September 29th, 2008 at 6:32 am

Grammatical Responses

Teacher to student: Correction.

Student to teacher: Fixed correction.

Student to student: “That’s good. Put in some quotes and some more research.”

Or:

Some institutional responses:

  • Collect papers, mark them, return, get fixed responses.
  • Meet one on one
  • Peer review (provide checklist, ask students to locate items on checklist)
  • Presentation (provide summary of work)

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Seminar response: Group discussion of one paper at a time.

Sommers’ response: Focusing attention (and specific acts like sabotage, etc).

Social response: Putting any given piece of writing in a relationship with other activities. This response may be close to Hartwell and Williams, and is close to Faigley. Hartwell’s whole critique is about teaching grammar (rules) in isolation of other writing moments.

One challenge posed by the readings: how to teach grammar not as an isolated response (fix, put it, add to), but as a social response.

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