Final Copy: Paper 1- Katie Thoburn

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BydrCvQbOIepYmVkYjM3ZjAtYmE1OC00Zjk1LTk3ODAtNGNiNzA1YmRjNDg3&hl=en_US

Cover Letter
With this paper, I was trying to exhibit the struggles I have found with grammar. In all papers, it is important to me that I give my papers a voice so to speak. I want my readers to feel comfortable and conversational, as if I was reading the paper to them in a conversation-like fashion. My main claim was that grammar is taught to strictly in schools, causing it to be viewed as either right or wrong. I would have liked to put more statistics about educators and their motivations to push for grammar and spelling in their classrooms. I understand it is important for standardized testing, but I want to know if they (as an individual with an opinion) believes it is truly vital to good writing. In my reader's response, I would like to know if they thought the paper was too informal/relaxed. It is important to me that my papers have a personality. I think it makes them easier to read, and keeps them from sounding robotic and too formal to the point where they're boring. If given more time, I would have liked to do some interviews including the teachers I had in grade school/high school to ask them if when reading papers, if they're truthfully and honestly distracted by mistakes and grammatical errors, or if they are able to ignore those things and stick to the ideas and main points of papers. I would have also liked to talk to a foreign exchange student and see if they struggled with grammar and spelling when learning English. I want to know the root of the push for grammar. I don't think there is a definite date and time that it started, but there is a reason that people push for it and just can't seem to let it go. (I believe, as I say in the paper: that it is because that is how we are taught in school- good papers have no spelling or grammar mistakes.....AND.....have good ideas and strong arguments- end of story.) I want to know why this is! Why teachers are brainwashing us like this to believe something that isn't necessarily true- are they being forced to teach it by state requirements for testing? Or do they firmly believe that "I couldn't tell if it was a good paper or not because the misplaced commas!" (Who are they to decide where a comma does or does not belong.) I'm done rambling. I hope you like my paper!
-Katie Thoburn