Spectator Role

In the readings this week I can see that as a spectator. it is my job to decipher what the speaker is really tyring to say.Britton says, "poetic function may be defined as a 'focus on the message for its own sake'" (Villanueva 152). Poetic function is merely trying to decipher a verbal art. It's not as easy as some would think. While poetry is oral art, it is sometimes hard to find the meaning behind the words. I also understand the two types of reading process. Efferent, what we take away from the reading and Aesthetic, what we see during the actual reading. I think on the whole I use the Efferent reading process. Yes, I watch the reader, but it is what I "get" from the reading that most concerns me.

There are many ways a listener or reader can interpret what they are reading. A lot of times, a poet will use a word in lieu of another simply because it rhymes. The impact the chosen word has on a reader depends on how the reader interprets the word, or how they feel it works in the poem or literature.

Grammar

One of the first things this section says is basically that teaching grammar does not help improve writing skills. I disagree. Without proper grammar, you are not a writer. There are structures to a writing and if not done properly, they can even change the way a reader interprets the writing. Grammar is basically a way of organizing words to get your meaning across. Apparently a research study conducted in New Zealand proved that teaching grammar did not improve writing skills. I just don't understand how that is possible. How can improved grammar not improve writing skills? Hartwell says that even if we can't verbally define a grammar rule, we can write properly using a grammar rule. Doesn't that contradict the fact that knowing grammar improves writing?

I think that some grammar rules may in fact confuse a student in writing, but that these errors are more of a accident than a true error. Hartwell gives an example of a student who adds an s to children because it was plural. I actually think that grammar errors as they are defined are more than likely,pluralization, spelling and punctuation errors, than in fact true grammar errors.