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VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 25

= INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD), COLLEGE OF EDUCATION,

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN « WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

 

Audible Commas

Asan English instructor, I am frequently faced with the
task of teaching comma usage to college freshmen, many
of whom have a paranoia about commas and feel that, if
they have not learned commas by now, they will never
leam them. We go through the rules in the handbook
repeatedly, but even after successfully completing the
exercises, many students do not transfer that knowledge
to their own writing. Most of all, they are less than
enthusiastic about spending several class periods listening
to comma rules.

In my search for a new approach to teaching commas, I
thought back to my undergraduate work-study job where
| listened to dictaphone tapes from which I typed letters.
My boss would say the punctuation aloud, since while I
was typing I never knew when a sentence would end. I
noticed that after just a few letters I began to “hear” the
punctuation in my mind whenever I talked or listened to
others. Most of our language skills are not based on
memorized rules but on what sounds right: native
speakers never make a mistake in the use of “a” versus
“the,” but who among them could explain the rule for
choosing an article? I never even thought about it until an
ESL student asked me, and then I was stumped by the
rationale. | thought there must be a way for students to
learn to “hear” commas so that they would not have to
rely only on grammar rules which are painfully memo-
rized and quickly forgotten.

I used one of my English 99 courses as an experimental
group and the other as a control group to determine if an
instinctive use of commas can be as effective as a rational
approach. At the beginning of the quarter, the students
took a pre-test in which they inserted commas into a
literature excerpt and answered True/False questions on
the comma rules. The number of commas missing or used
incorrectly on the pre-test and on their first writing
assignment represented the students’ previous knowledge

“of commas.

For the experimental group (which I called the Roman-
tic class) I typed two short stories, revising as necessary to
include various comma usages. | distributed stories, and
then I read them aloud, saying “comma” when one
appeared, while the students followed the words. I
emphasized the importance of staying with the reader so
that their exposure to correct comma usage would be

visual as well as aural. After I finished the stories, each
student took a turn reading one paragraph until we had
read them through a second time. When we finished
reading, students asked some questions about why
commas were used in certain places, and I answered with
the appropriate rule as simply stated as possible, also
noting that it was natural to pause at that spot.

We learned commas this way for two class periods
while the control group (the Classic class) spent two class
periods working on comma rules and exercises in the
handbook. But while the control group took their comma
work as a bitter pill, the experimental group seemed to
enjoy it. After two days of intensive work, we only
discussed commas when a student asked a specific
question pertinent to his or her writing. For both classes, I
responded with the comma rules and also pointed out that
the comma “sounded right” there.

At the end of the quarter, both classes took a post-test
and submitted their final writing assignment. On the
tests, the Classic group showed a much greater improve-
ment. Their scores increased 16% on the literature section
and 18% on the True/False questions, compared to the
Romantics’ 1.5% improvement on the literature and 16%
drop on the True/False. In terms of comma usage in their
own writing, however, the Romantic class improved by
62%, nearly twice the Classics’ 34%. These results suggest
that students can use commas correctly in their own
writing without knowing the rules. Since the rules are so
easy to forget, I find these results encouraging.

In terms of the students’ feelings about the teaching
methods, all of the students in the Romantic class, except
one, said that they liked the approach. The Romantic
method will work better for some students than for others;
some appreciate knowing the rules. In the future, I plan to
use a combination of both methods, reading commas
aloud and then covering the basic comma rules, but it will
be important to read first for the feel of commas.

Marian Anders, Instructor, English
For further information, contact the author at Pierce

College, 1601 39th Avenue, S.E., Puyallup, WA 98374-
2222.

 

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community College Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration

College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712