Exorcising the Devils

Well, here are the two devils…

The first one is an old devil. No matter how hard I try to push it away, it refuses to disappear. Yes, grammar again. Well, I am a much sober enthusiast for grammar than I once used to be. Williams and Hartwell have nearly won me over to their view of “errors” and “grammar.” I am turning over a new leaf. As a DI, I now grade “ideas” and not grammar. But, as they say old habits die hard. Well, it is not hard to explain my obsession with grammar.

The system of education in which I grew up sets a premium on grammar. My country India once used to be a British colony. The British were the first to introduce English into the educational curriculum. No, they did not have edification of the Indian masses in their mind. The objective was to train “natives” in basic writing skills for filling up clerical posts. Quite understandably, this led to a curricular emphasis on grammar. Anyone training for a clerical position in government offices would need to write and express himself immaculately in English—the colonizer’s language. Grammatical errors had a high price—it would cost you your job. Even 60 years after independence, the nature of English curriculum hasn’t changed much— colonial hangover, perhaps. Our first classes in English are still grammar lessons. We are trained in English grammar and literature separately all the way up to university. Although grammatical errors no longer cost jobs, they do account for the “F” grade in exams. Consequently, it is quite a struggle for me to dissociate grammar from “ideas.” They figure in my consciousness as a single fused entity.

Well, to move on to the real point. I mentioned in the opening paragraph that I am trying hard to look beyond and past errors. While grading I capture the grammatical errors in the commentary box. However, I no longer take off marks for that. But it keeps me wondering how seriously does a student take an error that does not prevent him from getting an A+ grade in an assignment? By not penalizing our students, are we giving them the liberty of not caring about grammar? What is the signal that we are sending out? Grammatical errors are acceptable as long as you have someone to point them out for you. In other words, are we adequately preparing them for the real world where employers/ publishers will judge them by the number of grammatical errors that they make? I would like to quote Harris here: “it is one thing to feel that in a particular classroom your language will not be held up for ridicule; it is another to feel confident in your abilities to write to an indifferent or even hostile reader…” (p.86)
But this again brings us back to the moot question: how important is grammar after all? We neither stare the problem at face nor are willing to completely ignore it. How do we account for this troubled classroom attitude towards grammar?

My next question is not an old devil. It asserted its presence while I was reading Britton’s “Shaping at the Point of Utterance” last week. I like to think of writing as a recursive “process.” Yes, this too has something to do with the way I learnt to write in school. We had annual grammar exams. The first task, on the question paper, would instruct us to write an essay in exactly 40 minutes. The word count was clearly stipulated (usually 350-450). We could choose our topic from a list of options. I resented this task. I always felt that the system did a great injustice to my writing skills by not giving me the scope for revising my work. Ever since, I have been in love with the idea of working on multiple drafts before coming up with the final product. However, Britton’s essay is prompting a re-evaluation of my unqualified support for “successive drafts and revision processes in composing.” Was there, after all, a hidden value in all those essays that we churned out in the exams with clockwork punctuality? Am I also guilty of underestimating the “value of spontaneous inventiveness?” Is there a way in which I can reconcile these two conflicting positions?

Any tips for exorcism?