I was advising a young person I know about writing.(I continue to be amazed that kids aren't taught grammar anymore, but that's a separate issue.)
Anyway. Pretty good writing overall.
I noticed something interesting. The writing was good, but when we
chatted casually online about what they wanted to convey -- what they
wanted to 'say' -- that was BETTER. I could lift this phrase or that
from the back-and-forth convo we were having and stick it into the
writing and it was fresher, more original, cooler, more apt.
So I come away thinking --
a writer needs to engage with the page as if it were a person.
We need to hold a conversation with the page.
We need to talk to the page.
So I come away thinking --
a writer needs to engage with the page as if it were a person.
We need to hold a conversation with the page.
We need to talk to the page.
Kids aren't taught grammar? Really? Like, no more circling direct objects and drawing lines around and stuff?
ReplyDeleteMy jaw dropped when I learned kids are no longer taught cursive, but this...yikes. It makes no sense.
My kid doesn't even know what "diagram a sentence" means. I don't know when it fell out of fashion, but long enough ago that none of the whippersnappers currently working in advertising can identify the subject of a sentence if there's a prepositional phrase attached to it. I can't sit through two minutes of commercials without having at least one outburst about subject-verb agreement. I heard one the other day where the subject and the object were both singular, and they still managed to stick a plural verb on it.
DeleteThe upsetting thing is that when the misuse becomes sufficiently rampant, it goes in the books as "accepted."
Language: Devolving through laziness.
For me, diagramming is a vivid visual way to understand the language. Nothing else is quite as useful.
DeleteI pity folks who have my kind of mind and never learn that method.
Maybe this isn't true everywhere. Hope it's less true where you are.
ReplyDeleteMy speaking skills aren't so good, though. Usually I'm trying to talk more like a write, because things are more coherent and interesting. Of course, being able to have multiple drafts does help. One does need to find a way to engage with the page though. It makes it more alive.
ReplyDeleteMultiple drafts. I have so much wanted to re-edit things I've said.
ReplyDeleteThey're taught grammar, but it's called usage and it's squeezed in the niches between reading and math that's tested *ad nauseam*. Diagramming isn't taught anymore, tough. That's a pity. I draft out loud--much to my husband's amusement. ;-)
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just me ... I demand lots of specialized knowledge that isn't useful for anyone but a writer or copyeditor. Maybe people are taught the amount of grammar they need for the writing they do in everyday life.
DeleteWhich isn't much, really, for most people.
I've never had a grammar class or heard of anyone who has. I actually learned more grammar in Latin class than in any of my English classes. Language is always evolving though, so I try not to be too elitist about it.
ReplyDeleteSad to think knowing the rules of grammar and punctuation becomes 'elitist', when it is so easily and cheaply acquires. Alas.
DeleteI am 45 years old. I've never diagrammed a sentence. I agree with the previous poster about learning grammar in my foreign language class in high school. I was in a major school system and in honors classes throughout the 70s and 80s and had no extensive grammar lessons. I wish I had. This is not a recent thing. My kids are in elementary and middle school now and both have learned cursive although it was very quick. No week's worth of drawing OOQQQ.
ReplyDeleteI guess we get the education suited to our times ...
DeleteInteresting. I'm also 45, and I had grammar drilled into me all through grade school and junior high (and I could have had more had I chosen AP Language rather than AP Lit in high school). I'll admit diagraming sentences was not my favorite thing to do, but I'm grateful for having done it now.
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DeleteGrammar is so much easier for me when it's drawn out. My brain works that way.
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