Let's Pause and Discuss Commas, Shall We?

I confess, I am going on, ad nauseum, about education these days.  It’s hard not to.  I should also warn you that this is an odd, English teacher fixation upon conventions of language—rather dull to well-balanced people.

At the beginning of this year, we were given “prioritized benchmarks” and “pacing guides.”  The big-guys in the district did extensive analysis of the state test regarding what kinds of questions occurred most frequently and what kind of importance was placed upon which skills.  They determined from this what should be given instructional priority and prescribed the pace at which to cover these important concepts.  I’m not sure how pacing was determined, but you can be sure that we are hitting these things heavily and repeatedly before the next test in April.

On the surface, this has an important, positive effect.  It ensures a certain amount of uniformity—all kids getting the same quality of education all over the district.  If we can assume that level to be higher than it was before, how can we resist?  And I do think it may be better than it was before in some places.

In my classroom, it just isn’t panning out.  When I first began teaching, I followed a colleague’s example of marking every mistake and having students correct them.  It created a great deal of work for me, and I saw no improvement in their writing.  The only thing they seemed to learn was that they should put commas wherever I told them, but they didn’t get the rhyme and reason.  I ditched that and had students do grammar exercises from Warriner’s Grammar.  As a result, I got kids who were Cracker Jack exercise doers and who continued to slaughter the English language in their own writing.  Zero transfer.

For the last fifteen or so years, I have forced students to do a tedious activity called “corrections.”  It is a cruel and unusual variation on the original plan.  I mark every mistake.  They go back and fix them.  Then they explain each and every one:  “I needed a comma before this conjunction because I had two independent clauses on either side of it.”  “I did not need a comma before this conjunction because it is used with a compound predicate.”  “I should have used the adverb ‘well’ instead of the adjective ‘good’ because I was modifying a verb rather than a noun.”  They each purchase a writing resource book their freshman year, and they use it as their reference for this activity.

It’s brutal—for them and me.  If you think the kids have it tough, first, I must mark every mistake on every original paper.  Then, I go back through every mistake on every paper and make sure they have correctly identified every problem.  Each new assignment improves markedly.  For one thing, the kids hate doing corrections, and work very hard to avoid having to do any more than they must.  For another, they study exactly what they need to study as it relates to their own writing.  In class, I do warm-up exercises on the board—sentences with mistakes to fix so that I can reinforce common grammar language—terms like “prepositional phrase” and “coordinating conjunction.”  This language is critical for doing corrections later.

This year, the pacing guide has identified the “priority” areas for language study.  First quarter, it was commas in introductory phrases and appositives, so I have focused my in-class exercises on those.  The end result was discouragingly apparent yesterday, as I ground my way through corrections on the third major writing assignment I have given this year.  The kids are just trying to figure out whether their comma mistakes fall into the “appositive” category or the “introductory phrase” category.  Unfortunately, many fall into the “interrupter” category, or the “compound sentence” category, or the “two modifiers equally modifying” category.  My emphasis on two rather limited areas has thrown them all off the scent.

A classic case of “if it’s not broken, fix it until it is.”  It is also a means of equalizing education by bringing one group up (assuming that there were tons of kids out there being deprived of comma instruction as it relates to appositives and introductory phrases) and another group down.

I am tossing out the pacing guide for grammar.  Anybody want to place any bets about whether anyone above me will notice?

And just out of curiosity, how many of you do not know what an appositive is and have somehow gone on to lead satisfying, productive lives?

tags: grammar  commas  education  state tests  prioritized benchmarks  english