Making a Point (33 page)

Appendix

Teaching punctuation

I see my job as a linguist to talk about the ‘what', ‘when', ‘where', and ‘why' of language. Even the ‘who' sometimes. I leave the ‘how (to teach)' to the professionals. But ‘how' inevitably depends on ‘what', so I thought it would be useful to bring together the various observations about the teaching of punctuation suggested by the pragmatic approach at various points in this book.

Never isolate punctuation

Punctuation is one part – an important part, but not the only part – of the entire writing system (the
orthography
or
graphology
) of the language, and needs to be seen as part of that system and integrated within it. There are several points of overlap, as seen in
Chapter 32
, such as capitalization and typography. From a child's point of view, it's the whole graphic picture that is the starting point. Punctuation takes its place towards the bottom of a literacy hierarchy of book, page, illustration, and text.

Orthography, in turn, is part of the language as a whole, so punctuation needs to be seen routinely in relation to other aspects of language structure and use – most obviously grammar, but also pronunciation (in the sense of oral fluency), vocabulary, discourse, and style. Semantics and pragmatics are the foundation topics here, as I've emphasized
since
Chapter 11
, for it's not possible to explain the complexity of punctuation without them. The semantic perspective explores the meanings that punctuation (chiefly through the mediation of grammar) is able to express. The pragmatic perspective explores the factors that cause variation and change. It's essential to use both perspectives in teaching, for each explains only half of what is going on (
Chapter 34
).

In relation to grammar, punctuation shouldn't be thought of as some sort of appendage. This was the problem with traditional approaches, which relegated it to a chapter at the back of a book. Rather, as Percival Leigh put it in his
Comic English Grammar
(1840), ‘Punctuation is the soul of Grammar'. It's always there, awaiting a call whenever a grammatical point needs to be taught in relation to writing. So it should be spread through a syllabus. For example, sentences, in their various functions (statement, question, etc) will motivate an exploration of ending options (
Chapter 16
). Subordinate clauses will motivate an exploration of how they are to be linked punctuationally to main clauses (
Chapter 25
). Important semantic contrasts will need to be explained in their place (such as when dealing with relative clauses,
Chapter 25
). Ambiguities (‘are you asking me or telling me?') will need to be noted when encountered (
Chapter 21
). There are so many points of connection that their exploration needs to be spread in a leisurely way over time. Try to avoid the trap of ‘having a lesson on punctuation', without some other motivation. That should never be the routine, for punctuation is never an end in itself. It's always in the service of some other aspect of language.

Detect the limitations

In relation to oral fluency, punctuation represents the
dynamic features of the voice: intonation, loudness, speed, rhythm, and pause – what are technically called the
prosodic
features of speech – and it's illuminating to compare speech and writing from this point of view. Punctuation makes its contrasts, literally, in black and white terms. The dynamic features of speech are not like that; they are an indefinite number of shades of grey. A pitch level can gradually rise, tone by tone, until something that began as a statement ends up as a question; but a period does not gradually morph into a question mark. Information is always being left out, therefore, when speech is written down. And conversely, information is always being added when a written text is spoken aloud.

An adaptation of the old dictation pedagogy can be rewarding: a class writes down a dramatically spoken utterance, and sees what punctuation variation turns up among their responses. They then ‘back translate' – reading the different versions aloud, and seeing which corresponds most closely to the original and where the punctuation has let them down. This way they learn the limitations of punctuation – that it isn't a perfect system and can't solve all problems in the graphic representation of speech. An important aim is to draw students' attention to the places where the system breaks down, and to suggest ways around the difficulties. They need to see what punctuation can't do as well as what it can do.

Speaking aloud can also draw attention to places where a wrong punctuation decision has been made, as in the case of comma splices (
Chapter 22
). This common error usually remains unnoticed while writing, but becomes more obvious if what is written is then read aloud. But there's a caveat: if young writers read their own work aloud they may pass over the error, as they already know the meaning of what they've
written about. The problem is much more likely to surface if a child
other
than the writer reads the piece aloud.

Recognize the hierarchical system

This principle governed the central part of the book, from
Chapters 13
to
29
. It expresses the fact that the various punctuation marks don't all operate at the same grammatical level: some relate to paragraphs, some to sentences, some to clauses, some to phrases, some to words, and some to parts of words. But at each level, the marks work in a systematic way – even though there are exceptions and variations. Getting the idea of a system across to students is probably the most important intuition about punctuation that a teacher can convey.

To say that punctuation is a system means simply that, at any one place in a written discourse, a choice has to be made from the set of options the language makes available (
Chapter 13
). The important thing, therefore, is to make students aware of what the semantic and pragmatic options are. No one punctuation mark can ever be satisfactorily explained in isolation, and it should never be taught in isolation. There should always be a contrast with some other mark. To discover the function of the semicolon: replace it by something else, and see what happens (
Chapter 22
). To work out how to handle end-placed adverbials: reflect on the available options, such as those in the series
Come here immediately
(
Chapter 25
). To develop a sense of the semantic function of an ellipsis: add continuations to groups of sentences as in
It's time you went home …
(
Chapter 16
). This is where teaching punctuation can get quite exciting, when a class of youngsters act out the consequences of one punctuation mark being used in a story rather than another. When there are no clear-cut rules to
guide usage, we need to build up students' intuitions about good practice by getting them to reflect on as many instances as possible. This can come unconsciously just from reading a lot; but the issue can be neatly focused by presenting learners with a judicious selection of examples.

Work within genres

In a pragmatic approach, it's important to ensure that the choices are presented within a single genre. It would make no sense to consider together the use of a comma in a newspaper and the use of a colon in a legal text. That wouldn't be a real choice. Rather, we need to select the punctuation options that operate
within
an individual genre, so that students can see how the system is put to work. What do journalists do? More specifically, what do journalists on a particular paper do? The trick is to find genres that are motivating, given the age and background of the students' point of view. Journalism may not be of interest, but there are plenty of punctuation-using alternatives in computer games, text messages, advertisements, best-selling stories … What can be done with James Joyce or E E Cummings can also be done with Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett.

Inculcating a sense of language appropriateness in different genres (varieties, styles, registers … terminology varies) is the foundation of the modern approach to mother-tongue language pedagogy. For the teacher, the main challenge is to draw students' attention to the stylistic differences between them, and especially to the differences between standard and nonstandard usage. This is especially important in relation to genres where nonstandard punctuation is the default practice, as in several online situations (
Chapter 33
). For a young learner (and for older users too) the challenge is not to mix
the two worlds up. The media panic is that new punctuation habits learned in the online nonstandard world will transfer to the offline standard one. This won't happen if the differences have been thoroughly explored and understood.

Highlight consistency

I've repeatedly mentioned a principle that all punctuation commentators respect: the need for an individual writer to be consistent. But how is this to be achieved when there's so much stylistic variation around? In the days when children had most of their primary education from a single teacher, the maxim would be ‘Do as I do', which worked well enough. That would guarantee consistency – or, at least, a consistency that was no worse than that of their model! Today, children are taught by several teachers and classroom assistants as they progress, and are exposed to many more unofficial ‘teachers' outside school, such as parents and online peers. Given that there is so much personal variation, how is consistency to be achieved now?

A recurrent message of government reports into language, from the Bullock Report (1975) on, is the role of a school language policy. This is especially important when it comes to punctuation. A situation where Teacher P insists on a comma at a certain place whereas Teacher Q insists on the opposite, without any explanation being given, is unlikely to foster a confident use of punctuation. A punctuation policy doesn't mean that all the teachers need to adopt the same pattern of use – which would be difficult to implement, given their different personal histories and the deep-rooted nature of punctuation habits – but it does mean that they need to be aware of the differences in individual practice that exist (including between school and home, or school and examining board),
so that they can alert their charges to the variation and establish pragmatic guidelines. Children will never develop a consistent personal punctuational style if they don't see a coherent model around them.

Take account of the child's point of view

With young readers (and often with older ones too), teachers should be aware of what the learners bring to the literacy table. Even very young children will already have encountered punctuation marks in various settings, and will have formed some opinions about them. As I suggested in
Chapter 14
, we therefore need to understand punctuation from the child's point of view. This was part of the message of Emilia Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky's hugely illuminating
Literacy before Schooling
(1983), a book about all aspects of the way children think about literacy, and which included examples of what they had to say about punctuation. One of the children they studied, Mariona, age five, describes punctuation marks as ‘head letters' because ‘you think them but you don't say them'. Another, Alejandra, also age five, was shown two cards: THEBEAREATSHONEY and DAD KICKS THE BALL, and the authors comment:

We ask her if she thinks it is okay and she says no. When we ask if something should be corrected, she responds, ‘Here I have to put other letters,' and she begins filling in letters in the blank spaces of the sentence with the conventional separations.

This is an intriguing reverse of what an adult would expect.

The literacy hierarchy was also the motivation behind the acclaimed
LARR
test of the 1980s (
Linguistic Awareness in Reading Readiness
, by John Downing and others), which is still
as relevant as ever.
LARR
assessed the extent to which a child understands the meaning of literacy metalanguage, from its most general terms (‘reading', writing') down to points of detail. For punctuation, it presented short pieces of text and asked children to perform a simple circling task:

(a) Dr. Smith bought a car. [Circle each thing that is a full stop (period).]

(b) Sandy, Bruce and James ran home. [Circle each full stop (period).]

(c) Can all birds fly? Yes, they can. But can an emu fly? [Circle each thing that is a question mark.]

As children develop their linguistic awareness, they make some interesting decisions, such as circling only the second period in (a) because ‘it goes at the end', or circling the comma as well as the period in (b). Engaging a child in a discussion of what punctuation is all about is always mutually beneficial. It is the message also of
Help Your Child to Read and Write, and More
(see the Interlude to
Chapter 14
): ‘Discussion of the physical aspects of a book, including the lay-out of the pages, will help them to understand what they themselves must do as writers.' And it is the basis of the excellent
Punctuation Project
, led by Sue Sing and Nigel Hall at Manchester Metropolitan University, which is based on the belief that young children ‘have the ability to talk freely about punctuation in ways that would offer insights into how they thought about it'.

One of the findings of this kind of research is to highlight the importance of choosing terms that don't confuse young learners. For example, describing an apostrophe as a ‘little raised comma', won't help, as there's nothing linguistically in common between the two. And while the term ‘speech
marks' is fairly transparent, to express what's going on when people are speaking, it needs to be carefully watched, for (as we saw in
Chapter 31
) these marks are also used in quite a wide range of other circumstances in which people aren't speaking at all. It isn't a difficult matter discovering the way punctuation terms can confuse children: they will tell you themselves.