Over the course of spring semester 2011 here at Washington State University I feel that I have made great strides towards achieving my goals as a student. I moved much closer to graduating with an English Education degree this past semester—I also realized that I will be able to graduate in only four years which I never thought I would do. I am quite elated about that.
In English 326, Teaching Grammar, not did I study the rhetoric of teaching grammar, but I became a better writer myself. Before the semester I sent a number of goals for myself in the first blog post I did as a member of this class. The first goal could be summarized as to work on increasing sentence variety and length within my writing. Specifically, I wanted to use more short sentences, as well as more simple ones. I felt it would make my writing easier to read, instead of the arduous task it was at the time. An example I provided for this trend in my writing (at that time) was a gruesome 52 word sentence about Mark Twain and “Unabridged Dictionaries.” I shudder rereading that sentence now. But, I digress. I honestly believe that I have met this goal; an example of improvement can be seen in this excerpt from a paper I wrote around week 5 of this semester:
“Of course, any word, theme, or motif within a poem is important because the author put it there. In this case however, the words that made it into the final draft are even more deliberate and important. The reason is that famed Imagiste Ezra Pound was the editor. As a writer, poet, and editor Pound was famous for his insistence in using as little words as possible and, when editing, cutting down (slashing) the length and content of literary works to just the necessary elements.”
I see a nice sequence of sentences in that passage. A couple simple sentences even made it! In fact, the longest sentence in my whole introduction of that paper was only 30 words—a big improvement over the 52 word titanic from before.
The next goal I had at the beginning of the class was to not mix different styles—a word I failed to articulate before—of writing. This goal is hard to classify, and after searching a few papers I found nothing inappropriate for the context of the assignment, sports article, or page of my novel (which I progressed almost 5,000 words this semester). None of my literary studies papers weighed the pros and cons of giving Paul Wulff another year as head coach, none of my sports articles were critiquing the merits of The Big Sleep by Raymond Carver, and as far as I could tell none of the pages of my novel contained chemical compounds. Totally assessing if I completely achieved this particular goal of mine is muddy at best though, due to how vague it was in the first place.
The last goal that I mentioned in my first blog post for English 326: to learn how to use the dash and colon—and no longer fear them. I certainly believe that I have mastered these two pieces of punctuation. The dash is used to create emphasis—on a single word, phrase, or clause—it can help the reader determine what is important. My favorite way to use dashes is as a substitute for parenthetical commas, which I use quite a lot when I write. The colon, on the other hand, is most often used to introduce a list, definition, or an explanation. I really am glad that I now can use several different types of punctuation: commas, periods, colons, semicolons, and of course exclamation points! I think I nailed these two; check mate.
I certainly think that I achieved the three goals I set for myself at the start of this semester, however; I learned a lot more than three things. I think the most important thing I learned, that will affect how well I am able to teach all my students, is the stuff about different dialects of English. Before English 326 I never knew that Ebonics was a real, legitimate thing, I would have been ignorant and assumed that non standard English speakers could not or would not speak properly. That would have been really unfair to my students who were raised by parents and older siblings speaking AAE.
One other thing that I know I will carry with me for a long time is the lesson on brushstrokes. This, however, is mainly due to the richness it can provide my creative writing. Here is an example from my novel that I has a few brushstrokes:
"The chill was exactly that: bitter. It gnawed at the extremities, it ate at the soul. It left the tree limbs brittle and it tossed them about as if they were not living things, as if the trees had no will of their own. Things that lived in the foothills of the mountain range that could exercise wills of their own did so. The creatures who inhabited the gentle rolling foothills of the great mountain range tried to escape the icy feelings the wind filled them with. As if it were a predator. Its clutches were unbearable, like Death’s clammy hands."
Another activity that was absolutely crucial was the SWA or Student Writing Analysis. It was quite a challenge to look at three different papers and try to pick out trends from them. I wish that we had done it a few more times in English 326. However, I certainly think that I picked up a lot of things from the time we did it, as well as became more confident in my ability to judge students' grammar.
I am really glad that Washington State University offers such a fine course on teaching grammar. English 326 was absolutely one of the most important classes I have taken—as far as preparing me to become an English teacher is concerned. I am really quite pleased that I have completed the goals I set out to accomplish, especially because my new year’s resolution was to be a more goal oriented person. I know the things I learned, as well as the resources handed out in class, will help me as I start teaching my own class in 2 years or so.
