In last week's class, I wrote that too many students believe "good" writing is correct grammar and mechanics. Monaghan and Saul (1987) explain in the 19th century, "'good' writing was taken to mean a mastery of capitalization, punctuation and syntax as well as correct spelling and pleasing handwriting" (p. 89). Growing up in the 1980s and 90s, I found most of my classmates viewed their writing in these terms, but why wouldn't they when the kind of feedback they received about their writing was red scrawls of "sp" for spellling errors and corrected punctuation?
As an elementary school student, I remember spending countless school hours writing upper- and lowercase cursive letters on specially lined paper. These lessons in penmanship were often the first comments students received about their "writing' ability. Matt was a "good" writer because he dotted his i's directly above their bases. On, I the other hand, was "unsatisfactory" because I couldn't make my s's behave.
I don't know how, but some time during my adolescence I got the idea in my head that "good" writers were ones who were engaging and creative. I remember being shocked when one of my most creative classmates told me I was lucky because I was a good writer. I didn't consider myself good. Sure, I could write grammatically correct sentences, but at the end of the day, I didn't write anything I felt was worth reading, and I certainly couldn't write engaging poems and short stories like this classmate wrote.
When I went to college, I had the opportunity to be a professor's assistant. I got to evaluate sets of preservice English teachers' papers and was shocked by how many simple errors existed in their writing. It was then that I realized a strong command of grammar and punctuation set one apart in classroom writing. Correct was "good."
Today, though, computers can check our spelling and suggest probable words. As we type, Microsoft Word creates colored squiggles alerting us to possible errors in subject-verb agreement and punctuation. These programs are far from perfect, but they are helping us come closer to "good," correct writing.
Schmandt-Besserat and Erard (2008) tell us in "Origins and Forms of Writing" in the Handbook of Research on Writing (Ed. Charles Bazerman), "The future of writing will also be determined by communication technologies" (p. 20). Already, word processors have obviated the need for good penmanship on most school papers, and text messaging and phone memo applications are quickly replacing the lists and notes we used to jot and leave on the kitchen counter. Will printed and typed text replace handwriting at some point? Will there come a time when handwriting notes and essays will seem as archaic as scribes copying books? If computers and other technology intuitively use the correct punctuation, capitalization and spelling in legible text, what will "good" writing look like a century from now?
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I also remember my days in elementary school in which "good writing" was characterized as perfect penmanship. At times, it seemed the content of a writing sample was less valued than the neatness and correct formation of the letters of the alphabet. I remember one of my former colleagues expressing her chagrin when her first grade daughter was sent to the "remedial unit" due to her poor handwriting skills. It did not seem to matter, that the little girl was imaginative and using a variety of invented spelling techniques to express herself in writing.
ReplyDeleteThe use of technology has enabled students to express themselves without the constraints that many of us experienced as school children. However, this does lend itself to debate over whether students need to spell and write grammatically correct on paper, when no spell-checking or grammar-checking system is in place.
Katie, the idea of "good" and "correct" is very interesting indeed. For me, good is a word I'm loath to use in connection to writing because it's so hard to define. I think you're right that in schools today good seems to have become synonymous with correct - but who decides what is correct?
ReplyDeleteI learned to write in England. Like many students my age I do not recall ever explicitly being taught grammar and punctuation, yet I have always had a pretty basic grasp of it. What's interesting though, is that what is grammatically correct in England, is not correct in the US and vice versa. In fact, these days I write a strange hybrid from both countries, which means my writing is rarely correct in either language! Yet I still consider myself to be a "good" writer. Because what is correct in one place is not correct in another, it seems dangerous to associate correct with good, and I wish schools and universities would attempt to come up with other way of looking at writing.
The whole point of writing is normally to get an idea across to someone else, and in order to do this, the writing has to be understandable to the intended audience, in the intended medium, using the intended form, to get a point across. For me then, what makes "good" writing is context specific and very difficult to judge.
As a brief aside - I always had pretty bad handwriting, but now that I spend 90% of my time typing, my penmanship is now almost illegible - I suspect one day, as you suggest, handwriting will be completely replaced by printed text, but I still hope this day never comes. Handwriting is unique to each individual, and I'll be sad when we can no longer make our mark on the world noting something down in our own handwriting.