Dawkins & Bryson

Summary

Dawkins: In his article "Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool," John Dawkins talks about the very basics of punctuation. He argues that punctuation is very important when writing sentences and how it effects the reading of that sentence. He goes into depth of punctuation rules and how to use them.

Bryson: In his article "Good English and Bad", Bill Bryson attempts to teach us about how the English language is extremely complex and confusing. He argues that our grammar originated from the Latin language and that because it is hardly used in today's time, that we have trouble understand how to use it in the correct way.

Synthesis
Both of the author's discuss punctuation and grammar in their articles. They discuss how you use them properly and in the correct way. Dawkins goes more into the basics of punctiation and how it is used whereas Bryson goes into the origin of our grammar.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling
Dawkins: I usually think of punctuation as if I was trying to publish a book. Knowing how it is used and where it needs to go comes naturally for me, but sometimes I must rethink and see where exactly it needs to go. Dawkins' writing didn't effect much of how I view punctuation because I knew that it plays a big role in how a sentence looks and how it is read.

Bryson: Perspective in the context of teaching grammar would be how a teacher explains to the class how an assignment should be done according to how they see fit. Descriptive in the context of teaching grammar would be how teachers explain a work without giving a biased opinion, but just going into detail of what it is about. I was taught in a Perspective stance because my teachers would always have us do assignments in the way they wanted it to be done without much creativity and following the guidelines that they have created for students to follow.

Opinion: I didn't really like these articles all that much. Dawkins' article was just boring in text and reminded me too much of someone teaching a punctuation class compared to writing more about it. The examples he gave were good, but I just didn't particularly like it compared to Bryson's. Bryson's caught my attention because he taught me about how the words in our language were so very complex when I didn't think they were that hard. He also gave information about Latin and I have always wanted to learn more about that language.