Summary of Interviews

I have chatted with several physics professors regarding their opinions regarding how students’ general academic proficiency and grammatical aptitude have varied over their teaching careers. Usually, I first introduce the topic posed as the following question, “Have you noticed any trends in the aptitude of your students over your teaching career?” The response to this question was somewhat reserved due to either apprehension about how the response will sound or a lack of a formed opinion. For example, one professor noted: “Though this is a general question, I think that, overall, the aptitude of the students has remained almost constant; however, students’ writing and comprehension abilities have declined over the past 10 years.” The second question asked was, “How significant is proper grammar usage outside of undergraduate physics work?” The answer to this question was unanimous, “Isn’t that obvious? Hasn’t it always been important?”

After these introductory questions, I prompted them to speak more candidly on what they thought had changed the most in the last 20 years. The response to this question was perhaps the most varied. For example, one professor said, “Overall, students’ abilities to read and comprehend material given in class and in textbooks have fallen.” Although it is not grammar related, the most interesting quip was, “I think the greatest change has been in how we are required to grade and how students now treat their educations like consumers. If they don’t like their grades, they just try trading them in for better ones; it’s not supposed to work like that. There should be consequences for poor study habits.”

The conversations then passed to more esoteric topics. Among these topics, the most appropriate for this discussion is, “What errors do you find occurring most often in the literature?” The answers were “spelling mistakes and incorrect use of certain words.” However, I think that this can often be forgiven since many authors are not native English speakers; although, the journal referees should catch these errors.

Kyle Augustson

Interview: Fisheries Department

It was difficult tracking someone down this week due to the American Fisheries Society meeting, but I finally managed to catch Dr. Oncorhynchus at his office in the Nash building. The interview that followed was something more of a conversation, lightly seasoned with the occasional question to keep things flowing.

Dr. Oncorhynchus said that, while he may have seen a slight decline in grammar over his years of teaching, it wasn't the most obvious pattern he had seen during his teaching career. What really stood out to him was the way students' grammar changed throughout a term. The first papers of the term tended to be a lot sloppier than those turned in at the end. Oncorhynchus said he thought this had to do with students not realizing the importance of their grammar in scientific essays; a faux pas Oncorhynchus cured them of when the first graded papers were returned.

As far as grammatical pet peeves go: Oncorhyncus said that wordiness was what he least liked to see in a paper. He believes that many students, particularly graduate students, have a tendency to use so many words in a sentence that it muddies the underlying meaning. In the scientific community, clarity and conciseness are crucial. Most scientific papers contain enough large words as it is, without further complicating them with unnecessary ones.

Interview with English Professor

I interviewed my English professor, Dr. X, and asked her four questions about grammar and errors and for any advice she could give student writers. I have listed the questions and answers below.

Q. What error in student writing bothers you the most?
A. The error that bothers me the most is the confusion between the plural and the possessive forms of a noun (the difference between “poets” and “poet’s”). I see this quite a lot & it seems like a fundamental concept that should be learned early, so I’m not sure why it is such a persistent error in so much student writing.

Q. What are the most common grammatical errors that you see?
A. I see incorrect quoting/citation; misuse of the ellipsis, colon & semicolon; and sentence fragments or run-on sentences.

Q. Do you think your students, overall, have a good grasp on grammar? Why or why not?
A. I think that most of my students have a good grasp of grammar in the sense that they know when something sounds correct or not. When it comes to written work, however, they make more mistakes because they don’t “hear” their writing in the same way. The public domain (newspapers, televisions, advertisements, etc.) is full of grammatical errors, so it isn’t surprising that students tend to make similar mistakes. I do think that the more you read—especially the more edited, published books you read—the better your grammar skills become as a result of that exposure.

Q. What tips would you have for student writers in the field of English?
A. Be aware of the kinds of mistakes you tend to make and proofread for those errors (and have a grammar handbook nearby to use as a reference whenever necessary). Most importantly, recognize that muddled sentences are often the result of muddled thinking—if you clarify your ideas, your _expression of those ideas will naturally become clearer as well.

Melissa Barnhart

Interview with English Professor

I asked DR. S. the following six questions about errors he has encountered and how it affects the writer's credibility:
Question #1: What type of error bothers you the most?
A: Most annoying are careless errors because they indicate lack of effort or care. They tell me that the correspondent or student did not take the writing seriously (and by extension, did not take me seriously, since the writing was directed to me). I then suspect that the same laziness may extend to the quality of thought in the piece.
Question #2: Are there any styles of writing that make it difficult to understand what the author is trying to communicate?
A: I'm not sure styles in themselves are responsible for ineffective writing, but I do find that , more and more, especially on exams, student write in an outline style. the problem with abandoning a full prose style is that many of the connections, transitions, and steps in logic are omitted. In a sense the writer is suggesting that I already know what he or she is intending to say, and rather than make an argument, this person only needs to allude to some key words or concepts. I guess I am supposed to fill in the rest.
Question#3: How much does it affect their credibility if an author sumbits something with errors?
A: Careless errors always make me more dismissive of the work. Errors that do not seem to arise from lack of care suggest to me that the author needs more or better education.
Question #4: Is there a specific type of error you see a lot of English students make that could hurt their career later?
A: I think there is a tendency for English students to make their prose needlessly abstract. This is either to mask a thin argument or growing from the assumption that prose for an English class needs to be lofty or inflated. Actually I see both ends of that spectrum: prose that is too lofty and prose that is too colloquial. This is more a matter of style than of grammatical correctness.
Question #5: In general, do your students have a good understanding of grammar?
A: I think that many do and some (not a lot, but enough) don't. I am a little troubled by this, because some students obviously get it, and have enough practice to write coherent and grammatical sentences with little effort, but the ones who can't really can't. Many students don't recognize when they write sentence fragments, or when their sentences lack agreement or parallelism. For those students, writing for literature classes is a serious problem. Many students write run-on sentences and comma splices, and continue doing so regardless of how many times they are corrected. Lack of agreement is a nuisance, lack of parallelism and unclear pronoun reference can be serious impediments to clarity.
Question #6: Have the more common errors you see in students' papers changed over time?
A: The kinds of errors that I have seen increasing (and I am talking about errors rather than poor analytical skills, or poor skills of logic or argumentation) are errors in spelling that reveal, essentially, that students don't read much anymore. They show that the student has never seen the word written out, and therefore has no sense of what it should look like. An example from, say, Shakespeare class, would be when a student writes (as has happened once or twice each term for the last three or four years) that, for instance, Richard III murders his way to the thrown. While it may seem funny, I think a student who writes that has just never seen the work in print.

Grammar Interview, New Media Communication

This week I spoke with Dr. W., of New Media Communications about grammar in his field. We spoke about the writing style in the field of Communications, but also style in different media as well. For example, Media Communications publications take on a style much like the social sciences, where the voice is secondary to the information being presented. He pointed out that there are many different styles, most going to a particular field or group of fields. In the media, obviously the grammar in a newspaper is going to differ from a critique of a book or film. The newest development of grammar has been in the internet. Rules are still being established in chat rooms, blogs and bulletin boards. This is where grammar is particularly informal, though important, because social relations are carried out through written word, requiring specific rules for grammar to express meaning and emotion since body language and other non-verbal communication is impossible.

Dr. W is a grammar fanatic. He has been published previously, and has spent time on the Editorial board of a communications journal. He has also been teaching for 15 years, giving him a lot of experience with students and working with their grammar, or lack there of. By Dr. W’s guess, roughly 20% of his students have only a small grasp on grammar. However, of those who receive papers from him drowned in red ink, few of them come to see him about possibly improving for future papers. When he speaks to people in the workforce who are looking to hire his students, the request he hears most often is to teach them how to write. A person who can’t communicate their ideas on paper is not going to be very useful.


Jennie B.