 |
 |
I think I'm about five days late on this issue -- I always seem to be running to catch a bus that's already several blocks away. But I'd like to make a comment or two on a point that arose in one or two posts having to do with assignments that those dreaded 'other' English teachers give our students. As I recall, the discussion was begun by someone comment- ing about rigidity and inappropriateness of asking students to argue an extreme position on a controversial issue. I agree, incidentally, with most of what was posted; I like to encourage my students to use what I recall being termed the Rogerian compromise format for persuasion (I think the source was a 20 yr old text called _New Rhetoric_). But I was fascinated by another post that, while bemoaning the strange advice students seem to receive in high school English classes, also expressed sympathy for this beleaguered group of instructors. I sym- pathyze, as well, having been one of those for a time long ago. But what struck me, once again, was the fact that our students come to us as palimpsests: there are layers upon layers of teaching, advice, rules, suggestions, confusion, and punishment associated with thinking about problems and using language to express that thinking. And like a palimpsest (or the succession of buried layers of ancient city) much of advice, etc. is lost to the view of the student and has become matters primarily of reflex. Thus, I spend a great deal of my time individually with my students attempting to peel back the layers of the palimpsest and (to shift metaphors) unpackage the causes of unproductive language behaviour, replace those causes/rules/etc. with more effective strategies (ugh... trapped into a military metaphor) and hope/pray the language behaviour changes...hope/pray I haven't just added another layer to the palimp- sest. Which brings me to a question: nearly all my students are -- even after we have worked with sentence combining and parallelism -- terrified of writing a long sentence (usually over 20 words). This they identify with the dreaded "run-on sentence" and not with a failure to locate sentence boundaries correctly. Now, in my palimpsestic investigations I have been unable to determine if this rhetorical solecism derives from actual advice provided to my students or if they have seen this term scrawled on essays and simply read it literally as meaning a sentence that runs [goes] on over too great a length. This is not a terribly philosophical concern. But I'm curious if others of us have experienced this phenomenon. richard c. Note: Mail transport via Digital Equipment of Canada Ltd. Calgary gateway.