATH

On my word processor, no word in that sentence is underscored with a wiggly red line. Nevertheless, it is wrong, wrong, wrong. The book had to be given away at a convention, which is how I got it -- could not be sold with such a large typo in the center of the back cover. The author's career surely tanked -- all those copies that never earned a cent. The editor probably lost her job.

And the moral of the story is, do not trust spellcheck. Always, always, have a human being (ideally not the author) read it with intelligence.

Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
...Do people ... find recent school graduates incapable of plain written communication in their first language?

Yes.

I'm not (officially) a teacher, but I run into a lot of high school (and often college) graduates who aren't really literate. This dates from before the advent of text messages - I suspect it is more due to growing up watching television rather than reading books where the punctuation and spelling were more obvious. Some of the symptoms, like the classic "it's a mute point", seem to be clear indicators that they picked up the language by ear rather than by reading.

A number appear to be dyslexic or have other perceptual problems. Some can't read at all, but have become quite good at not showing it. Some just don't care. In some cases, poor grammar and pronunciation serve as proud proof that one hasn't been corrupted by liberal concepts such as "book-larnin'" or "edjamacation".

I think the idea of focusing on composition issues, while providing feedback on grammar and spelling (and resources for those who need it) seems like a good approach to try. Perhaps a poster like this or an explanatory T-shirt would help encourage the students to pay more attention.

Posted by Rowen (# 1194) on :

I live in remote, rural Australia. The nearest university is four hours away by car. No public transport. The local college is two hours by car, three by bus. Many folk here never leave the region, for work or personal reasons. Living away from home is expensive and unheard of.... Many students, therefore, don't finish school or go on to further education.
It shows.
Lovely people, just um....
They don't write much.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
...isn't that what spellcheck is for?
Someone recently shared with me an advertisement for a mattress. Spellcheck "corrected" it to extol the benefits of sleeping on a new mistress for a comfortable night's sleep.

Canadian spelling doesn't rate with spell checkers, which are dominantly USA spelling, and to a lesser degree UK. Creeping American spelling is a peeve. Harbour, counsellor, chequebook, barbeque. Not the Amerc versions please. Inability to know the difference between practise and practice. Also creeping American usage. It's grade 5 here not 5th grade.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
For the last 50-100 years, a strong preference for the passive voice has been observed in scientific papers.

Very good!

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Canadian spelling doesn't rate with spell checkers, which are dominantly USA spelling, and to a lesser degree UK. Creeping American spelling is a peeve. Harbour, counsellor, chequebook, barbeque. Not the Amerc versions please. Inability to know the difference between practise and practice. Also creeping American usage. It's grade 5 here not 5th grade.

How much does Canadian spelling differ from the UK version? I'm using Word 7 at the moment, and it allows me to select either UK or US English. While I haven't actually tried changing to the UK version, I was assuming that selecting British English would have the spellchecker underlining "neighbor" and insisting on "neighbour" instead. As for "barbeque," I've used American English all my life and have never spelled it -- or seen it spelled -- otherwise.

Drat. I just realized that the novel I'd like them to read is by Neil Gaiman, and is set in the UK. Will that confuse them even more?

All that said, as these students are in a US setting using US English, they're better off learning US spellings, nicht wahr?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

If you want to emphasize the need to get it right (like Brenda does), it's not that hard to find plenty of examples on the Internet etc. My favorite was a headline that almost (not quite!) made it past my desk: "We believe in nuturing church leaders."

Do you have any idea how hard it was to resist correcting it to "neutering"?

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
How much does Canadian spelling differ from the UK version? I'm using Word 7 at the moment, and it allows me to select either UK or US English. While I haven't actually tried changing to the UK version, I was assuming that selecting British English would have the spellchecker underlining "neighbor" and insisting on "neighbour" instead. As for "barbeque," I've used American English all my life and have never spelled it -- or seen it spelled -- otherwise.

Word 7 doesn't have a Canadian English dictionary. None of Microsoft payware does. An internet search will turn up differences among spellings and usage in different places.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mere Nick:

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
That said, it's a venue where you can really do a lot of good. Many of these people are the first in their families to go to college, or even to graduate from high school.
That's probably not near as true as it may have been for earlier generations.

In the long-term (generational) perhaps, but in the short term (the 12 years I've been teaching on the collegiate level) it is MORE true. The students I have now are significantly more diverse than ever before, including economically diverse, so that I am much more likely to get a first-in-family college student today than I was 12 years ago.

On the general lack of composition skills-- yes, afraid that's the norm for freshmen-- even in the 4 year uni where I teach. If you're able to give them those basic skills you will indeed be making a huge difference, as those who don't get it freshmen year will probably not make it to graduation.

[code]

[ 16. July 2015, 05:05: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I have a paperback book which I carry to writing classes. It is the poster child for why you do not trust spellcheck. It is a horror novel, the standard child-of-demons kind of thing, and on the back cover is a summary of the plot. Demon seed, portents of evil, screams in the night, you know. And in the middle is this line, in larger type:

LAY DOWN ON THE ALTER OF DEATH

I have a whole list of similar homonyms or almost-homonyms that show up regularly in my students' work. The most common is "defiantly" instead of "definitely". Often with amusing results, as in: "I defiantly am confused about what the author means..."

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I think I feel a thread coming on...

Posted by M. (# 3291) on :

Ah, flaunt and flout!

M.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
... do not trust spellcheck.

I know it, don't I know it.

I am dyslexic and it doesn't matter how many times I learn a spelling, it still won't stick. Spell checks have been my life saver. But, like you say, they are far from fool proof, especially this fool.

Many other coping strategies are needed. One good idea is not to try and cover up the fact that you can't spell - ask those who can to check important documents or any writing which will bring mocking and the assumption that you have no brain.

When I am teaching dyslexic pupils I often tell of my friend's daughter who got a first at Cambridge in poetry. She is severely dyslexic.

I teach Year 6 (11 year old) primary school children and I am very open about my dyslexia. I ask the good spellers to be on the look out for my mistakes. I let the poor spellers know that they must learn, learn, learn and check,check check then ask others to check for them. But don't let it put them off writing, they are often far and away the most creative of children.

Posted by 3rdFooter (# 9751) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:

Drat. I just realized that the novel I'd like them to read is by Neil Gaiman, and is set in the UK. Will that confuse them even more?

Neverwhere is a brilliant and accessible book. The geography isn't supposed to make sense. I don't think there are any cultural icons that the reader is expected to recognise for themselves and matter that much. Old Bailey is more about the name than the criminal court. Vandema and croup will appeal to many. I think it is a sound choice. Keep an eye out for the ones who dig out the BBC TV series - it's different.

Frankly, if they are struggling that much with spelling, the minor variations to UK spelling a going to sail straight past.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Barbecue is usually spelt with a 'c' round here, as I've just spelt it. If it had a 'q', it would be pronounced 'barbekwe' - or in Canada, presumably 'barbek'.

The barbecue season is in full flow here at the moment, with the smell of charcoal and spluttering fat wafting from back gardens every time there's a remotely warm evening.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Could I suggest you take the line,
"Do you want to be able to think clearly? Do you want to be able to persuade people. Because if so, you need to express yourself clearly.

If you can't say what you think or want clearly, so that I can understand it, then,
a. You aren't thinking clearly and
b. Why should I or anyone else bother to listen to you?"

It's quite possible that they have never realised this fact of life. That is probably because nobody before you has ever had the guts to spell it out to them.

Perhaps this is your calling really to make a difference to somebody else's life.

Spot on. Remember why Cobbett wrote his English grammar: to empower ploughboys and sailors and private soldiers by enabling them to communicate effectively.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

Well, I agree with the above advice. If nothing else, graduates of a college program should be able to write well enough in standard American English to make their meanings clear, and to leave themselves and the degree-granting institution relatively unembarrassed by their efforts.

Here are my two problems, though:

1. This institution promises (through the catalog course description which I'm required to include in the syllabus) to teach students the writing process -- the draft, review, revise, review, edit method -- of developing written products. I went to school long enough ago that my own learning experience was with the one-draft-and-you're-done method.

Worse, a major part of my personal/professional writing experience was in daily and weekly print journalism, which is essentially the same thing: you go cover your event or meeting or interview, start "composing" in your head en route back to the newsroom, write up your notes when you get there, and ship the result off to your editor. If you were lucky (and speedy), you might have time to review what you'd written for major gaffes before hitting "send." In short, I'll be attempting to teach a writing approach I don't use, and have never used.

2. Grammar. I grew up in a lower-middle-class household, and was a first-generation college student myself. My family-of-origin was not educated. They were intelligent, though, and they were all readers: books, magazines, newspapers, weekly trips to the public library, etc. In addition, standard American English was a point of pride with them. Any grammatical lessons I managed to absorb were by being surrounded by standard usage. As a result, composing complete sentences and avoiding run-ons and comma splices, etc. has always come to me automatically.

I vaguely recall being exposed to sentence diagramming at some point in my schooling, and dimly recall going over parts of speech, but I paid zero attention to this, found it both excruciatingly boring and utterly pointless, because I already knew how to construct proper sentences.

As a result, my spelling, punctuation, and usage are all generally standard (according to American usage, not Canadian or British), but I have not the faintest clue how to explain the whys and wherefores of any of it.

Being able to write with reasonable coherence is of little help in trying to teach writing with reasonable coherence.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I would skip diagramming. It is educational and fun, but not all that helpful in day-to-day usage.

What your experience clearly shows is the value of just getting behind the wheel and driving. You learned by doing. So get those kids out there and make them do. They will learn.

Set them short essays, possibly for every class. A paragraph about your summer (that classic hardy perennial). A paragraph about your clothing. A paragraph about (past or present political event or crisis here).

Arm yourself with an array of colored markers or pencils. Red for spelling, green for punctuation, blue for larger issues like incoherence or lack of direction.

Select one v/i/c/t/i/m example to discuss every class. If the facility doesn't have one of those overhead projectors, call technology to your aid and take a cell phone photo of it, or alternatively photocopy it and pass it around. (I hope the school gives the teacher free photocopy.) Go through it mark by mark, pointing out why this comma is wrong, why the writer has confused its with it's (they always will), and how it would have been ever so much more sensible if they had told the story in chronological order.

Every now and then make them rewrite an old exercise, better.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Go through it mark by mark, pointing out why this comma is wrong,

This is precisely what I feel unequipped to do. Again, knowing that X is wrong is not at all the same deal as being able to explain why X is wrong.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Announce, "This is wrong! Can anyone tell me why?" and make them do it.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

While I love this idea, the samples I'm reading suggest that the response to this question is going to be a deafening silence.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I'd say, play to your strengths as a teacher, and the areas you can't do, don't do, but point them to other resources instead. If you can't explain prescriptive grammar, put a book on reserve in the library that does for them to use. Recommend a website. And so on.

I say this because clearly you have some strengths, or you wouldn't have been hired. And the time you have with these students is so very short that you're not likely to exhaust your areas of skill or even get close before your time together comes to an end.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Ideas off the top of my head, Porridge, to help you brush up before term starts- I bet there are some decent moocs on grammar and academic writing out there, and some might be accessible at any time or have materials you can access easily. Worth a go? Other thing would be to have a look at the academic skills / study skills websites of universities and colleges- may be available without a log-in- for resources. Some of these can be very good, though the ones I know best are British English.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

@ Lamb Chopped:

Well, teaching is a sizable component of my day job -- just with different audiences, and different skill-sets. I have to teach my staff how to teach, how to observe & record (without interpreting, though that's a challenge); I have to pinch-hit for staff in teaching skills to our clients (how to take the bus from home to work & back; how to budget; how to run the washers & dryers at the laundramat, etc.

What I know of teaching consists of this:

Analyze the needed skill.
Break it down into subroutines with the minimum possible steps.
Show Step 1 of subroutine 1.
Ask learner to copy this.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

That's basically how I teach English writing. I've even been known to pass out fill-in sheets for the terminally frightened at the start of learning, so they can produce a five paragraph essay almost entirely mechanically. [Devil]

Once they get their confidence up, and see that a very simple process underlies competent essay writing, then we can get fancier.

PS would this stuff be of any use to you? I inherited my bag of tricks from an older, awesom-er composition teacher.

[ 16. July 2015, 19:40: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

Hmmm -- might help a lot, if you're willing! But I don't want to turn this into a homework thread.

I'm also fearful of boring my students, as I'm normally concerned with teaching people whose IQs are 70 or lower.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
as I'm normally concerned with teaching people whose IQs are 70 or lower.

This would explain why you do so well on these boards.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

The teaching of English (or language arts, or whatever it's being called now) has changed somewhat over the last 40 years.

In elementary school, I was taught phonics as a means of "sounding out" unfamiliar words. It didn't always produce correct results, but quite often it pointed me in the right direction. In middle school/junior high, we were taught English grammar. Concurrent with all this was spelling practice.

Then along came "whole language" theory, which focuses on getting students to recognize the shape of the word itself and to associate it with the meaning and the sound. The explicit connections between phonemes and letters get filled in later by the student as he acquires more and more words and learns to recognize them, just as (through self-selected reading material) he learns to abstract the basic rules of English syntax and grammar.

It works to a point, and if the student is self-motivated enough and interested enough to begin to put the information together, all is fine. But it doesn't seem to work dependably, and schools that have relied solely on whole-language instruction seem to turn out a lot of poor spellers who have trouble expressing themselves in writing. This also accounts for the phenomenon of seeing an unfamiliar word and substituting for it a familiar word with a similar shape : thus, "exiguous" becomes "excellent".

Of course it's not news that pedagogy is as much driven by fad and fashion as everything else. And it seems as though phonics is making a resurgence again, and whole language is fading into the background, and all this is unfortunate, because it seems to me that a blended approach is probably the best way to go. It still seems as though the main method of teaching grammar is osmotic, though.

Anyway, the advent of whole language predates the availability of texting; my age bracket is probably the last generation to have been taught how to read via phonics, and to have been taught grammar as a subject unto itself rather than as a side-lesson relative to whatever books we were discussing.

Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :

I was thinking about this at work today.

Given that your future students are young, why not use the web as a source for reading material?

You can find examples of both good AND bad writing all over, in blogs, websites, newsletters, even SOF postings. Have the students find things they think are good writing, and ask why.

My thought is that "short and clear" is a good starting point.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
Hmmm -- might help a lot, if you're willing! But I don't want to turn this into a homework thread.

I'm also fearful of boring my students, as I'm normally concerned with teaching people whose IQs are 70 or lower.

I sent you an email--if you don't get it, let me know. As for boring your students, you're automatically going to do that simply because you're not the latest and greatest viral video, so don't worry about it. The fact that you usually teach people of low IQ means that you are ideally suited for getting your points across instead of talking over their heads as so many of us do. (In my case, I was trained to write for third-grade reading level audiences; this came in handy when I later wrote for theologians etc.) [Two face]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
The teaching of English (or language arts, or whatever it's being called now) has changed somewhat over the last 40 years.

<snip> my age bracket is probably the last generation to have been taught how to read via phonics, and to have been taught grammar as a subject unto itself rather than as a side-lesson relative to whatever books we were discussing.

In the UK all children are taught phonics and grammar. The new 2013 National Curriculum has a string of formal forms of language and grammar that students are expected to learn.

Porridge the English programme of work have the stages of teaching grammar and composition listed out, with a glossary of all the terms, which may be useful.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

In the US, rather than whole language replacing phonics, the two have dueled over the last 40 years, and we've had several rounds of one or the other being the method-of-the-moment only to be replaced by some version of the other only a few years later. This is the sort of thing that keeps curriculum publishers in business.

In my rather limited experience, it seems like each has it's merits: some students will learn well in either program, some better with whole language, some better with phonics. Very few will get it with only one and not at all with the other. It would be nice to be able to be more flexible in our teaching styles to adapt to the learning characteristics of each student but that rarely seems to be the case.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The UK has gone over totally to phonics in recent years, including a phonics test at age 7 including made up words to test their phonetic ability. Those tests have been in place since 2012, but the emphasis on phonics goes back over several years.

We are getting a number of children who can bark adequately at text and spell but don't understand what they are reading and don't have the vocabulary to go further. It's noticeable when we both test reading and sentence completion to test reading comprehension and there's a big discrepancy. We are working with students who have fallen out of the school system and often have a long history of exclusions and time out of school.

There are remedial programmes to teach phonics at older ages - we have Alpha to Omega, but there's also a free course here on teaching students to read.

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