Lu's article seeks to promote the importance of ideas within an author's work. Content should not be disregarded simply because of problems with sentence structure and grammar. Although an absence of good structure may take away from the work somewhat does not mean the ideas are without merit. Take for instance the case of writers whose native language is not English. Should their experiences be disregarded and should they be termed "bad writers" because they cannot properly conjugate a verb? The article points out that these issues are remedied with tutoring. A teacher can easily do a unit that focuses on grammar or sentences structure or a student can usually find help in a writing center. One of the writer's within the article felt that since his work would be edited at some point anyway, why worry so much about a few dangling participles, such as it were?
Perl is another theorist that emphasizes the importance of good structure. While I agree with both that the distractions caused by poor writing can take away from the overall experience of a piece, I also side with Lu in that we should not disregard the voice behind the writing. Sometimes the most powerful voices of experience come from those not well versed in academia. We cannot regard ideas to be without merit simply because of poor grammar and sentence structure. Such things can be taught and improved upon, strong experience seldom can.
Lu points out an irony in her article. Those writers perceived to be "good" are encouraged to throw caution to the wind when it suits them and write beyond accepted boundaries should the need arise. Poor writers are penalized for not following the rules of an institution. This sets for a poor standard for any classroom. If ideas are the backbone for a piece of writing for one set, why emphasize mechanics for another set of writers?
For the most part, I believe we adhere strictly to the rules of structure. While style is always appreciated in a paper, writers need to find the path that allows for structure and style to coexist, which is not always an easy task.
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7 comments:
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis and response to the reading, Tara.
I agree with you Tera, one should first focus on the idea and then on the grammar.
Our blogs are too similar :) I agree with you, though, it is ironic that for some people only grammar is focused on, and then for some other people it is their ideas that are focused on.
I think the idea is that the writers who have the basic mechanics down are the ones who can move beyond that basic skill and then work on developing their ideas and voice. Even so, I'm not sure I agree with that in practice because as Lu asserted, people from different cultures may not have the mechanics correct, but may develop their point well. I agree with you that the ideas are what is important and that is why in our tutoring groups we are constantly trying to look past sentence level errors and really focus on getting them to fully develop their argument.
Tara, when you said "Should their experiences be disregarded and should they be termed "bad writers" because they cannot properly conjugate a verb?" it reminded me of spanish classes I have taken. If more writing courses acted as encouraging as professors I've had in foreign language courses I believe multicultural students would be encouraged and helped instead of not regarded as good writers. In my spanish classes, if I'm having trouble articulating exactly what I want to say, my original thought is to give up. Instead of letting me, even if my responses probably sound stupid to a native Spanish speaker, my professors have always incouraged me and recognized that I'm on the right track and just need the right words to get there to get my message across.
Tara--you brought up some interesting points! I think that it is most important to focus on your idea before worrying about the surface level errors. We can always fix that later :) I enjoyed reading your blog.
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