Week five

Reading Neuleib and Brosnahan's "Teaching Grammar to Writers" has made me question whether the students in Advanced Grammar will be able to transfer the knowledge that they have gained in this class to their writing. From listening to their initial introductions and reading the form that you had them fill out at the beginning of class, there are many who see this class as a means to make their writing better. But can a semester course allow for true internalization of concepts? Can presentation and review of terms be enough without further independent study? Meckel's Research in Written Composition study concludes that a semester is "a span much too short to permit development of the degree of conceptualization necessary for transfer to take place." So what can we do? I need to start pushing far more group exercises where students are given opportunity to apply what they are learning. Merely having them able to classify grammatical units is not enough; they must be able to demonstrate an ability to take rules and use them in editing. This would be a true link between focal grammar knowledge and desire to improve their writing.