Blog Post #4

Rustick, Margaret Tomlinson. “Grammar Games in the Age of Anti-Remediation.” Journal of Basic Writing 26.1 (2007): 43-62. EbscoHost. 29 May 2011. Web.

Rustick spends the first part of her article discussing the historical debate surrounding grammar instruction, touching on what she sees as the rejection of any discussion of grammar in composition, to the politics and power dynamics of correctness, to the difficulty of figuring out exactly how to teach grammar in context.  Despite these conflicts, she suggests that teachers need to move forward in the teaching of standard written English (SWE) in some way because the world outside of English studies values it. In order to meet this challenge, Rustick suggests we draw from ESL research, treating SWE as something akin to a second language. The two languages between which students must learn to code-switch are their oral (home) language and the written (SWE) language of the classroom.

The bulk of Rustick’s article describes several grammar games she uses with her students. “It is important,” she writes, “to understand that the primary purpose of grammar gaming is not to teach terminology or prescriptive rules, nor is it simply a way to have fun. Instead, the basic premise […] is that students need to practice using language the way writers do” (50). Rustick’s ending assertion—that students need to use language like “real” writers do—is one I have read in several different articles, most recently in Dawkins’s and Micciche’s pieces. A question I have, though, is how do real writers use language? And how do we know? All the above authors spend a small amount of time addressing my first question—the gist seems to be that real writers are guided by a rhetorical transaction of meaning and by stylistic considerations rather than by hard and fast rules—but all elide the second question (how do we know?). In a field that is focused on how writing is generated, this elision seems odd. Of course, we all can read professional writing and see how different rules are bent, and books on the composing processes of professional writers abound (I use Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Stephen King’s On Writing in my classes), but if the stated goal is to replicate another group’s composing process, more needs to be said about that model process.

The games Rustick presents do sound interesting. All have to do with playing with punctuation, word order, and sentence structure to see what happens, with a goal of increasing the ability to make conscious decisions about the above elements of writing without getting stuck on terminology. Rustick also suggests talking with students about the different considerations and options presented by oral and written compositions. It is an interesting article, and I think it will be helpful as I develop my basic-writing course for the fall. I do, however, wish for a more in-depth analysis of the practices of professional writers, and I also question whether it is appropriate to model what we teach students on how professional writers write. After all, the purposes and genres for which our students will end up writing are different that those of most professional writers. But I do like the movement away from hard and fast grammatical rules and the acknowledgement that too much terminology can serve to confuse and dismay students.