April 9, 2003

BY ROSALIND ROSSI EDUCATION REPORTER

The writing skills college instructors most want from incoming freshmen--proper grammar and usage--are considered least important by high school English teachers, a new study by the producer of a popular college admissions test showed Tuesday.

Among six writing skills, grammar and usage were taught the least by more than 700 high school English teachers surveyed during a national curriculum survey ACT conducts every three years.

"The bottom line here is that. . . there's a disconnect between the value that postsecondary educators put on grammar and usage and what's happening in high school classrooms,'' said Cynthia Schmmeiser, ACT's vice president for development.

Grammar pitfalls * Subject-verb agreement (using a singular subject and a plural verb or vice versa) * Reflexive pronouns (when to use "myself," "herself," etc.) * Verb phrases (distinguishing among different verb-preposition combinations, such as "take out" vs. "take on" vs. "take to") * Individual items such as "its" versus "it's," "who" versus "whom," etc. Source: ACT

"We don't know the reasons for this disconnect but . . . we believe it's noteworthy.''

The survey by ACT comes as both ACT and SAT prepare to add writing components to their college admission tests. ACT's will be optional while SAT's new writing test is expected to be mandatory.

Among high school English teachers surveyed by ACT, only 69 percent said they taught grammar and usage, compared with 83 percent who said they taught punctuation and 90 percent or more who said they taught the other key writing skills--sentence structure, writing strategy, organization and style.

Those results seem to jibe with the results of the ACT itself. Grammar and usage produced the lowest scores of any ACT subtest--in any subject--taken by last year's high school graduates. In Illinois, 2002 graduates averaged a 9.5 out of a possible 18 in grammar and usage, a score Schmmeiser said was just below "borderline college-ready.''

Michael Day, director of a mandatory freshman composition class at Northern Illinois University, estimated that 95 percent of NIU papers in freshman composition have at least one grammatical error.

"It's very difficult for students to write without at least one grammatical error,'' Day said.

Often, Day said, high school teachers don't have enough time to give a lot of writing assignments and correct student grammar. Plus, he said, some teachers may not be sure of their own grammar and usage.

Like it or not, Day said, grammatical correctness is important.

"Grammatical correctness helps you win credibility and authority in all walks of life,'' Day said. "It could lose you a job, it could lose you a court case and it could lose you respect among your fellow citizens if you write a letter to the editor that's ungrammatical.''

The ACT survey reflected the opinions of not only college freshman English teachers, but also math, science and social studies teachers--roughly 1,200 college teachers.

Dennis Baron, head of the English Department at the University of Illinois-Champaign, said such teachers may be pinpointing grammar and usage as needed skills because such errors are easy to spot. But often, even if such errors are corrected, student writing still needs work, he said.

"The problem with student writing is that students write like students,'' said Baron, author of The Guide to Home Language Repair .

"We want them to write like professional writers.''

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