Dawkins and Bryson

Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool, John Dawkins (WAW:139-155)

Good English and Bad, Bill Bryson (ROW: 61-67)

SUMMARIES:

DAWKINS: In his article ‘ Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical tool, John Dawkins attempts to explain the problems with how people understand punctuation rules. Dawkins gears this towards ‘people’ in general, anyone who is involved with grammar and punctuation. He also wants us to think about grammar as rhetorical. He is saying that grammar involves choices, whereas when we learned about grammar we learned of it as a set of inflexible rules that had to be memorized and never violated.

BRYSON: In his article ‘ Good English and Bad’ Bill Bryson attempts to explain why the rules your teacher gave you about grammar seem arbitrary. He also goes on to talk about how complex and confusing English grammar is. Bryson also talks about the history of proper English and what was considered good, or bad English back in the 18th century, and today. I don’t think there is a specified audience, I think it is just a very general article. 

CONVERSATION: Both of the articles talk about grammar obviously. The Bryson article goes into more of the history and a comparison of how English used to be and how it is now. Where Dawson talked more about understanding grammar and the English Language.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

DAWKINS: 6. I don’t normally think about punctuation. I just write how I normally do, without thinking about it. When I learned about grammar in High School I had a really hard time with it. I could never remember all of the clauses, and all of the rules for grammar and punctuation. Reading about it kind of just made me confused because I don’t know the differences between everything and all of the rules.

BRYSON: Prescriptive is they should prescribe how language should be used. Descriptive is to describe how it is used without taking a position. In the past I have encountered the prescriptive grammar instruction. In my language arts class sophomore year I remember my teacher, teaching us grammar. She would just show us the ‘correct’ ways of grammar. She would just tell us how it worked and how it had to be done, and that was what we had to do.

OPINIONS:

DAWKINS: I feel like this reading was different, because it wasn’t just reading an article. There were examples through out it, so it made you stay more focused and interested. However I didn’t like the topic of the article. Grammar is one of my weak spots, and it just frustrates me.

BRYSON: I thought that this reading was kind of boring. I didn’t really find it to be that helpful. Some of it kind of stated the obvious. We all know that our English language is complex and confusing, and that it doesn’t really make sense.