Before class began, I surveyed the roster for the students' majors. Some were English/liberal arts majors, some journalism, and a few science. Uh oh, science majors, I thought. They're probably taking the class because they really have trouble with writing.
Come to find out that the science majors are my best writers. In their diagnostic essays, they recounted their previous exposure to grammar, why they enrolled in the course, and what they hoped to gain from it. The best writers told me what I could have guessed: Their grammar is intuitive, and they have somehow absorbed grammatical concepts from the volumes of texts they've read. One student, a math major, spent his free time last semester reading books on mathematical and scientific theory, which led him to theology, and then to literature. (He cited Orwell as a literary author whom he respects.) The student's writing was clear, concise, and had a voice uncharacteristically strong for a rising sophomore.
***
A component of our course is what I call Issues in Grammar: Students read texts on a language-related topic, and we have discussions that spring forth from those texts. Today, somehow, we got on the topic of reading a physical text versus reading text on a screen, be it online or on a Kindle. One student said she felt smart reading an actual book on a train; apparently she carries Elements of Style in her purse. (Be still my beating heart!) Another student said she feels a sense of accomplishment at seeing the thickness of the books she reads—she named Atlas Shrugged as an example. Yet another student said she was proud to have read The Fountainhead on the treadmill. At that point, another student exclaimed, "Every time I finish reading a Twilight book, I think, 'Wow, I finished another one!'"
Silence.
We readers swallowed, felt our incisors with our tongues, took a drink of water. Something to occupy our tongues while we considered how to respond to the accomplishment of reading literary junk food.
Finally someone, maybe it was I, said something generic about how nice it looks to line up books on a bookshelf, that having a Kindle on an empty bookcase would be a sad sight indeed.
As I commuted home this afternoon, I had the opportunity to digest today's discussion. I realize that it was the students who took the most pride in reading, who read the most challenging and thought-provoking books they could find, who were the ones who produced the best writing. Not surprisingly, it was the students who devoured literary junk food who produced, well, junk.
