Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Communicology, clip 12 of 12

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: I think one of the things that I found most challenging is the... grammar and mechanics of writing... The baseline... of where's the average student as far as grammar and mechanics, and things like that, frankly is lower here than it was at Santa Barbara. And so something I am trying to kind of balance... I don't want to turn a college level, in this case, elective upper division course into talking about grammar rules. And at the same time, I don't want to let slip by... things that are basically what standard English prescribes as the way that you put the sentence together... One of the things that I've noticed a lot here is that just in general... there's much more quote unquote non-standard English, as far as constructions go, as far as the way people put words together, the way that people pronounce things... This is pure speculation on my part... I have felt like that makes it more of a challenge for students... One of the kind of go-to things that I would say to my students at Santa Barbara for example is, 'If you are not sure how something sounds, read it out loud. Read it to a friend... Say it verbally, and if it doesn't make sense verbally, then that tells you that you need to rework the structure on paper.' But if you're entire soundscape is non-standard constructions, then telling people to read something out loud as a checkpoint becomes a much less useful checkpoint because it may sound fine, but it still may not conform to... Standard English written conventions... I haven't found a solution to that frankly... I've been strongly encouraging students to go to the Writing Center... to involve others in the writing process. Have your roommate read it over. Have a friend read it over... For all but the final assignment... I return them with... fairly extensive comments... 'You've got a structure issue here. You've got a word use issue here.' And they have the option to rewrite their paper to improve their grade.