Re: OT-ish: txt - Could it replace Standard Written English?

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> In my experience, somebody who has no idea of grammar cannot think clearly *on
> paper*. Whether you like it or not, the written language and the spoken
> language *cannot* be alike. They are two different media that don't mix well.
> You may be very good at thinking when *speaking*, but if you have no idea of
> grammar and spelling, you just can't think right when *writing*. I've been
> helping enough students to know that for sure.
It's actually easy to find counterexamples, when you think
about people writing in foreign languages.  Take a look at
Chapter 2 of Eric van der Vlist's book _RELAX NG_, available at
http://books.xmlschemata.org/relaxng/RngBookPatterns.html .  This is
a pre-edit, pre-publication version, and it is riddled with mechanics
problems, probably one per sentence, involving English grammar.  But the
content is as sound as can be.

Similarly, when Richard Feynman was teaching in Brazil, he translated
all his lectures into pig-Portuguese, on the grounds that it was easier
for his students to understand "Feynman Portuguese", even if it had lots
of errors, than for them to understand his idiomatic colloquial English
lectures.  (He tried having them translated into proper Portuguese by a
translator, but he found that he couldn't understand them and so couldn't
deliver them satisfactorily.)

> Anyway, in all my experience, I've never seen
> such a thing happen.
Our experiences differ widely, as is not surprising.

> Pure nonsense. Anybody who says that has given up teaching. The problem here is
> that those details like spelling and grammar should have been taken care of
> long before people start to write creatively. Now call me a prescriptivist if
> you like, but in my experience I've never met anyone who wrote meaningful
> things without knowing grammar and spelling.
I suspect the problem here is partly cultural.  There probably just isn't
a lot of experience in France with teaching adults (with whole minds,
and who are not also trying to learn the language) to read and write.
I'm talking here about people who cannot read a menu in the simplest
restaurant (they have to always order the same thing), who cannot write
a single sentence without leaving out or massively misspelling many of
the words, who are almost as illiterate as if they lived in the Third
World -- in the bush.  (They can usually write their own names.)

Such people often have a great deal to say, and in written form, if they
can be gotten over their fear of getting it wrong.  (My wife does this
sort of work, so I have the inside track here.)  The first step is to
get them to write a short document -- as short as a paragraph -- and
then read it aloud to the class.  At this stage it does not matter how
many mistakes are made: the point is to build confidence and overcome
the years and years of "I can't read, I can't write, I'm stupid" in the
back of the student's head.

From this they progress to longer pieces, more nearly correct, sometimes
read to the entire literacy program (there are thrice-yearly events where
students read their work at my wife's program).  Many pieces are then
published in the program's journal, which comes out also thrice yearly.
It may take a year (two nights a week, two hours a night) for the student
to develop a piece from zero to publishable, but it does happen
often enough that each journal has perhaps 60 pieces in it out of perhaps
200 students at any given time.

For adults, who lack the enormous capacity for rote learning that
children have, actually writing, about matters of concern to themselves,
provides the motivation to actually master the mechanical parts.  When the
previous mayor tried to close down the program, which is funded by NYC,
the students all wrote him letters saying why the program was necessary.
Their reasons were immensely varied: from obtaining a high-school
equivalency diploma, to writing letters to family, to being able to read
to their children or grandchildren or help them with their homework.
The program didn't get shut down.

Writing is also an excellent path to reading.  As is often pointed out,
people who learn shorthand learn to _write_ it: the reading of it comes
on the side.  Though Paulo Freire's methods in teaching literacy in Brazil
aren't workable for English (the syllable structure is too complicated
and the spelling is too maggelitous), the same insight is applicable:
people become literate when literacy is directly connected with their
human need for self-expression.

My wife's favorite case: a man who had been pushing a mop along a hospital
floor for the last 27 years, totally illiterate, learned to read and
write sufficiently well to pass the New York state civil service exam.
He is now a court officer, licensed to carry a gun and maintain order
in courtrooms.

> The quality of the "details", as you say, often reflects the quality of the
> contents.
The two are correlated, yes.  But the connection is not a causal one.

--
John Cowan                              jcowan@reutershealth.com
http://www.reutershealth.com            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through his norse
                Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible vorse
But for all his kinks English / And his irismanx brogues
                Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all rogues.
                        --Cousin James

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