Interview in the English Department

"Grammar is like a piano, I play by ear." -Joan Didion

As an English major, I chose to interview Professor Chris Anderson. I learned that in addition to his other duties he is the man who trains the Teaching Assistance for their writing classes. As a student of Rhetoric and Composition, Anderson not only teaches technique but shows the Teaching Assistances how to evaluate papers, in other words, what to do with grammar. His advice is to mark down for grammatical mistakes, but don't identify what the mistakes are in the student’s paper, simply make them aware that it was grammar that affected their grade. Anderson says marking students errors doesn't help them to write better. However, he shared that when he does this the next paper was almost always significantly better.

Anderson, well aware of the 20 most common errors that we are studying in class, says this is his experience as well. However, within these 20 most frequent errors, problems with punctuation are generally the most common mistakes. Anderson thinks students generally know what they are doing, and errors are typically an issue of performance, not competence. By which he means, generally students make mistakes that they would correct if they simply read their paper aloud, or allowed themselves time to revise. But for the occasional errors of simply not knowing, it is beneficial for the teacher to find major pattern of errors so that the right issues could be addressed if need be. Anderson does not, nor do the TA's, take any class time to teach grammatical terms. In writing 121, for instance, they merely have a handbook, and continually practice by editing their own mistakes.

Because of my own personal interest in teaching high school English, I asked Anderson if he thought these same practices of self-taught, editing your own mistakes, was what he felt would be best in a high school setting. He agreed that this was a good technique in secondary schools as well. Anderson feels that any problem that people want to blame on a lack of grammar knowledge in high schools is simply a problem on not writing enough. He says there has been no correlation found that links that knowledge of grammar with the ability to write well. But one thing that writing 121 students use is St. Martin's Press web page, which has interactive grammar capabilities, he did think maybe this could be a useful tool for teachers. As far as a change over time, Anderson has not seen one. He doesn't feel that students are any better or any worse at grammar then they were when he began teaching. Writing is a form of behavior. Writers know they have to behave in certain ways to write well, and that is what they do.

In Anderson’s own writing, he has written many books, he has just internalized grammar. It has become second nature to him, so that he doesn’t even have to think about it. He does like to do a lot of free writing, and then go back and revise and edit. He did share that lie and lay still confuse him occasionally, but through reading and writing he has developed a natural instinct for grammar use, which he wishes to instill in his students.