As a student who was in grade school not long ago I related to the article on a personal level. I can remember as a child mistaking one word for another and feeling put down rather than a teacher or parent using that as a tool to teach me something. Corvitz has one main argument, that the way teachers currently approach error analysis is not successful in getting students to understand English. I found his argument that simple grammatical mistakes that students make aren’t for lack of ability to understand or work hard, but because they have a deeper misunderstanding of the concept very convincing. The example of Daily Oral Language (or DOL) exercises was helpful because as far as I know most if not every student has done some form of these in the past. DOLs are unhelpful, uncreative, and detrimental. A writer’s natural creativeness and artistic ability is stifled by the fear of “doing it wrong”.  DOL’s contextualize grammatical errors in ways that students and writers never run in to in real life applications. Corvitz offers alternative ways to achieve the same goals as DOLs while keeping students engaged in the activity and allowing them freedom to experiment with grammar in a more natural setting. Covitz offers the example of “Sentence Dictation Activities”. The teacher reads aloud a sentence from a published author and then the students, without being told how the author punctuated the sentence, copy the sentence and punctuate it themselves. Discussion follows and students and teacher can engage in open discussion about the different and most effective ways to punctuate a certain sentence. They can also discuss any incorrect ways of punctuating the sentence. Novels and poems are great examples because they often offer lots of wacky punctuation to emphasize or draw out different words.  The first paragraph of Moby Dick by Herman Melville is a perfect example.

 “The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and

brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons

and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly

embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations

of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it

somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality”.

The first sentence alone offers up a literary goldmine of punctuation. Students can play with it, punctuate it in their own terms and discuss their punctuation in an academic setting.  This is comprehensive, helpful, complete. Rather than looking at the same sentence on a white board and finding the error, students can experiment with different pieces of punctuation as they would in their own writing. This activity also keeps student engaged and thinking critically about what they are trying to punctuate. The goal in this exercise, as should be in all writing exercises is to help form the student into a better and more effective writer. There are many ways to teach grammar, just as there are many ways to punctuate a sentence. It is not always about right and wrong, rather, what is more effective.

William Cayo