Clarify, Don't Correct

In this week's reading, I found it interesting that Weaver drew comparisons between grammar acquisition in young children and English Language Learners. The commonality between them is that much of learning to speak a language is observing and experimentation. I can remember following this process as a young girl as I found words I didn't recognize when reading. For example, while reading a Nancy Drew book in third grade I became facinated by a new word that I found: "rhododendron." After that, I described any and all plants in my midst as a "rhododendron," not knowing in my youthful bliss that there are very specific contexts and places to be discussing flowering shrubbery. To the credit (and patience!) of those around me, I eventually learned how to pronounce and use words that I picked up properly.

Learning English a second language, however, presents unique challenges. The example essay from an ELL student on page 155 is a good example of this. Putting aside my mental red pen, I can see that the student has a good, well-developed set of ideas lurking in there. Though the inner editor is screaming "The sentence structure! The word choice! The vagueness of the thesis! et cetera," I can see that it is more beneficial to help them clarify rather than correct what concepts and ideas already exist in the student's mind.

As such, I think that the next chapters about making expository essays more engaging are a nice segue. In many ways, I think that if we as teachers clarified that the distinctions we draw between many types of writing are more arbitrary than we may like to admit many, if not most misconceptions about English and English teachers would be clarified as well. Upon reflection, much of what we call good fiction, journalistic, or even academic writing freely bends genre rules. I think that what they all hold in common is the ability to persuade, and as such I think the most important part of writing is teaching students the many, many ways that a writer can go about making an argument.

On the other hand, I can see a danger in telling students to break from the formula completely. Without making it clear to students that the so-called rules of essay composition are, in fact, guidelines, I can see writing assignments degenerating into chaos. I don't want this to be meant as a condemnation of students. Put simply, students are so used to teachers telling them what they must do, they aren't even sure what to do when you eliminate the "musts" and "have tos." Because of this, I hope that Weaver goes into some effective strategies for transitioning the classroom from formulaic writing to functional writing.

One thing that I do like about Weaver's approach is that it takes a constructivist view of grammar. Specifically, I find the conception of error as part of learning especially interesting. A summation of the chapter would be that errors in grammar usage do not just arise from defiance or ignorance; rather, they come from a variety of sources such as an incomplete grasp upon or oversimplification of a concept. Furthermore, the paralells that Weaver draws between how native English speakers form their speech as children and how nonnative English speakers develop an understanding of it are also tied to this. The teacher's role, then, is to help the student learn how to keep using a misused concept, but model how to use it in its proper context.