I think I have admitted before that I am often bothered by bad grammar. I’m also really bothered by sloppy word choice and awkward sentence structures. Sometimes, in fact, I am so bothered by these smaller issues that I get distracted from looking at the larger picture. A mistake like that can really mar a well thought-out paper.
My biggest fear as a consultant, though, is probably letting a smaller error that I shouldn’t waste my time on distract me from a larger issue. I kind of felt like this happened a lot with one of the essays I was working with in a tutoring session last week. The writer used the passive voice. A lot. To the point that her use of the passive voice was distracting me from the points she was trying to make because I was actually getting lost in her sentences. While that may be a grammatical issue that needs to be addressed, because it subverts meaning and clarity, there were other smaller issues that were irritating me as well. Lazy word choice that didn’t adequately make the point. Contractions in formal writing. Simple things that the writer should be able to fix on her own anyway. But in getting so fixated on them, I almost missed the fact that her thesis wasn’t really making a point.
The best way to prepare myself for this is, honestly, probably to try and desensitize myself to the immediate urge to take a red pen to a grammatically messy paper. I have also found that reading through a draft more than once helps me get around this issue slightly. While the smaller issues tend to taint my first view of the draft and also tend to distract me from the larger picture, a lot of times the second read through allows me to look at the larger arguments being made. Though the grammar and conventions may have initially detracted from my understanding and my ability to look at a paper for its central arguments, a second read through tends to make things clearer and helps me really focus on the more serious issues.
I can completely relate to getting stuck on small grammatical issues. Before learning to step back and look at the "big picture" I would fill a page with grammar corrections, and, in the process, overwhelm the reader. It's difficult to teach yourself as a writing consultant to look only at the 'big' picture and to let the smaller details work themselves out in the editing process.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think it is important to try to focus on larger issues before smaller grammatical errors. Although these can certainly be irritating I usually think a student's paper can be most improved by checking the thesis and clarity of the argument. Professors should be more concerned with the content than the grammar and too many grammatical corrections can overwhelm the writer. I usually try to give the writer just a couple of grammatical errors to correct.
ReplyDeleteJust. Do. It. Good call, Rachel.
ReplyDeleteToday, I reviewed the introduction for one of my FYS students. She wanted to know if she was providing too much summary and lacked a governing claim; she's learned her lessons well from me about where to begin.
As I read the introduction aloud to her, I noted two grammatical issues, one of them an Essid "Pet Peeve." I almost bit my tongue to prevent my calling attention to them too early.
After I went over what she had promised the reader and confirmed that what I saw as the thesis was what she intended, we spent about five minutes on the two grammar errors. They were miscues, to use Bartholomae's categories. She self-corrected one when she read the sentence and the other came from hurrying, because she had the rule correct in another place.
By getting the "big picture" in place, even as I mentally noted the grammar issues, we had a most enjoyable writing conference.
I completely understand where you are coming from Rachel, because the blaring grammatical errors work like tiny little stop signs throughout the paper preventing you from thinking clearly while also trying to decipher the writer's meaning.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think could help is narrowing in on specific errors of the paper to help you get the same "Big Picture" that Dr. Essid mentions. I know that if I read through a student's thesis and introduction sentences and don't know where the paper is going, that helping her with that should be one of my first priorities. Maybe if you focus in on just little section of a student's work at a time, it could help you get over your "fear" of the grammatical error.