The Recognition of Usage Errors by Instructors of Freshman Composition

Abstract

It is reasonable to expect that teachers should be able to identify and correct errors that are relevant to their discipline. We decided to find out to what extent a typical group of college teachers of freshman composition would be accurate and consistent in identifying and correcting putative language errors in their students' writing. We chose to investigate their perception of certain usage problems. The group consisted of 27 teachers of Freshman English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who participated in the experiment voluntarily during the spring semester of 1977.1 They were typical of college instructors of freshman composition in being interested primarily in literature or creative writing and in having had little or no training in either linguistics or in the teaching of composition. Their academic status was also typical: most of them were graduate students, and the remainder were lecturers or persons on limited-term appointments. The experiment focused the instructors' attention on formal written English. Even within that style we find some variation in the application of rules of usage. Certain usages are, or have become, completely acceptable in formal writing. Certain violations are universally condemned by educated writers. Certain variants are in divided usage-used or tolerated by some and rejected by others. We investigated ten usages. We list each together with a pertinent test sentence. We judge that they fall into three categories.