Putting Correctness in Its Proper Place

Donna M. Padgett
Macon College

When correctness has been foremost in writing instruction, the focus has been on grammar, not, to quote Mike Rose, "the intricacies, idiosyncracies, and rich complexities of composing" (88). Yet Richard Braddock, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer's important Research in Written Composition (North 17) unequivocably states that "the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in actual composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing" (37- 38). Other reports on how grammar study affects composition agree (Hartwell 105-06).

If, therefore, we should not place correctness foremost in the teaching of writing, where should we place it? The English faculty at one college give as "priorities in any piece of writing . . . substance, organization, style, and correctness" (Akin). This order is consistent with composition specialists' books about writing and with research on experienced writers' processes. This order is violated, however, in novice writers' processes. Also, according to the same faculty, grammar, usage, and mechanics "are best learned individually through reading, writing, and revision" (Akin). Compositon pedagogy may reflect both of these positions: that correctness be a writer's last priority and that students learn correctness contextually.

Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers and Donald Murray's A Writer Teaches Writing exemplify books placing correctness as a last priority. Elbow asserts:

. . .don't let a concern about grammar hinder your efforts to improve your writing. Don't make a special effort on grammar until you are already comfortable and much more competent in your writing. In the meantime treat grammar as a matter of very late editorial correcting: never think about it while you are writing. Pretend you have an editor who will fix everything for you; then don't hire yourself for this job till the very end . . . . (137)

Elbow blames incoherent writing not on errors, but on premature attention to error. He says that grammar has been included in writing instruction because "it is the one part of writing that can be straightforwardly taught" (138).

Murray also postpones concern about correctness until late in a writer's process. He includes a checklist for a writer's last activity, "Edit to publish." The final points relate to correctness:

Are the traditions of language broken only if it clarifies meaning?
Do the mechanics of language help make the meaning clear?
Is each word spelled correctly?
Is the manuscript neat? (63)

Murray also notes that drafting and rereading involve grammar, as does peer-editing. "We should know the traditions of our language," Murray says, "but they are best learned within the context of making writing" (238-39).

Elbow's and Murray's suggestions that a writer attend to correctness late in the process conforms to research about experienced writers' practices. For instance, Nancy Sommers studied revisions of "twenty experienced adult writers . . . journalists, editiors, and academics" (121). Their first revisions concentrated on their topics and ideas, rather than on word choice, which might have limited them. Alluding to a power failure in New York, one participant explained:

I feel like Con Edison cutting off certain states to keep the generators going. In first and second drafts, I try to cut off as much as I can of my editing generator, and in the third draft, I try to cut off some of my idea generators, so I can make sure that I will actually finish the essay. (127)

According to Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, writing discovery drafts and editing later characterize sophisticated writers with "flexible process goals" ("A Cognitive Process Theory" 380-81). Also, six professional writers compared with six competent adult writers wrote longer sentence parts before pausing to plan and to review (Kaufer, Hayes, and Flower 122, 126-27).

In contrast, novice writers focus on correctness prematurely, with unsatisfactory results (Harris 77; Perl 328; Rose 3-4; Sommers 124). For instance, Sondra Perl's unskilled college writers edited in the midst of drafting, after drafting preliminary texts, and during their final reading (331). Their editing interfered with generating and drafting and tied them to the written text. Perl concludes that these writers needed "a conception of editing that includes flexibility, suspended judgment, the weighing of possibilities, and the reworking of ideas" (333). Blocked writers edit too soon, Rose notes, and apply arbitrary, irrelevant, or faulty rules (4). Perl's students also mistakenly invoked rules, resulting in hypercorrection or unintended lack of clarity. Perl attributes students' disruptive editing, rather than elaboration, early in the process to classroom instruction about surface features (332-34).

How does one apply this research to teaching writing? First, one may educate students about writers' processes. In addition to textbook explanation, I discuss the writing activities on the next page with students. In English 101 and in business communications classes, I also show a videotape of a writer composing aloud. This videotape illustrates the writer's processes, which my classes critique and compare with their own. In addition, I explicitly teach invention techniques and require relevant ones before students draft.

A List of Writing Activities

Prewriting or            Writing or               Rewriting or
Predrafting              Drafting                 Redrafting
 
Considering              Writing words            Rereading
constraints              that are part            Evaluating
(influences)             of a text                Revising
    Purpose                                          (Making sub-
    Message                                          stantive
    Medium                                           changes
    Audience             <------------>                 [through
    Context                                          adding, de-
    (Situational                                     leting, or
    Background)          Recursion                   rearranging]
Generating ideas         (Moving among               in the whole
Organizing               kinds of activi-            text, a
                         ties)                       section or a
                                                     paragraph)
                         <------------>           Editing
                                                     (Correcting
                                                     errors at
                                                     the sentence
                                                     or word
                                                     level)

My intent with this list is not to establish all that may occur during composing. Rather, I suggest activities in which a writer may engage so that my class will be aware of these and may discuss them.

Through such instruction and assignments, I portray composing as developing meaning, with concern about surface features late in the process. Also, students' coursework trains them to write in accord with this view.

In English 101 I ask students to draft in pencil, to underscore that their drafts are transitory, not final, and need not be perfect. Also, I suggest ways to postpone editing, such as marking a problematic passage and writing in options, to reexamine later. After students write a draft in class, I request that they evaluate it according to a written list of requirements, concerning global to sentence-level matters. During two to three class meetings, students draft again and review their drafts, in terms of the same requirements. Students write the final version in ink, but may neatly correct errors.

Later in the term, students must bring two extra copies of an out-of-class draft, to receive feedback from their classmates. The directions for peer-editing (comparable to those for reviewing an in-class essay) concern global to sentence level matters. After class, students engage in rewriting activities and draft a new version. Then they peer-edit in class again, in terms of an assignment's requirements, and, out of class, rewrite and draft once more. They may neatly correct their final typed drafts.

If we agree with Murray, we realize that all this drafting, redrafting, and peer-editing involve grammar (238-39). So, too, does a student's correction of errors on a graded essay. How else may a student learn grammar, usage, and mechanics by reading, writing, and revision (Murray 238-39; Akin)?

In my conferences with individual students, each reads an essay aloud to ongoing evaluative comment. I allow students to correct errors that they spot. Otherwise, I mark a problem and comment about it, teaching a brief lesson if necessary. Students also discuss their essays and ask questions. Thus, I explain an error so that a student understands it and knows how to correct it.

In the writing center I similarly refer a student to his or her own work for the student to detect and to correct problems. After explaining any remaining ones, I ask the student to write a comparable passage, in order to determine if he or she can omit the errors. In these ways I focus on the students' writing, not on grammatical abstractions, nor on isolated, strange sentences in an exercise.

These are but a few easy ways to instruct students with correctness a late priority, related to their texts. Certainly, other writing instructors engage in practices with a similar intent, for students to persist with elaboration until time to address correctness. It would be beneficial for writing instructors to share their practices. It is not sufficient simply to reject formal grammar study and relegate learning correctness to reading, writing, and revision. Unless we plan for students to develop correctness contextually, their learning, at best, may be haphazard or scanty. To put correctness in its proper place, we must have a suitable pedagogy.

Note

(1) Unlike their model ("A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing," CCC 32 [1981]: 370), this list avoids mention of a "monitor," an artificial phrase for "the writer's mind making decisions" (Patricia Bizzell, "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing," PRE/TEXT 3 [1982]: 222) or of the writer's memory, which a writer implicitly possesses.

Works Cited

Akin, Lew. Memorandum to Record. 25 March 1992. Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Tifton, GA.

Berlin, James A. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.

Braddock, Richard, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer. Research in Written Composition. Champaign, IL: NCTE, 1963.

Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. London: Oxford UP, 1973.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 365-87.

Harris, Muriel. "Modeling: A Process Method of Teaching." College English 45 (1983): 74-84.

Hartwell, Patrick. "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar." College English 47 (1985): 105-27.

Kaufer, David, John Hayes, and Linda Flower. "Composing Written Sentences." Research in the Teaching of English 20 (1986): 121-40.

Murray, Donald M. A Writer Teaches Writing. 2nd ed., Boston: Houghton, 1985.

North, Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1987.

Perl, Sondra. "The Composing Process of Unskilled College Writers." Research in the Teaching of English 13 (1979): 317-36.

Rose, Mike. Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension. Studies in Writing and Rhetoric. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.

Sommers, Nancy. "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers." College Composition and Communication 31 (1980): 378-88. Rpt. in Tate and Corbett, 119-27.

Stewart, Donald. "Some History Lessons for Composition Teachers." Rhetoric Review 3 (1985): 134-44. Rpt. in Tate and Corbett, 16-23.

Tate, Gary, and Edward P. J. Corbett, eds. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.