When it comes to teaching grammar, teachers "face a chronic dilemma," according to Maxine Hairston (794). As things currently are, very few teachers spend much time on grammar. But in the time that they do spend teaching grammar, what are the important things to teach? The goal of the survey our class conducted was to hopefully find out what errors were the most bothersome to educators and business professionals and should therefore be given extra consideration and what errors were the least bothersome and could be skipped over in teaching if time was a factor. Although most categories of errors did not stick out one way or the other, the results seemed to show that survey participants were most bothered by errors classified as: 1) "dialect difference," 2) spelling, and 3) punctuation. They were least bothered by those classified as "change/variation in standard dialect." (Although there were two other categories, there was only one question in each, which is insufficient data to draw any conclusions.)
The error that bothered people the most, far above and beyond all others, was the error category that Dr. Rubba calls "dialect difference." An average of 81% of all respondents was bothered by errors in this category. Most importantly, 87% of the 81% were bothered a lot. These results were consistent across all age and occupational categories. With such a large percentage of people being bothered such a great deal, I assumed the errors must really be obvious and the writer must have extremely poor writing skills. But upon analyzing what a "dialect difference" is, I discovered that my assumption might not be accurate. A "dialect difference" is anything that strays from the standard dialect. "A standard dialect is one spoken by educated members of society, used in writing and the media, and supported and encouraged at school" (Edwards, 21). So, in reality, an error classified as a "dialect difference" is merely just the writer expressing himself or herself in a manner he or she considers as normal. Dr. Rubba claims that "the reason for considering usage [of an error classified as ‘dialect difference’] incorrect is social prejudice" (Rubba, 112). Although, judging from Edwards’ definition of standard dialect, my prejudice, as well as the "prejudice" of the participants, comes in being educated. In my opinion, if the prejudice is merely judging a writer on his or her level of education, then this is a fair prejudice for educators and business professionals to make.
As far as implications for teaching, these results stress the importance of teaching the standard writing dialect. However, in teaching this standard writing dialect, teachers cannot presume to teach a child what is appropriate spoken language or to condone one dialect over another. All speakers know and use various dialects in their day to day conversations, and to claim that one of these dialects is better than another doesn’t make sense. J. R. Edwards agrees, saying "a considerable amount of effort has gone into the demonstration that languages, and language varieties (dialects and accents), although clearly differing from one another, cannot reasonably be described in terms like ‘better’ or ‘worse’, ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, ‘logical’ or ‘illogical’" (Edwards, 21). Lisa Delpit put it well when she said that as teachers, "all we can do is provide students with the exposure to an alternate form [of speaking], and allow them the opportunity to practice that form in contexts that are nonthreatening, have a real purpose, and are intrinsically enjoyable. If they have access to alternative forms, it will be their decision later in life to choose which to use"(Delpit, 54). Whether or not forcing all students to learn this "standard dialect" may be considered prejudice, the results show that a writer’s working knowledge of this standard is crucial to the students’ future in school and the business world.
The least bothersome of the error categories was the change/variation in standard dialect. In this category, an average 35% did not see an error on an individual question and only 53% were at all bothered by the error they saw. Due to the nature of this error category, I believe that it is more important to look at each question individually than at the category as a whole. On some of the individual questions, such as using ‘impact’ as a verb and ‘data’ as a singular noun, over 70 percent of participants saw no error, or saw the error, but were not bothered by it. On the other hand, errors such as using ‘we’ in place of ‘us,’ did bother 60-70% of the respondents. The remainder of the questions showed split results over whether participants were bothered or not.
What this says to me is exactly what the error category says: Standard English is changing. It is interesting to note that the standard seems to have changed over the years. Evidence of this can be found in looking at the following results: 18-35 year olds were least likely to spot an error in this category, 35-55 year olds more likely, and over 55 year olds were the most likely to find the error and be bothered by it. Dr. Rubba concurs that "changes occur naturally in every language over time… [and that] change occurs at different rates in different parts of the language and at different times in a language’s history" (126). Therefore, a teacher needs to be aware of changes undergoing in Standard English. Dr. Rubba suggests using traditional grammar texts in order to remain updated (129).
The survey also showed that men and women basically view the errors in all categories similarly. As far as being bothered or not, the numbers were very close. The only noticeable difference was that of those participants bothered by an error, women tend to be slightly more bothered by an error, any error, while men were slightly more nonchalant.
Analyzing the responses by job category shows that college teachers were usually much more bothered by errors in every category. In all four categories containing an error, over 60% of the college teachers were bothered by the errors, with at least 40% being bothered a lot in three categories. These findings lead me to question if the subject pool of college teachers were predominately English teachers, who would probably hold a higher standard than teachers of other subjects. The other three subject pools were much closer together, with middle school teachers being slightly more tolerant of errors. The only exception was in the area of spelling where high school teachers showed less tolerance; 72% of high school teachers were bothered in comparison with 64% of business professionals and 59% of middle school teachers. Basically, this shows that if all educators teach by the standard to which they are bothered, students should be amply prepared for the business world. Although, students entering college may need to beware that college teachers are going to expect a higher standard than what had been expected previously.
As we look at the results of this survey, I believe that we need to take into account that the results are somewhat skewed. As educators and business professionals, participants probably felt threatened by being tested on their knowledge of grammar, even if they were assured of their anonymity. Survey participants were clearly apprehensive about marking questions with the response, "I see no error," even when those questions, in fact, did not contain an error. On average, 50% of the participants claimed to see an error when there was none; 16% of those even said that the "error" bothered them a lot. I sincerely doubt that half of the participants saw an error where there was none. I believe that the participants felt that they would look stupid marking this if there actually was an error, especially one that others might think is really obvious, and they couldn’t see it. Rather than risk being wrong and saying there was no error when there was a high possibility that there was one, they chose to mark that they saw the error. Another possible explanation is that the participants probably felt that they really did see an error after rereading the sentence and noticing an awkward-sounding portion in which there might be an error. Due to the nature of this survey, their guess that the awkward portion of the sentence was an error actually had a high percentage chance of being an error and thus was an intellectual decision. If either or both of these are true, then we can also conclude some of the other responses to questions to be skewed. When the participant saw an error, there was less likely to be a problem. They may have been relieved to find the error, but might have lied about how the error made them feel, or there’s a possibility the "error" they saw was not the actual error being tested. Unfortunately, we have no idea of how many of the questions may have been answered in this manner. The only thing we can conclude is that the actual percentage of people seeing an authentic error is probably slightly less than the survey results.
In any sense, I can conclude from the results of this survey that all categories of grammar are important and do bother people. A student’s writing ability will directly affect his or her success in further schooling and career. Teachers need to take note of this and stop teaching simple 5-minute lessons on grammar prior to a writing period. Rather, teachers need to take the time to give direct explicit instruction. But, whichever course of action a teacher takes, the teacher must follow up and hold their students accountable to what they have been taught. Even if the teacher assumes that a student should already be at a certain level or have a solid handle on standard English dialect, he or she should not be afraid to back-track on the individual or class level if this is what the student(s) needs.
Works Cited