Post 2

This article really reinforces some important ideas that I have learned about in my Linguistics classes.  Williams uses this article mainly to illustrate a few specific points about the usage of language and how it is perceived.  Errors have become a concrete social faux pas in our society.  They are easily identifiable because they are given so much attention in academic settings that using an incorrect form in conversation suggests that the guilty party must be uneducated and ignorant. This black and white notion of correctness is a serious problem because language is fluid and changing.  It shouldn’t be constrained by the idea of wrong and right.  Williams further elaborates on this idea by describing the process of adding words to a dictionary.  He attests that by acknowledging that a word might be incorrect we are giving editors an ability to arbitrarily construct language.  He also discusses the idea that some errors are more severe than others.  This, he says, is a view that many academics share, but is not really anything taught in classes.  The idea that something can be acknowledged as correct and yet be wholly ignored (or not brought into usage) underscores Williams’ conclusion.  He states that his “essay is an exercise in futility” because people enjoy the idea of right and wrong, black and white too much to make a gray area for passable errors.  I think that Williams is indicting the general public with this essay.  We are the ones who continuously perpetrate the idea that error is concrete and unchanging and that it should be avoided at all costs.  These ideas hold us back, but we will continue to value them for the foreseeable future.

Post 1

My only previous writing focused course at OU was English 151, which was very basic and required the standard five papers.  That said, I have written quite a bit in most of my other classes since then.  Generally, this includes research topics and short essays.  I find the most rewarding writing assignments to be the ones that I am able to personally relate to in some way.  It's easy to write about any random thing if I'm just trying to get through it, but it's definitely less of a chore if it's actually relavant.  I find the most frustrating aspect of writing classes to be the pace.  I hate having to take three weeks writing a paper that could be written over the course of a few days.  In addition, I find it extremely frustrating that OU requires all students to take one of just a few junior composition classes.  Not all students have the same writing abilities because of huge variation in majors and their requirements.  I feel that with this setup, some students are held back as a result of the variance in skills. I think that it's really beneficial to students to have teachers who provide feedback when there is still room to correct and resubmit.  I hope that I can learn something  new about posting in wikipedia from this course.  I am a little worried that the course seems to require a lot of extra work for each project.  I hope to gain a greater appreciation for the peer review process, even though I think that at times it can be a tool that simply takes up time in class without any real benefit.