I am disturbed by the degree to which grammar errors can be destiny, out of proportion to their actual context. For example, should someone who can design a wind tunnel or a life-saving evacuation system or build a robot end up failing an exit exam from a technical college because he or she has made too many grammatical errors? What if that student has only been speaking English for 4 or 5 years? While nobody would deny that the student should and must continue to improve his English, shouldn’t his engineering skills take precedence at a technical college? I’m sure that everyone reading this has faced some version of this problem-I suppose it’s one of the central problems if not THE central problem of student assessment in a linguistically-diverse culture. Yet even barring grading rubrics that would strike most teachers as unfair (counting article mistakes individually, for example-don’t get me started!), non-native speakers face challenges in their coursework that are both more complex than I originally understood , and, I think, less “inevitable” then they seem.
I’m working with some project reports, which are group-written and must conform to fairly strict guidelines. Not surprisingly, the native speakers tend to do most of the writing so that the entire group isn’t penalized for grammar and syntax issues. While understandable, this situation creates conditions that are detrimental to the whole group: First , it forces the second-language speakers to do a lot of the legwork in order to “pull their weight” while potentially overshadowing their contribution, and second, it pretty much destroys any kind of group ownership of the project. When meeting with the groups, I found myself addressing the writer of each section (which I could sort of guess by noticing who perked up as I reached it), rather than the group as a whole, which generally demurred with comments like “Oh, I don’t know about that part-I didn’t write it”, or “you’ll have to ask _____-she wrote the whole thing.” Over time it dawned on me that most of the non-writers weren’t even reading their own group’s report! When I suggested some different divisions of labor (and also that it might not be the best idea to put your name on something you haven’t read) _everyone_ agreed that the chance of being graded badly on grammar/syntax errors was too great to risk, and that it really didn’t matter whether they read the report or not, at least in terms of their grade (i.e. the way that “matters”!) I admit that I didn’t have the guts to ask about the division of labor during the design process, but it occurs to me now that I might find a way to speak to the groups _generally_ about their experience working in groups. I wanted to encourage the non-native speakers to participate more in the writing process (increasing their control over their contribution ), but felt it would be hypocritical, given the very real repercussions their “mistakes” might have on their groups’ grade. I don’t have immediate solutions for this problem, of course, but I thought I’d get it on the table. Thoughts?
Yes, but no matter how much we speak about unfair grading rubrics, I have never heard of any of my colleagues failing a student because of grammar mistakes. We tend to be much more liberal than that, and just how liberal one should be is one of the eternal conundrums I am facing. I experienced both sides of the equation: I used to be a second-language learner myself, and I am now a (non-native) teacher of English. I like to think that I understand the situation of those students who come from an under-privileged background, or from a different country. Being a softee, I melt easy. But I have to say that rarely do I see real discipline and desire on my students’ part to make up for whatever they have missed out on. Maybe I am getting sterner the older I grow, but I heard a lot of excuses, some of them quite ridiculous like “I do not know the use of articles because I missed that day in the kindergarten when the teacher was teaching this to us.” I agree that the use of articles is a complex grammatical issue, and schools should teach it extensively, not just at the kindergarten stage (whatever teaching of articles happens at that level). However, how long are you going to wait for somebody to compensate you for that loss decades ago? What about picking up a grammar book and doing the dirty job of, God help me, learning the rules by heart? No, I do not tell this to my students face to face, though maybe I should. I sandwich my suggestions in such a way that I do not hurt their feelings.I love my students, and I understand why some of them have to be glued onto their iphones even during class. Should I tell them that I remember my days in communist Romania when learning meant sweating it? No, I did not have much fun in school, but I learned that making spelling mistakes was a shame, in a real, profound sense of the word, like good old Freud would understand it.
Szidonia, ofcourse you should tell them that learning means sweating it! When I first introduce myslef to a new class I roll my “r”, try to sound really stern and scary and tell them it is going to be just like in the communist Poland: no smiling allowed, I will make them stand in the corner in shame for every unprompted remark and I will send them to Siberia for every spelling mistake! It works wonders!
Just kidding. (A little).
Woohoo, Agnieszka, God bless Eastern Europe!I tell them I am from Transylvania, which is true, and I drink blood for breakfast. My favorite is American students’ blood. (I do get some looks of terror at times, seriously. But I find such terror a useful pedagogical tool.
O.K., Szidonia and Agnieszka, point taken! S, thank you balancing my comment a bit-you’re right, as teachers we rarely if ever actually fail students for grammar errors, but the threat is always there at the institutional level, and I think it feels very real to students. I think that the difference in our points of view arises from our mutual desire to be fair and supportive in very real and pragmatic senses-just in opposite ways. As flawless second language speakers, you two are understandably less patient with the “my dog ate my grammar” book line of argument (although I have lived to regret missing a class devoted to Hegel-have been dialectic-deficient ever since!), while I, and probably a lot of native speakers whose parents or grandparents were not born here (and a lot of others as well!) are inclined to want to counteract a certain sticklerism for grammar that, in its more unpleasant form smacks of nativism. But having read your posts, I think I might have to modify my “softy” approach a _little_. Please don’t think I treat grammar and syntax issues as wholly unimportant-they are extremely important, and influence peoples’ lot in life enormously, but I have seen their importance overvalued to the extent that it obscures or overshadows a students’ _ideas_. Which, in the end, is just another form of marginalization . BarrieP.S. When I was a kid I had a Soviet-trained ballet teacher. Hoo boy, was Madame Prochovsky ever a toughie. She used to beat time on the floor with a big stick, which she would also use to correct our arm and leg placement. (No she didn’t beat us- but she was fierce! Nobody slacked off in her class…She loved to grab our feet and touch them to our heads saying “Little Soviet ballerinas can do this in their sleep-While you are watching ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ on the TV!” Actually, I loved her. And several of the little girls in that class grew up to be professional dancers.
Barrie, I think you provide some food for thought in that we need to find a happy though difficult balance. I think the research does show that overbearing attention to grammar is a detriment to students learning how to write. Bean seems to also suggest that we find ways to correct grammar that will not discourage young writers and will help them internalize grammar rules.
The group work problems you describe is also something I struggle with. In fact, we ( in FIN ECO) have made a handout on group work, and we include in our workshops. In it we suggest that it is a good idea to assign the three basic roles of the coordinator, moderator and note taker and we offer ideas on how to divide responsibilities. Unfortunately, I do not think we manage to solve the problem you cite. After the students meet and then retrieve to work on writing, they often fall into the pattern you describe, I am afraid.
Great ballet story!