No, commas are not added like salt and pepper (to taste)

January 11, 2011 7:51 AM

I'm teaching a humanities course at an open-admission college. The students are extremely poor writers, and have almost zero knowledge of English grammar. This semester, I want to help them avoid comma splices, since that's one of the top three issues I see in their papers (spelling errors and sentence fragments being the other two). Can you help me design a lesson/activity to help them?

I'm not teaching an English course, so I have at most 25, maybe 45 minutes I can devote to this topic. I can't use any grammar jargon (and I mean *any*: I asked them to identify the verb in the sentence "John was at home" and "was" was guess #3, after John and at).

They desperately need help with identifying and avoiding comma splices, and I would be grateful for any suggestions of how to teach it. Activities, games, and methods of proofreading are all fair game.

posted by philosophygeek to Education (16 answers total)

Give them short, funny examples from books that are written in easy English and tell them to emulate it.
posted by anniecat at 7:58 AM on January 11, 2011

I just googled "exercises proper joining of clauses" and this looked good. When I've taught non-English speakers this type of thing, the main thing is to give them clear examples of the correct form so they can use it as a model.
posted by bwonder2 at 8:00 AM on January 11, 2011

For starters, avoid grammar terms. Do not ask What word is the Verb? Ask instead What is the person doing or going to do...then tell them that the word they picked, if correct, is a verb. A verb expresses action of some kind, a doing of something etc.
Subject? Who or what is doing this or that?
posted by Postroad at 8:11 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think you should start with sentence fragments first. The key to recognizing comma splices is to be able to recognize when your sentence has two complete sentences within it joined by a comma. Also, the patterns in sentences tend to be more clear when you use simpler, shorter examples. By this I mean, if you were to ask your students to identify the subordinate clause in a sentence, that would probably be more difficult than recognizing that these "sentences" are actually fragments:

Because I owe you money. (Because... what?)
Since I graduated from high school. (Then what happened?)

Fragments (or subordinate clauses or phrases) can be joined in with a comma, and sentences (really independent clauses) cannot.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 8:15 AM on January 11, 2011

Is an entry level writing class part of the general education/liberal studies requirements? Is it a prerequisite for your class?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then you need to give some feedback to the school that the writing instructors aren't doing their jobs. If you don't have the writing class listed a prerequisite for your class and you're going to continue to give out writing assignments, you should add it.

You really shouldn't have to take time out of your lesson plan for remedial stuff like this. I'm an older student who recently went back to college and graduated. I had a couple of classes where we had to take time out of normal class to address a lack of writing skills on the same basic level as your students. I was really upset about it. Everyone had to take two semesters of writing and at least one writing class was a prerequisite for an class that had any amount of writing. It ticked me off that these people had been given passing grades in a class about writing when they clearly didn't have a grasp of basic grammar let alone the larger issues like the structure of an essay.

The college as a whole, though not every faculty member bought into it, took on the motto, "The students are the product, not the customer." While this seems really harsh since the school runs on the student's money, it kept the focus on keeping standards up. Do you really want someone to be able say that they are a college graduate when they can't write? I wouldn't expect them to be on level of a professional writer but some of the stuff you're talking about seems really basic.

You shouldn't take time out of your humanities class to teach writing. You should expect that the students have that skill by the time they get to this point in the process (assuming the school offers a writing class and it is a prerequisite for your class). You should grade papers on grammar as well as content and give the students the grades they deserve. If they are having trouble, you can refer them to your school's writing center. If they have taken the writing class and are still having issues, you need to give that feedback to the school through the appropriate channels.

If the product is defective at this point in the manufacturing process, it needs to go back through the assembly line to get fixed. You wouldn't buy a car with major components missing and no one will hire a college grad with major parts of their education missing.
posted by VTX at 8:53 AM on January 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I hate to say it, but you need to start with dependent and independent clauses. Once they learn the difference, it's easy to drill into their heads "You cannot connect two independent clauses together with only a comma." But without that basic knowledge, you'll just keep getting comma splices.

Also, does your school have a writing center? My alma mater's writing center offered to come into classrooms and present quick workshops for these kinds of issues.
posted by litnerd at 9:02 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm going to make the (shocking) suggestion that they don't need to be able to identify a verb in order to write well enough to get by. In any case, simple rules for identifying parts of speech often have exceptions that can be confusing; a verb is not simply what someone or something is doing, which is what is taught in a lot of high school English courses.

If your students are native speakers of English, then they already know how to compose a grammatical sentence without knowing what a "verb" is. They just don't know orthography and academic standards, and you've identified one of the major areas where that lack of knowledge shows: their use of commas.

Personally, I think examples, examples, examples are one of the most helpful things you can give them. Give them examples of incorrect and correct sentences, on a handout that they can refer to later if your printing quota can handle it. Give them an assignment so that they can practice this knowledge and then go over the answers in class the next day. Tell them that you expect their use of commas to improve and that if they don't, they will lose points, but back this up with resources they can consult if they still have trouble. (It's probably not their fault that their writing is so bad.) Can you offer office hours? Is there writing tutorial center at your school?

I don't know if you can actually give them a single "rule" on using commas that won't be confusing, given their level of knowledge, but they don't need much knowledge to do some basic pattern matching. "Oh, this sentence looks like this one on the handout, maybe the comma should go here..."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:05 AM on January 11, 2011

I find it helpful to look at lots (I mean LOTS- drill repeatedly) of sentences done properly. But then I like learning by example.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 9:12 AM on January 11, 2011

Response by poster: The students are required to take at least one, and sometimes two, terms of English before this class. Having said that, my impression from talking with other faculty is that many of our students are functionally illiterate coming into our school, and I can't in good conscience blame the English department for failing to fix 30+ years of poor language skills in 30 weeks.

It would be really easy for me to throw the burden back on the English department and just fail all of my students. Aside from the fact that doing so would almost certainly get me fired, however, it's also not fair to my students to be unwilling to help them with what they need to learn. I have to teach the students I have, not the students I wish I had.

Please keep the suggestions coming! As a reminder, teaching English mechanics is not my specialty and I have no pedagogical training on that topic. Suggestions like "teach them dependent and independent clauses" are interesting but I need much more concrete suggestions on *how* to do so.
posted by philosophygeek at 9:16 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here is a nice handout resource from Purdue's Online Writing Lab re: comma splices, fused sentences, and run-ons. Here is a handout covering independent and dependent clauses. These two, along with plenty of examples, should help quite a bit.
posted by litnerd at 9:40 AM on January 11, 2011

It seems like a solid lesson on proofreading could be the key. If they can learn to always, always read their papers out loud to themselves, they could easily identify sentence fragments. Comma splices are a little different, but if they are proofreading, they could be taught that every time they want to use a comma, they need to see if both halves can stand alone as two smaller sentences. Wikipedia's example:

It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.

Both halves can stand alone, so substitute the comma for a semi-comma or modify with an "and."
posted by coupdefoudre at 9:50 AM on January 11, 2011

I teach foundation courses at a school with students that are typically very poor writers. One approach that works well for me is to give the students a visual image to write about and have the entire class write a paragraph describing the work. The entire set of paragraphs can be collected, dissected and discussed for editing. It makes the work a lot more collective, fluid and enjoyable as a learning experience. Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is the most popular and evocative image that has worked for me in previous courses.
posted by effluvia at 9:50 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

I taught freshman composition for 13 years at the community college level, and you are fighting an uphill battle. The "stand alone" idea is one that teachers often use, but it's not all that clear to students--it may be obvious to use that "because he was running late" is incomplete, but students will also see perfectly fine independent clauses that require information in other sentences to make sense as incomplete. For instance, sentences with pronouns may seem incomplete to students: "He had been there before" (where is "there"?). Someone up-thread said students need to be able to recognize independent and dependent clauses, and that's pretty true. One approach I also had success with was giving students a list of subordinating conjunctions and the idea that these are words that unbalance a sentence. "John went to the movie," can stand perfectly well, like a table. But add because, although, while, if, or other words like that to it, and it's like one of the legs has been knocked out, and it needs to joined to another sentence prop it up. Giving them a list of some common words that signal "dependant close!"

Of couse, that may not be helpful if what you're getting are two independent clauses joined with only a comma. It's hard for students who do not read much to learn to recognize that, because it sounds just fine--like speech--if read aloud. So, I'd second people up-thread who said to give lots and lots of examples, and practice fixing comma splices. Sometimes when grading I'd pull sentences out of student papers to create a handout for practicing on, and then you've got examples that really do sound like the kinds of mistakes the students are making.

You can send students to the writing center at your school; I'd bet money there is one. Print a note saying you want the student to get help with comma splices, for them to take, and have a place on it for the tutor to sign, and you can make going there a requirement.
posted by not that girl at 10:39 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Like it or not, it is part of your job to address these concerns (in so far as you are working to make your students effective, persuasive communicators, and grammar is an unavoidable part of that job). However, there ARE ways to minimize the amount of class time spent on these activities.

The first thing I'd suggest is to keep your focus on the students' writing -- students' own errors. Too much emphasis on non-student examples can make the problems abstract, i.e. students can detect splices in a workbook, but not apply the lessons gleaned to their own work. When they see their own errors as the basis of class discussion or a short homework assignment, they'll perk up and care more.

I have a couple of concrete suggestions:

1) Make occasional Writing Center visits mandatory for students with recurring errors. Even a couple of sessions one-on-one with a tutor, specifically focused on comma splices, can be very effective. Ask the students to provide evidence of appointments by getting a tutor signature and appointment date (you should clear this process with your school's Writing Center director; he or she may have other suggestions).

2) Institute what I call the "Editing Correction Sequence." If you notice a recurring grammar or punctuation error in a student paper, circle the first error and name it in the margin. Then instruct the student to complete the following series of steps to remedy the problem. The numbered responses, and associated activities, are due soon after. You can stipulate that you can't grade the paper without this sequence, or fold the assignment into the class participation grade, or homework grade-- whatever you think will motivate speedy completion.

Editing Correction Sequence

1. Type up the marked sentence(s) with the error, just as it appears in your paper.
2. Locate the relevant grammar or punctuation issue in the Bedford Handbook (or whatever Handbook students at your school tend to purchase for their writing courses). Copy out portion of the rule that addresses your error.
3. Type up a corrected version of the sentence based on this rule.
4. Explain how your correction addresses the grammar or punctuation rule in #2.

Now please locate the X other instances of this error in your essay. On an attached sheet of paper, type up each erroneous example and a correction. If you need assistance in locating and correcting these errors, please schedule an appointment with a writing center tutor.

(optional) In addition, please complete and turn in the following worksheet focusing on this error. [All major handbooks have associated workbooks covering key grammar principles; consult your campus bookstore.]

--

Some folks won't like the fact that this exercise requires students to think explicitly about grammar and grammar terms, but in my experience, students can't master sentence-boundary issues (splices, fragments) until they have some working knowledge of the components of a sentence. Whether you want to talk about "verbs" and "subjects"/"main noun or noun phrase" or be less technical (What is the main action of the sentence? Who or what is performing the action?) is up to you. Either way, they can't recognize a splice until the understand the concept of an independent and a dependent clause, and that's where handbooks and tutoring come in.

To boil down my advice: focus on student writing, ask students to correct AND reflect on errors, provide ample practice, require some one-on-one tutoring.

Finally, I'm a fan of revision. You might consider giving your students the occasional option to revise their essays to correct errors. Point out the first error, note that there are several such, and give the option of a rewrite.

Good luck! This isn't much fun, but you're providing your students with a crucial service by attending to their punctuation and grammar.
posted by cymru_j at 11:18 AM on January 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

It seems like a solid lesson on proofreading could be the key. If they can learn to always, always read their papers out loud to themselves, they could easily identify sentence fragments.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I had an English professor once who refused to offer grammar and spelling feedback "because you should be proofreading your papers". No quantity of proofreading will help someone who does not know that they have made an error. Even if you give a list of errors to look for, none of your students are going to go through a long paper, sentence by sentence, comparing against the whole list. For someone who's unsure, comparing each sentence could easily take five minutes per sentence. That's a hundred minutes per page. Or five hours for a three page paper. How much incentive (point-wise) are you willing to offer them? How much incentive do you think they would actually need in order to convince them to spend five hours on it? (And how much time do you want them to have left over in order to actually study your subject?)

Getting students to actually correct errors is a good idea but I would recommend circling every instance, noting what the error is, and only requiring them to actually write the correction.

Disclaimer: I'm aware that my own grammar is rubbish. This is because I sit down with the writing manual, get through about a paragraph of correction, come to the conclusion that it's total crap, and go do something more productive.

Oh, and for the record: I read a lot, have a large vocabulary, and generally know how to use my words. Commas are simply not obvious to everyone.

Unlike math errors, which actually are obvious and why didn't you just check your work?
posted by anaelith at 11:51 AM on January 11, 2011

Just want to say that they don't have "almost zero knowledge" of English grammar. They get through the day all right, don't they? They don't say "bit dog man the" instead of "the dog bit the man", do they?

But seriously, if you need to teach them grammar terminology before they can go on to think about why a comma splice makes for a bad sentence, why not do what teachers did for us as kids? Verbs are "doing words". Adjectives are "describing words". Nouns are "naming words".

Tell them a comma splice is when you use a comma, but you should be using a "joining word".
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:03 PM on January 11, 2011