Quote:
Originally Posted by mackeleven
One criticism was that they waste time, among others. Essentially what I said I agreed with when I said I agree with spank.
Quote:
Originally Posted by spanktehbadwookie
Correcting other's grammar is a yuge time waste and, again, no signs at all it is very effective at doing anything but wasting time and energy trying to control something beyond any firm grasp of control.
Working in an institution of higher education which has predominantly first generation and ethnic minority students, I'm convinced that you're both wrong. Many students come in with weak language skills because they have not been exposed to academic English and many of them have never been challenged to fully develop their awareness of the language that they use.
Some of them have gaps between their spoken and written work, in the sense that they can speak in reasonably well-constructed sentences (and even full paragraphs of thought), but they struggle with writing it out. (And no, this isn't just a dyslexia sort of thing.)
Trying to frame this in terms of "control" is just silly. If OP doesn't change his grammar, I'm not going to hound him on it. I would suggest that you want to control how I use language more than I want to control how OP (or anyone else) uses language. You imagine that I've made it some sort of ambition of mine to fix grammar on the internet, so you've turned around and made it an ambition of yours to try to shame me into not trying to fix grammar on the internet. The whole framework you're approaching this thing in is absolutely stupid.
One of the primary reasons people tend not to write very well is that they don't take any time or effort to reflect on their writing. They just kind of do whatever they normally do and never give it the attention that it deserves. That time of self-reflection is extremely important to the development of one's writing and the process of "finding your voice."