The REAL reason for bad grammar

This is a secret I discovered while working as a writing tutor. When I’d run across bad grammar in a student’s writing, it was usually accompanied by some kind of unusual turn of phrase that made the whole thought of the sentence seem odd. I would ask them what they meant by it, and they would look at me like, “Huh?

As I thought about their questionable sentence, I would begin to see a number of different possible meanings that it might convey, so I would ask them. “Do you mean ______ or do you mean ______ or do you mean _______?” Then they would stare at me and one of two things would happen:

They would say, “No I meant _______.”
They would say, “I’m not sure…”

Bad grammar doesn’t necessarily happen out of ignorance. Usually it happens when we most struggle to express our thoughts.

Often the students I tutored didn’t know exactly what they meant by a sentence until I asked them. That’s when they discovered the way they rendered their sentence was not what they meant at all. Then they had to clarify, and I got to help them craft their sentence so that it said exactly what they meant. When we know exactly what we mean, it is easier to write with good grammar.

When the students didn’t know which of the optional meanings I rattled off was the one they wanted, that was usually a sign that they didn’t know exactly what they wanted to mean. In these cases, often they had just written what they thought would sound good to a teacher. (Their heart may not have been fully committed to the words on the paper.) When I told them the different ways that their writing could be interpreted, they learned (perhaps for the first time) how their writing affected a reader. I suspect that many of them had never had this experience.

Good grammar and punctuation arise out of being able to make our nebulous thoughts and impressions into words and by examining alternative ways of expressing ourselves. When you are determined to be understood, you want to make sure that the placing of your words exactly guides your reader, and you look for alternate ways your sentences might be read. Try to eliminate those possibilities when you don’t want them. Careful grammar and punctuation is the way you block out the host of unwanted alternative interpretations.

When you’re having troubles getting the words down

When you have to write something, do you have this trouble?

As a writing tutor, I worked with a particular student who felt so blocked that he simply couldn't write. When I probed him with questions about his writing process, he told me that his mind was actually flooded with words and ideas he could say. He was mentally overwhelmed and had no idea where to begin, so he would just freeze up. (I suppose that for him, it was like trying to push Niagara Falls through a garden hose; the hose would just burst.)

In these situations, the process of using a pencil and paper is too slow and ineffective. Other strategies must be employed. You may need to tell someone your thoughts and have them write them down for you. (Writing tutors will do this.) Or it may be necessary for you to talk out your paper as you type it. If you have this trouble, realize that you may be a verbal learner, one who thinks better talking. You could also get a tape recorder and talk out all your thoughts and then transcribe them.

In the case of the student that had trouble getting his thoughts down, we used the rest of the session in this way--he dictated his thoughts to me and I scribbled them down just as fast as I could. It was fascinating to see that his verbal organization was absolutely flawless; it was like a perfect outline. I pointed that out to him in the most enthusiastic manner. He was also excited about the idea of talking his paper out while typing it at the computer.

Take-away: When your mind is flooded, talk it out to a scribe.

6 Types of students that come in for tutoring

As a writing tutor, I had to deal with the emotional baggage that students brought in with them along with their paper. I learned different ways of helping them get past their mental blocks so they could improve as a writer.

The coerced student

Some students were required by their teacher to come to the writing center. (Usually these required trips were foisted upon them before the teacher even looked at their paper.) They came in with a bad attitude, and they didn’t think they needed help. I learned to acknowledge their feeling of independence and to suggest that we look over their paper to see if we could polish it a bit. This usually got them to unbend in the session. I could see that they wanted to be validated that their paper needed no more work done to it. I was willing to give them that validation if they deserved it, but I also knew that in all probability, there would be problems.

The student with the gory paper

A few students came to the writing center because their teacher had bled red ink all over their paper and told them they needed to get help with it. They came in very depressed. It frequently helped them when we went over all the comments their teacher had written on their paper. I would do my best to explain to them what the teacher meant, since the teacher comments were usually very brief and sometimes cryptic. (It may interest you to know that sometimes the teacher’s comments were wrong, but I could see the teacher knew what the real problem was and didn’t have the time or space to write a detailed explanation.)

The insecure student

Some students came with the idea that they were terrible at writing. I could tell from their behavior during the session that they felt they needed their hand held in everything. In this situation, in addition to helping them improve their essay, it became necessary to search for their successes and validate their good instincts. It was also very important to share strategies for improvement so that they could take more control of their own writing process.

The passive student

Some students came with the expectation that the tutor should do all the work. They were reluctant to engage with their own writing or apply principles explained in the session and this made it very tempting for me as a tutor to take over and demonstrate. If demonstrating at least once didn’t seem to make a difference, the best way I found to react was to mirror the student’s behavior. If I sat back and looked expectantly at the student, the student usually realized that nothing was going to happen unless they did something.

The needy student

Some students tended to ask for more time and more help than could be given. This was always very difficult for me to deal with because usually these were cases when the student really DID have a lot of needs. This was when I had to work very hard to make sure the limits and boundaries of the writing center’s services were understood. I also had to remind them that they could make additional appointments later and make appointments for future assignments too.

The ESL student

English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students are a special tutoring case. They have not grown up immersed in the English-speaking culture, so many colloquialisms that English-speakers have absorbed are strange to them. Also, there were often times that the correct English was contrary to the general rules that they had learned. (This is what makes English frustrating to foreigners.) In these cases, I gave them answers that I would not give native speakers because they needed the exposure to the language.

It was always an adventure to be a writing tutor. I never knew what I would be dealing with next. I loved all the different students I worked with, and I never looked upon the different types as annoyances, but as needs to be met. I loved the whole process of learning about them and helping them.

Tutoring for academic writing: how to avoid postmodernistic hand-wringing

In writing centers across the country, inevitably the question comes up about whether the tutor has a right to tell the students what kind of writing is “right” in school. What about these minority cultures that have their own way of writing and expressing themselves with non-standard English and idiom? What right does the tutor have to squelch the students’ authentic voice?

For instance, if I was writing this for an academic paper, I might find I was expected to write something like the following:

Postmodernist theorists on writing tutoring have turned their attention to the cultural discourses that are marginalized in academic writing, and they advocate for a tutoring method in which the tutor acknowledges the student’s cultural discourse and dialogues with them about the tension between their cultural identity and they requirements of discoursing academically.

Is that crazy, or what? Why would anyone with a soul feel drawn to change their style of expression to fit something as lifeless as that? They’re not. Students have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward academic-style writing. The ones who realize what they are being asked to do frequently over-compensate by pulling out all the big words they can think of and thoroughly muddying up their writing in order to get the good grades.

But back to the question. What right do writing tutors have to tell students to change their writing style for academia? It took me a long time to answer this question for myself. Eventually I learned that academic writing is NOT the only alternate writing style besides one’s personal style. There are many styles. (It just seems like academic is the only style because that may be the only other style a student has been asked to write in.) But the more styles the writer learns about, the more it becomes obvious the writer only has to learn another set of skills in addition to the ones they have already. Just because you learn to write academically doesn’t mean that the other writing skills you consider more authentically “you” are destroyed. Learning different styles of writing (like business writing, creative writing, history writing, engineering writing, etc.) is about accumulating skills, not about blotting out your unique you-ness. Writing tutors help students craft writing that will succeed in academia.

Then we have to deal with the next question. How did academic writing develop into something that seems so dull and boring? (Sorry, you academics, but your prose IS boring. )

Academic writing (discourse) has become what it is because it meets a need and does it very well. It is built on the theory that time is scarce. Teachers know this as they look at a pile of student essays that they have to grade. For people who have only so much time they can spend reading and responding to writing, communication that is direct, logical, and dense with thought is highly valued. Academics want to know right away why they should be reading a paper; thus the thesis comes at the beginning. Once academics know why they are reading the paper, they want the reasons supporting that thesis presented in an orderly manner so they can easily pick them out. The academic doesn’t have the time to think of opposing arguments, so he wants them presented and rebutted in the paper. Then, just to make sure he hasn’t lost the point of the paper, he wants to be reminded in the end what it all adds up to, thus the thesis is repeated at the end.

The uninitiated writers accuse academic discourse of excessive use of jargon and uninteresting style. They say that academics make it hard for ordinary people to read. However, the fact is that academic writing also has to advance the field, and this may require inventing terms where none existed before. Naturally, this means that if a term is invented, it must be clearly defined so that it is not mistaken to mean something else. The more precise a term is, the more specialized it tends to become, and the greater the tendency for the uninitiated to misunderstand. Precision of meaning becomes even more necessary if a word is used in several different disciplines and means different things in each one. Academics strive for precision of language, so their language uses jargon.

When academics wish to advance their field, they realize that they “stand on the shoulders of giants” and it may not be clear to their readers which giants they are standing on. Therefore, they take care to communicate the context that their study can best be understood through. (Sometimes it becomes difficult to isolate the context from the thesis, however.) Academics seek to solve problems, so they have to communicate precisely what that problem is and how large it is. Academics realize that if they use scientific study to make advances, they have to make it possible for others to duplicate their experiments. Thus, they have to share their methods, calculations, and conclusions.

There is a reason that academic discourse developed. It serves a need in the university. If it were not useful, some other form of discourse would be quickly adopted.

If a writing tutor can communicate this to the student, the student will be more likely to understand the need to master academic discourse. Further, since the business world likewise values time, discourse in the business world is similarly direct.

Students often feel that their voice is being silenced by academic discourse. They fear that academic style will take over their communication, Borg-like, and that once assimilated, they will have great difficulty escaping. The tutor can comfort the student by emphasizing that every style of writing mastered adds to the student’s capability of communicating effectively and appropriately. If the student wishes to develop their personal voice, they can be encouraged to take creative writing classes and discover new ways of stretching their style.

Above all, the writing tutors need not become embroiled in postmodernistic hand-wringing about “privileged discourse” and “power structures.” They are there to help students master the writing style of their chosen discipline.

Why no one is a bad writer

Now, why would I want to start this post out with the kind of relativistic claptrap that would make English teachers want to tear their own eyeballs out? (And yes, if they are reading this post right now, they are doing that or something similar.)

I say it because it is true, and I observed it over and over as a writing tutor.

To put it simply, everyone writes according to his or her abilities, and no one deliberately sets out to be a bad writer. I observed so many students who would be labeled “bad writers” by their English teachers, but who were perfectly willing to change when the rules were explained to them in relation to their own writing when I tutored them in a one-on-one session. Most were very apologetic about such things as their comma usage and welcomed the chance to learn and practice those skills.

Here's the deal--we are all on a continuum of development, honing our skills. We are born, and we begin communicating by saying “mama.” We first get a pencil in hand, and we start scribbling. We learn how to form and interpret letters and draw scraggly stick figures. We begin putting letters together. Then we begin putting words together into sentences. Every assignment we are given calls forth something more than we ever thought was in us.

We learn to write better by reading writers that are better than us. We learn the turn of dialogue and where to put quotation marks and commas. We notice that sometimes a character’s thoughts are in italics.

We notice what is funny and try to imitate it. We learn about the ridiculous and fanciful. We learn to tell stories, we learn what kind of stories seem boring, and we try to write so as not to bore others.

We learn to argue a point and prove it. We learn to follow written instructions and we discover that there are different ways of interpreting instructions, depending on where a comma is placed.

We discover opinions that we don’t like and try to discredit them, and we learn how to twist word meanings and tangle words up. This causes us to begin guarding our own writing better so that the same is not done to us. We learn to examine our unspoken assumptions. We learn how to put our reasoning in order.

We notice interesting punctuation marks, and we try to figure out how to use them. We notice patterns of usage with dashes, parentheses, semicolons, and colons. We experiment with them and overdo it until we learn to use them sparingly. All along the way, we are corrected and praised and graded, and the more detailed the feedback, the better and faster we can improve.

Instead of calling a person "a bad writer," we should call a person "an unskilled writer." Yeah, yeah, I know I'm debating semantics, but skilled writing requires careful attention to word choice.