Grammar Education

Recently in a lecture we had in class last month I was introduced to a topic that I wasn’t familiar with, and a set of rules I didn’t know existed. This rule was something that perplexed me so much that I brought it up on several different occasions with people from outside our Foundations of Composition class. What I found was that there was a staggering amount of people that, along with me, didn’t know that this grammatical rule existed. Apparently the rules of use behind superlative and comparative adjectives aren’t common knowledge, and thinking back on it this was definitely one rule I was guilty of breaking on several occasions. It’s instances like this that make me wish grammar wasn’t just briefly touched on in high school so that maybe in College and University the comma splice wouldn’t be such a scary thing.

Many people today think that grammar isn’t exactly on the top of the educational priorities list, and I found this blatantly evident in my transition from high school English class to College English class. I entered my first College English class with a very basic knowledge of the comma, and almost no idea what a semicolon was actually used for. Grammar was something that scared me and still does. I have this terrible feeling that maybe if the curriculum had allotted significant space for teaching the proper use of grammar in Jr. High through High School, it wouldn’t seem that intimidating. Instead it feels like we’re making up for lost time. I read an interesting blog the other night on this subject. It focused mainly on the lack of previous grammatical education students attending the University of Victoria had, and how it was effecting their present education. The blog opened up with a rather perturbing third person account of an English Professor asking his fourth year English class what the difference between a semicolon and a colon was, and their hesitant reply of, “But aren’t they the same thing?”. Later on the same English professor, among others including the head of the English Department at UVic, credited most of the University students, English majors included, “grammatically clueless.”

At this time one can only wonder what exactly happened to the curriculum to make it this way. Why are students being sent into their post secondary education ill prepared for one of our most basic and impressionable skills? We are given the notion our grammar is a direct reflection to our peers of our personality. University entrance essays have a hefty grammatical weight, and quarterly reports and proposals in the business world are constantly scrutinized. So why skimp on a life skill? According to the same blog, a quick read through the Ministry of Education’s English Language Arts Curriculum Guide for grades 8 to ten in British Columbia shows the mention of the word “grammar” only a few times. Through personal experience I can almost guarantee the Alberta curriculum would show chilling similarities. Oddly enough, the same curriculum in 1941 displayed an astounding 7 pages devoted to grammar. It’s funny how things change. Even comparisons of present day BC provincial exams and those from 30 years ago show a decline in grammatically geared English classes.

I know I can’t be the only one feeling the weight of a grammatically incorrect high school education on my shoulders. This is a skill that is highly valued by future employers and post secondary institutions alike, so it demands a little respect. If not, at least a spot in the High School curriculum.

Curtain Call by Shawna Blumenschein

I will admit that at the beginning of the term I dreaded this class. Grammar has always seemed incredibly boring to me and the prospect of long three hour lectures discussing the finer points of dangling modifiers or such was yawn inducing. Thankfully, this class ended up being far more interesting than I expected and definitely not boring.

On the whole I appreciated the opportunity to refresh, review, and clarify certain elements of grammar. The collaboration with classmates and the various exercises in the computer lab made the material more interesting and engaging. As a writer, this class has brought into focus a variety of things: when it is and is not appropriate to break the rules; the value of thinking about my own writing and why I make certain decisions; and that there is always something else to learn or improve upon.

The blog project was a welcome opportunity to do some actual writing and see my fellow classmates’ opinions on a variety of issues. In addition, the blog highlighted the immense power and role of the Internet in writing. Not just the ability to create a blog and have it read by people the world over, but the greater realization that by doing that we were all contributing to a larger discourse and global community of writers, teachers, editors, et cetera. A blog is invaluable as a tool to showcase a writer’s work as well as his or her familiarity and comfort with the online world. As such, this project was helpful for pushing all of us into that world, especially for those classmates of mine such as Kristen who had not previously experimented with blogs.

Given the growing importance of the Internet for corporations as well as freelance writers, I plan to stay on top of developments in the cyber world. Staying abreast of such trends as blogging, social networking, and whatever innovation emerges next will only aid me in the future. It is best to grow with these advances rather than play catch-up a few years down the road.

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Sentence Structure

As tacky as it sounds, I like to think of a sentence like any good meal. Every good meal has a recipe and so does every good sentence. Although the specifics change, the basics are always the same. The subject and predicate can be considered the meat and potatoes of the sentence. There really isn’t much of a meal without protein or carbohydrates, so respectively there isn’t much of a sentence without both the subject and the predicate. Here’s a basic subject and predicate “meal”:

Bob and his sister ran to the store.
Subject /Predicate

Pretty boring isn’t it? No one really wants to eat the meat and potatoes just as they are, so that’s when we decide to spice things up a little bit. Those spices, such as adjectives and adverbs, help to add a little kick to an otherwise dull meal. That’s why adverbs and adjectives are called modifiers; they help us modify the basic recipe. But just as every chef is different, every chef’s choice in spices will be different also. Here’s what happens to our sentence after we’ve done some modifying:

Bob and his older sister ran quickly to the closest store.
Subject/ Predicate
adjective/ adverb /adjective

Now things have started to get and little bit more interesting. We can continue to add things in to our sentence, like independent and dependant clauses, to make it's recipe more complex if we want to. That’s when we being creating compound and complex sentences.

Just as I had mentioned before, a sentence isn’t much of a sentence without its meat and potatoes. You can’t really get away with having just the subject or just the predicate; you need both to have a complete sentence. Forgetting to add one or the other creates an incomplete sentence otherwise known as a fragment. These fragments tend to sound awkward and aren't really appreciated by readers. You wouldn’t serve your guests a lone potato for supper, so your readers deserve the same kind of respect. As long as you remember your subject and predicate you’ll be able to serve up a grammatically correct meal!

Word Power

Language can be considered one of our most powerful characteristics. It has the ability to brand us as smart or stupid upon first impression, to offend entire nations, and may also have some influence over what career we end up in. Society loves to pass judgment on individual's speaking skills, which is evident in our willingness to throw celebrities, like professional athletes, under the bus after a lousy interview littered with grammatical and logical awkwardness. On the opposite side of the spectrum, when we aren’t laughing at celebrities unfortunate quotes, society also has a healthy appreciation for those who do have strong speaking skills as a result of an even stronger knowledge of language. Writing skills, along with public speaking, has become somewhat of a prerequisite for many occupations both elite and working class, so it is easy to see why proper language use can be a major advantage to its owner.

One of the most significant keys to discovering this advantage is the use, and more importantly the absence, of biased language. This one aspect seems to have the heaviest impact on how persuasive a speaker's or writer's work may be. We live in a time when things are constantly changing, and there is an ever present need to have the most current of everything. Times have changed and so has what is considered politically correct, so to date our language by using racial and sexist terminology seems thoughtless. Biased language is such a large issue ,due to the offense that it can create, that Rosalie Maggio has made it her own personal vendetta to right the many wrongs in biased language. She presents many of the obvious, and not so obvious, biased faux pas made in everyday language in her essay Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines. She strongly states that the use of biased language is, “…communication gone awry” with such arguments as, “Biased language communicates inaccurately about what it means to be male or female: black or white: young or old; straight, gay or bi …” Maggio makes a very valid point with her essay. Inaccurate communication has become the basis for creating offensive, misunderstanding and unrest in much of the public, and there is no better way to black list ones language skills than creating any of those environments via the use of biased language. One of the most memorable examples Maggio uses in her essay to illustrate this issue is President Bush Senior’s word choice in describing events that had taken place in Iraq during 1990. He had used the word hostage for the first time, and up to that point he had used the word detainee. As Maggio states, “The difference between two very similar words was of possible life-and-death proportions.” A simple word swap such as the President’s can cause public panic, and ultimately even cause mistrust. The public may have been led to believe that the President was purposely misinforming them about the seriousness of the situation by hiding behind a less somber word.

Though the use of bias free language appeals to the masses, there is always the chance that the over-use and improper application of it will also discredit ones skills. Michiko Katutani highlights these shortcomings in his essay The Word Police. Bias free language has the ability to create euphemisms, and when it comes to calling the homeless “the under housed” and the poor the “economically marginalized” Katutani points out that it, “… doesn’t help pay the bills. Rather, by playing down their plight, such language might even make it easier to shrug of the seriousness of their situation”; an argument that can be applied to many bias free terms. Katutani also brings to light the absurdities of adopting this language as the norm. He retorts against Maggio’s essay with arguments such as, “ It’s equally hard to imagine people wanting to flaunt their lack of prejudice by giving up such words and phrases as ‘bull market,’ ‘Kaiser roll,’ ‘lazy susan,’ and ‘charley horse,’ and “The dictionary includes such linguistic mutations as ‘womyn’ and ‘waitron’.” These instances can also be classified as inaccurate communication and the awkwardness of the terminology might lead the audience to question the author's /speaker's validity.

It is apparent that a balance in the use of unbiased writing and speaking must be found in order to create a persuasive argument within one's work. The relationship between Maggio’s and Katutani’s essays is further explored in the collaborative critical reading blog of Shawna and Jennifer . Both Maggio’s and Katutani’s essays create valid arguments, and highlight the reasons why the balance between both worlds is needed to create credible work.

Word Power by Shawna Blumenschein

Words are the most powerful tool available to humanity. Anyone can wield words whether they be physically weak or strong, male or female, young or old. Speech levels the playing field between all people because it is available to everyone. As such, it is vital to understand the power of words; they can move a country to war, foster peace, drive someone to suicide, and express even the most personal of human emotions.

Given this, it is little wonder that the political correctness movement has targeted language. The endeavour to use, promote, and spread awareness of bias-free language has its merits. As discussed in “Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines” by Rosalie Maggio, language “reflects and shapes society.” (443) Prejudiced terms such as “nigger” for African-Americans, “gooks” for Asians, and “savages” for Native Americans created a distance between those groups and the dominant, usually white society that killed, enslaved, and brutalized them. Distance made treating other humans in such a disgraceful way easier because it created a firm us versus them mentality; by virtue of such derogatory nicknames these racial groups became something less than human. The same trend can be seen in World War II when Germans were called “Krauts” and the Japanese “Japs.”

Besides eliminating such hurtful words, the bias-free language movement seeks to lessen the impact of labels. The people first rule is incredibly important in this respect. This rule states that people with a disease or disability should be referred to first, for example “a person with diabetes” rather than “a diabetic.” (451) Such phrasing prevents the person from being reduced to “a disease, a label, [or] a statistic.” (451)

Despite the merits of the movement there is the potential for it to be taken too far. As discussed in “The Word Police” by Michiko Kakutani, such a fanatical focus on words and phrases can “distract attention from the real problems of prejudice and injustice.” (455) Indeed, eliminating biased and derogatory words will not eliminate prejudice and discrimination but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Only by making people aware of what they are saying, the meaning in such terminology, and the power of those words will such people start to think about and re-examine their opinions and word choice. As Cassiby discusses, words themselves are not to blame, it is the intent with which they are used that matters. Awareness must come before change can happen and the bias-free language movement is the best way to highlight the stunning power of words.

Proofreading is Essential by Kayla Gaffney

Mistakes are common in all forms of writing. Our in-class proofreading exercise required us to watch a video of Erin McKean and transcribe what we could. After finishing our assignment, we were asked to review our work and correct our mistakes. After finishing my own assignment, I could not believe the range of mistakes that had made their way into my writing. From wrongly capitalized letters to incorrect paragraph indents, proofreading is essential to writing. Without perfecting proofreading skills, individual pieces of writing would be riddled with mistakes. 

Jennifer  Kerr makes a profound closing statement in her blog post regarding proofreading by stating that "It's a lot less frustrating to proofread when the task is rewarded abundantly by a large quantity of errors to be corrected." Jennifer may have come across another point without realizing it. Reward is a wonderful incentive to make anyone do more work than they want to. Creating a personal reward after proofreading will make proofreading an enjoyable activity, thus improving skill and releasing endorphins. Creating a "feel-good" effect will make a writer want to take part in proofreading more often. This will increase the grades of students and help editors screen for grammatical flaws.

Myths of the Comma

The comma is an important building block in the construction of grammatically correct writing; unfortunately, it is common for the comma to be misused. Before entering the Professional Writing Program at Grant MacEwan University, the comma was a complete mystery to me. I must have been sleeping when we learnt about commas in Elementary school, because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when it came to the comma. I had many different ideas about how one might use a comma depending on the situation, but none were actually correct.

A favoured tactic of mine was to add a comma every time I imagined a breath or a pause in my writing. For instance, I would write sentences like this: "The third dog, is my favourite." The comma after "dog" is completely unnecessary and makes the sentence rather difficult to comprehend, but in my mind it made sense. Another common misuse of the comma is to place commas periodically in ones writing. This is a mistake that I would also occasionally make. I would read over my writing, decide a sentence was too long, and add a comma. This was because, in my mind, commas fixed everything, especially if there were lots of them.

Now that I've learnt to properly use a comma, reading over some of my past writing is almost painful. There are commas thrown in everywhere, almost all of them unnecessary or incorrectly placed. As Lauren Wozny said in her blog post on commas, "When used properly [the comma] can signal breaks in a sentence and the pasting of two independent clauses together, but when used incorrectly it can cause mass chaos." My writing was definitely an example of how commas could create mass chaos when improperly used, as I'm sure my Grade Twelve English teacher would attest to.

Now that I have developed a better grasp of grammar and grammar rules, I am glad to say that my writing is no longer an exercise in comma excess. The comma is one writing tool that I feel confident using, as should most writers. Those who are feeling a little wobbly in their comma usage can easily review comma rules at this grammar website. While small in size, the comma is aspect of grammar that can throw off even the most grammatically correct sentence.