Persistence of Error

1
What Counts as Error in Writing

• Persistence of Error

2
The rules of English

• Who makes the rules?
• Who enforces them?
• How do we teach them?
• Why dont students learn them?

3
A old story

• In this Day . . . School-Boys are expected to
  be led, sooth'd,
• and entic'd to their studies by the Easiness and
  Pleasure of the
• Practice, rather than by Force or harsh
  Discipline drove, as in days of
• Yore. For while some of them are too Copious in
  Things not so
• immediately the Concern of Boys at School, most
  are too Brief in
• Things really necessary for Youth to be inform'd
  of, and none at all so
• happy or methodical as to distinguish between One
  and T'Other.
• -- The Art of Rhetoric Made Easy, John Holmes,
  1739
•  

4
And we still have the problem

• In 1874, Harvard University introduced an
  entrance
• examination featuring, for the first time, a
  writing requirement.
• When the English faculty at Harvard received this
  first test of
• candidates' writing ability, they were deeply
  shocked.
• Punctuation, capitalization, spelling, syntax at
  every level, error
• abounded. (65)
•  
• "Mechanical Correctness in Composition
  Instruction," Robert J.
• Connors, College Composition and Communication,
  1985, Vol. 36, p.
• 61-72

5
Lately, meaning for the last 20 years . . .

• A great outcry has been made lately, on every
  side, about the inability of
• the students admitted to Harvard College to write
  English clearly and
• correctly. The schools are to-day paying more
  attention to composition
• than they did twenty or thirty years ago and
  yet, notwithstanding this
• increased study and practice, the writing of
  schoolboys has been growing
• steadily worse . . . . With all this practice in
  writing and time devoted to
• English, why do we not obtain better results?
•  
• "The English Question," James Jay Greenough
  Atlantic Monthly, May
• 1893
•  

6
And not just at Harvard

• Students' prose is far from impeccable--Modern
  teachers of English,
• when weary with cropping the hydra heads of bad
  spelling and bad
• grammar, may at least comfort themselves with the
  thought that their
• dragon foe is of ancient lineage. (5)
•  
• Walter Bronson, in 1914, examining the writing of
  Brown University
• students from more than a century before (when it
  was Rhode Island
• College), from The History of Brown University,
  1764-1914. p.122
•  
• qtd. in The Rise and Fall of English
  Reconstructing English as a Discipline, Robert
  Scholes, Yale
• University Press, 1998

7
Go back to the old ways?

• In their complaints about student writing,
  academics hark back nostalgically to a golden
  age
• of academic community where Johnny could both
  read and write the "plain English that
• purists enshrine. But that golden age never
  existed in the modern university (and writing per
• se was not valued or even evaluated in the old
  college). As Daniel P. and Lauren B.
• Resnick have observed, 'There is little to go
  back to in terms of pedagogical methods,
• curriculum, or school organization. The old
  tried and true approaches, which nostalgia today
• prompts us to believe might solve current
  problems, were designed neither to achieve the
• literacy standards sought today nor to assure
  successful literacy for everyone--there is no
• simple past to which we can return.' (22)
•  
• "The Nature of Literacy An Historical
  Exploration," Resnick Resnick, Harvard
  Educational
• Review 47, 1977, p. 385 Writing in the Academic
  Disciplines, 1870-1990 A Curricular History,
• David R. Russell, Southern Illinois University
  Press, 1991.
•  

8
A matter of power
Old standards for literacy were often used to
enforce the social order. The purpose for
rules was to ensure that literacy, especially
written literacy, was reserved to a certain group
with access to school. But given that language
changes, and early grammarians had difficulty
fixing standards, even those with more
democratic impulses such as Noah Webster, were
unable to decrease error.
9
Steady rates of error

• Lunsford and Lunsford compared the number of
• formal errors in student writing from 1917, 1930,
  1986,
• and 2006 and found
• Error frequency in 1917 2.11 formal errors per
  100 words
• Error frequency in 1930 2.24 formal errors per
  100 words
• Error frequency in 1986 2.26 formal errors per
  100 words
• Error frequency in 2006 2.29 formal errors per
  100 words

10
Research shows

• Too much emphasis on grammar in writing classes
  can adversely affect writing quality (Hillocks)
• Study of traditional grammar does not improve
  writing quality (Hillocks and Writing Next).
• Not all teachers or workplace professionals agree
  on what counts as error (Lunsford Connors,
  Lunsford Lunsford, Gray Heuser)

11
So why the errors?

• Writing is difficult to master, and the more
  specialized it is the more effort is required.
• Often writing for school is felt to be
  irrelevant.
• Some teachers only grade for content.
• Error often accompanies growth.