I want to start off by saying I am a big fan of Bad Ideas About Writing, and in fact I use some of its essays in my classes. That being said, I had some issues about the presentation of ideas in these two essays for two separate reasons. In the first, about “correct English” I still struggle with the idea that this is the entrenched viewpoint in composition classrooms, at least urban ones. So, I suppose it would be important to know where the author bases her perspective. The article, for me, had the air of an Illuminati expose, without enough attention to context and various Discourse Communities. I also found it intensely ironic that an author could be advocating for a deconstruction of “white middle class” rhetoric, while advocating for her position in “white middle class” rhetoric. Ultimately, I do believe in exposing our students to a variety of discourse structures, recognizing full well that our students come to us with their own firmly entrenched discourse literacies which have value and should be acknowledged, cultivated, and integrated into rhetorical analysis.

In the second article, I felt that the concept of teaching grammar, again, has to do with the purpose of teaching grammar. I tend to focus more on the generation of ideas, as teaching grammar independently of contextual application is problematic. I also find that the more rules introduced tends to stifle expression. Again, I had a head scratching moment as the author obviously learned grammatical construction for rhetorical consistency, and I wonder what that said about her own experience, especially considering her own attention to grammar and syntax.

Both articles beg a return to the driving question related to our composition class practice – what is our purpose in providing instruction in writing? I think the current trend, unless one is living an isolated existence, is to help students communicate, either academically or across genres. I think we do a disservice to our students in academic settings, if we do not expose them to academic writing and its conventions, while recognizing that such is contextual. I think further the trend is to expose students to a variety of multiliteracies while our own students expand our own understanding of expression.