10-11-09

This week I found a lot of help in defining some grammatical subtleties that I had been seeing arise in my own writing. Specifically the work with AWWUUBIS and coordinating conjunctions. I was punctuating some sentences that had an “and” or “but” with a comma before the conjunction, something I had never done. It seemed as though I was writing phonetically or my stylistic choice of not placing that comma was changing. Upon working with coordinating conjunctions, though, I saw that I was subconsciously distinguishing between sentences where clauses are changing subjects and sentences where the “and” or “but” is not a coordinating conjunction. I think that to some degree I was writing phonetically but that it connected to the very subtle difference in those sentences. There seems to be a reason in terms of how it sounds within the language to punctuate “and”s or “but”s differently, as well as the technical differences that are harder to define.
Our work and explanations in class really helped me put a defined understanding to why I had been seeing these developments in my writing. It will be especially helpful for teaching and tutoring to be able to point out a possible error or inconsistency and then back it up with concrete understanding rather than natural understanding which often feels airy and somewhat silly to explain to students. “It just is,” or “it just does.”
Finding examples for the scrapbook has also been a simpler task now that I’m seeing the technical aspects of grammar to support the initial questions that arise when I’m reading newspapers, magazines, etc. I found many errors in the use of the colon (maintaining the understanding that there must be a complete sentence before a colon) in the publications I worked with. This makes me wonder about the changing nature of our language and how some very common and usually sensical errors end up as de-stigmatized errors, or “stylistic choices,” or even just ignored issues until they are accepted.
And that’s it.

Question!: Isn’t the approach of “it just is that way” a useful teaching tool if used properly? Having explored so much material on spontaneous generation of grammar systems and how those contribute to richer understandings of language, isn’t that explanation good if qualified to say there is a reason and it makes sense but a student should understand that some things in this crazy crazy language of ours just are and that it should be understood at an intrinsic level before a defined level?