Brown’s First Lessons in Language and Grammar (1904)

Two essays in the WAC Journal tackle the pedagogical value of grammar instruction in higher education.  The first, “What if the Earth is Flat? Working With, Not Against, Faculty Concerns about Grammar in Student Writing,” by Daniel Cole, analyzes the results of a retreat designed to help faculty without expertise in communication pedagogy to understand how to help students write better. His study covers a lot of familiar ground for anyone who has taught professional writing in a university and struggled both to teach students to write grammatically and to temper expectations of consequent miraculous conversions to eloquence.  Joanna Wolfe’s response, “Disciplining Grammar: A Response to Daniel Cole,” hinges to some extent on a straw-man argument: “it’s not true that good grammar = good writing.”  Her vivid sample exercises, however, effectively support her assertion that “we need to be prepared to provide concrete advice and tools that can help faculty recognize and teach the organizational macrostructures and rhetorical conventions common in their disciplines.”