Grammar Groans

by Lee Shainen IN THE AUGUST 12th edition of Parade, this headline caught my eye: "Help for Failing English Students." As an English teacher, I was obliged to read on: "The 'Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary' not only features new words, but its publishers also asked college professors nationwide how their students were doing with the words they already had. The answer: Awful." The paragraph-sized blurb ended with the dictionary's editor, Anne Soukharov, calling for a "national conversation" about why students are failing at English. Confidentially, I am often baffled by what Microsoft's grammar check finds right or wrong, and I am certainly troubled by my students' unquestioning trust in the correctness of their checked papers (especially regarding spelling and usage). When I show them that there are still mistakes, they look at me in an impatient "get with it" way, as if I'm the one with the problem for not agreeing with the software (sigh). Perhaps we do need "help for failing English students." Perhaps Microsoft will wear that cape and costume and rescue the students from our impoverished and overcrowded school districts. Perhaps. Look, I'm not so vain as to believe that the business community has nothing to offer educators. With that in mind, I went undercover. I attended a workshop put on by a corporate alliance of Careertrack, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, and Fred Pryor Seminars called "Mistake-free Grammar and Proofreading." Their brochure promised, "Get a firm grip on grammar rules, learn to proofread with perfection--and enjoy yourself in the process," all in a one-day workshop! I had to know: could they deliver the goods? I was feeling a bit Robin Hood-ish as I took a front-row seat armed with plenty of sharpened pencils. My first surprise was that the room was filled: there were close to a hundred participants, and, at $125 a head, I immediately realized, for the ten thousandth time, I have no instincts for making money. Why am I not teaching this seminar or ones like it? The "trainer" admitted at the outset that she wasn't an expert in grammar, which I found strange, considering the hype, and the small detail that this was a WORKSHOP ABOUT GRAMMAR! Well, if Microsoft can write dictionaries .... Meanwhile, I vowed to myself to keep my mouth shut and to not blow my cover, but I didn't last ten minutes before my hand shot up to question the material presented. "Excuse me, how come this section on run-ons doesn't mention fused sentences or comma splices?" Glare, some apologetic-dismissive response, and the program continued. I vowed not to ask anymore questions. That worked until we came to the use of the colon. You must understand I really like the colon. I have used it several times in this article already. I might even do it again before I'm through, but in the workbook there was no mention of using a colon between independent clauses. I was appalled by the omission. At that moment, I feared for the future, feared for a language that might fall into the efficient hands of corporations for streamlining and improving. One thing was clear to me: if English teachers were successful at teaching grammar, there wouldn't be a job market for trainers who think there is no difference between "all right" and "alright." I talked to people at the seminar and discovered that most were there because their companies had sent them; however, many were motivated to learn for personal as well as professional reasons. Guess what? Those people learned. Big surprise. Were they motivated to learn back in their school days? No. Was there anything unique about how the material was being presented at this workshop? No. The difference was that now they were adults with a reason to know, even if it was simply to keep their jobs. Does that mean English teachers are off the hook? No. We have to stop passing students who haven't learned what they need to know to move on. Otherwise, we are responsible for further corporate incursions into our domain. But we are also part of a culture that values televisions, cell phones, radios, and computers over books. Our children learn language more by hearing it than by reading it. That's why "by and large" becomes "by in large" (example from the Parade article). This is an on-going cultural literacy shift. Look at e-mail: speed and immediacy have triumphed over correctness and style. What to do? How about what the National Writing Project has been telling us to do for the past three decades? Write! Teachers passionate about their own writing, connected with other teachers who write, sharing resources and ideas about teaching writing are the best answer we have. Put them in classrooms of ten to fifteen students, in school districts not obsessed with teaching for test results, and there would be a literature Renaissance in this country. By the way, when students start creating writing they care about, they will also start caring about grammar. I guarantee it.