<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Christopher Banks<div>English 646</div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>The Practical Tutor: </b></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>Chapters 8, 9 and 13</b></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b></b></span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 36px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I once made the foolish mistake of calling myself a proud grammarian to a fellow undergraduate student at the time in the presence of the brilliant rhetor Dr. Kevin Brown of Penn State University. He pointed out that while grammar and a good command of sentence structure and spelling were important, the term grammarian focused squarely on only the aforementioned parts of writing and left out the process of generating, refining, and the organized positing of unique and expressive ideas. I learned a good lesson that day and decided that I wanted to become a powerful and relevant rhetorician. The idea that being good at grammar makes you a good writer is antiquated; therefore, focusing too much attention on a student’s use of grammar rather than on the content of the argument can and most likely will intimidate a student and retard the writing process. This is particularly true, I find, for reticent writers. Grammar is most effective when it is shown to students as a way to more clearly express thoughts rather than as an arbitrary standard of writing “prowess” and “sophistication”. </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 36px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"> Punctuation errors are common among undergrad and graduate students. Is there a unique difference in the way that a semicolon combines two related independent clauses when compared to the role of a coordinating conjunction? Yes there is. Is it something that student writers should focus on while they generate ideas and formulate arguments. Heck no. Focusing on punctuation is only beneficial when the student understands how it will help them more clearly state their arguments. I try my best not to pause a student while we are reading a paper together to tell them to place a comma here...and there...and there too IF the student is looking to improve the content of their paper with content revisions. </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 36px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Since the beginning of time, or at least since my birth in 1978, I have had a love hate relationship with spelling. (I’d love to hate iit, if I could only iit). All jokes aside, I just do not spell as well as I would like. Tutoring students in spelling is not my strong point. I always advise that a student carry at least a pocket dictionary. For those students who wish to increase their writing vocabulary, I recommend the almighty thesaurus. Learning new words comes from the practical practice of using new words. As for overcoming the spelling limitation, I’m a bit stumped on that sans arming one’s self with a dictionary and thesaurus.</span></div></div></body></html>=