Professional Documents
Culture Documents
September/October 2007 33
(ACT) as indicating that grammar is es will likely be as frustrating to the Students sentence: My older brother John
the most important skill for students instructors as their products are frus- lives in New York City, he is going to visit
me this weekend.
entering college, but high school teach- trating to those who hire them. If the
ers consider it to be the least important status quo is allowed to continue, gov- Instructors notations on students paper:
skill. According to the same study, the ernment intervention becomes a much Superlative adjective error (older should
discrepancy between college expecta- stronger likelihood, as has occurred in be oldest); comma-splice error (change
comma to semicolon or insert and); and
tions and high school instruction may the United Kingdom. parallel structure error (he is going to. .
explain why nearly 20% of students . should be he plans to. . .)
entering college take a remedial writing Suggestions
Note: In an actual situation, the codes of
course. Although teaching correct gram-
Researchers have posed a num- the errors reflecting these three deficien-
mar and mechanics certainly does not cies would be placed at the location of
constitute teaching writing, we argue ber of alternatives to the rules-based
each error. For example, sup. adj may
that for business writing, correctness is approach. However, unless these alter- be written at the location of the first error,
a critical characteristic of effective writ- natives help students overcome their CS may be written at the location of the
ten communication. sentence-level deficiencies, the writing second error, and PS may be written at
weaknesses of employees as identified the location of the third error.
Doniger (2003) wrote that the oppo-
sition to teaching TSG may be weak- in the two NCW reports will continue We believe that students sentence-
ening because recently, the armor of frustrate employers. level errors should always be marked
the anti-grammar instruction stance has Hillocks and Smith (2003), who are as part of grading their work. If English
shown chinks and dents (p. 101). Hud- strong opponents of the TSG approach, teachers do not see themselves as gram-
son (2001) concurred: recommended the sentence-combining mar police and therefore do not mark
technique as an alternative to the con- grammar and punctuation errors, students
The pendulum seems to be on the return text approach. When using the sen-
swing. It would be naive to think that remain unaware of the magnitude of their
the pendulum is driven by academic tence-combining technique, instructors writing insufficiency and have no way of
researchindeed, there has been very give students a series of short sentences knowing what types of deficiencies need
little research on grammar and writing in a set (from two to as many as eight to be corrected. The result is that they
since the flurry in the 60s and 70s. . . . or nine) and ask students to use all of
However, the result is that there is now continue to make the same sentence-
the ideas in these sentences to cre- level errors. The instructors who teach
much more enthusiasm in some educa-
tional circles for the idea that conscious ate a new, more structurally complex in other business disciplines also can
grammar (resulting from formal teaching) sentence. According to Cooper (1975), assist by marking sentence-level errors
could have the useful benefit of improv- no other single teaching approach has in their students written work. They also
ing writing. (p. 1) ever consistently been shown to have a can consider writing quality, including
Hudson (2001) reported that in the beneficial effect on syntactic maturity correctness, as one of the components in
United Kingdom, the government has and writing quality (p. 72). However, determining grades on students written
introduced two directives: the Nation- when considering the errors in the sen- work. This can be facilitated when an
al Literacy Strategy in 1997 and the tences students create, Jackson (1982) academic unit (e.g., department or col-
National Curriculum for English in found that sentence-combining prac- lege) adopts a uniform error-code list or
1999. These directives advocate reintro- tice did not reduce errors among basic writing style handbook that all instruc-
ducing the teaching of grammar into all writers. Hayes (1984) indicated that tional personnel use when grading their
primary and secondary state-run schools sentence combining has the same level students work. Thus, if a students paper
in the United Kingdom. of effectiveness in reducing mechani- contains a comma splice, the instructor
The instructors who teach writing cal errors as TSG instruction. records the code for the splice on the
courses, including written business We believe that a modified sentence- students paper at the location of the
communication courses, are chal- combining technique in which sentence- error and provides a correction.
lenged to develop new approaches level errors are identified and the rules Some researchers show that requiring
to help students remediate their sen- governing the correction of these errors students to correct certain marked errors
tence-level errors. These courses are are explained is a viable option. Illustra- is helpful. Johansen and Shaw (2003)
likely the last writing-oriented courses tion of the modified sentence-combin- advocated this with their glossing
that the students take before receiving ing strategy is: approach, which uses the following five
their undergraduate degree. Given the Directions: Using the ideas presented in steps: (a) the teacher evaluates students
disparity between the ineffective writ- the following sentences, combine them writing and marks their sentence-level
ing skills of those entering the work- into one compound sentence. errors; (b) the teacher highlights the
force and the level of writing skills John is my brother. errors that he or she wants students to
American employers require of their further consider; (c) the teacher returns
He is the oldest of the three boys in my
employees, the instructors educat- family. the students work, asking them to cor-
ing future business employees cannot rect all errors; (d) each student receives
ignore the disconnect. If instructors He lives in New York City. a summary sheet on which he or she
continue to ignore it, the consequenc- He plans to visit me this weekend. writes the grammar rules that pertain to
September/October 2007 35
for entry-level marketing positions. Journal of National Council of Teachers of English Quible, Z. (2006). Impact of error labeling on
Marketing Education, 12, 6471. (NCTE). (2006, October 24). NCTEs position error elimination in business writing. Business
Kolln, M. (1981). Closing the books on alchemy. unchanged: Isolated grammar drills do not Communication Quarterly, 68, 824.
College Composition and Communication, 31, produce good writers. Retrieved November 15, Quible, Z. (2007). The strategies approach: Effec-
139151. 2006, from http://www.ncte.org/about/press/ tive for reviewing grammar and punctuation
McDaniel, S. W., & White, J. C. (1993). The rel/125932.htm concepts. Manuscript submitted for publication.
quality of the academic preparation of under- Noguchi, R. (1991). Grammar and the teach- Sams, L. (2003). How to teach grammar, analyti-
graduate marketing majors: An assessment ing of writing: Limits and possibilities. cal thinking, and writing: A method that works.
by company recruiters. Marketing Education Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers English Journal, 92, 5765.
Review, 3, 916. of English. Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching grammar in the con-
McQuade, F. (1980). Examining a grammar OHare, F. (1973). Sentence combining: Improv- text of writing. English Journal, 85, 1524.
course: The rationale and the result. English ing student writing without formal grammar Weaver, C. (1998). Teaching grammar in the con-
Journal, 69, 2630. instruction. Urbana, IL: National Council of text of writing. In C. Weaver (Ed.), Lessons
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Teachers of English. to share: On teaching grammar in context (pp.
(1985). NCTE position statement: On grammar Quible, Z. (2004). Error identification, labeling, 1838). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
exercises to speaking and writing. Urbana, IL: and correction. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 46, Wise, K. (2005). The importance of writing skills.
Author. 155168. Public Relations Quarterly, 50, 3748.