hopefully

[Amy West]

On 4/6/12 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Unfortunately, in my experience the use of this and other similar cases =
> gets through to about 10% of the class. The other 90 either remember or =
> not the right answer for the midterm but go on and asking which uses are =
> correct and which aren't in the kind of absolute sense assumed by =
> prescribers. Hopefully, I'll figure out a way to increase the proportion =
> who get it but I'm not too hopeful I will.=20
>
>

Prescriptivism is easier for students: they want to know the rules to
apply. They want them to be simple rules.

I had my comp. students read Nunberg's "The Decline of English" (they
all thought he was arguing that English grammar is declining) and Foster
Wallace's "Tense Present" and gave an essay question asking them to
argue whether English comp. teachers should use a prescriptivist or
descriptivist approach. They all argued for prescriptivism.

--
---Amy West

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