Spoofing and Proofing the Classics: Literature‐Based Activities to Develop Critical Reading Skills and Grammatical Knowledge

Citation

Ellis‐Barrett, L. (2007), "Spoofing and Proofing the Classics: Literature‐Based Activities to Develop Critical Reading Skills and Grammatical Knowledge", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 9, pp. 844-845. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710831383

Errors in spelling, malapropisms, mis‐use of homonyms, typos and grammatical errors. Not forgetting of course punctuation – missing commas, missing apostrophes, capitalization, incorrect use of verbs, pronouns, prepositions – as well as sentence combining and paragraph sequencing. All of these are elements of written work that proofreaders and editors are trained to notice and amend before a piece of work is committed to publication. This work could be anything from a company report to a newspaper article or even a book. Whatever the piece of work there are many trained proofreaders and copy‐editors who spend time meticulously checking through for any number of possible errors. These people are highly trained and have developed their skills after a considerable amount of practice (I know). But how many times are the common errors made by children in their school work acknowledged and corrected?

Teachers are now discouraged from using red pen when marking work. They are told not to make more than three corrections to a piece of written work. These guidelines were introduced for fear that too much correction could potentially upset the child. Yet is it not worse that children move through their education and into adult life commonly writing with both mechanical and usage errors? A mechanical error can be compared to the “static” and a usage error to the “snow” often encountered on television sets, write the authors. These problems commonly result in misinterpretation and/or misunderstanding – the message is not clearly delivered. The solution to solving these problems is actually quite straightforward, apart from reverting back to marking in red pen and correcting more than three errors, teachers can help children to recognize how and why these errors are made using critical reading activities.

Spoofing and Proofing the Classics contains 45 short excerpts from classic children's stories (despite the blurb encouraging the reader to believe there are over 45). Children should instantly recognize traditional fairy tales – Goldilocks and Rapunzel – as well as classics – The Wizard of Oz and Treasure Island – among the perhaps lesser known extracts from Men of Iron and Sleepy Hollow. Each extract has been turned into what the Polettes describe as a “Shaggy‐Dog Story”. This they explain is an extended joke whose punch line will take the form of a pun or word play. For the purposes of this book the stories have been reworked or extended in a humorous way. Younger students may miss some of the subtlety of this approach but the overriding aim of each story is to teach critical appraisal skills.

Each extract may be photocopied for classroom use and a brief introductory sentence explains the related exercise. Having done the work for themselves, after perhaps some explanation of the grammatical terms or general aims, the children can be provided with the corrected form of each story which has been included in the book and is again photocopiable.

These exercises could form the basis for lessons in which children are encouraged to write and then practice the art of proofreading their work before handing it to the teacher. They are also an excellent introduction to grammar; anything that makes this sometimes dry subject fun and clear is welcome! As a result of using this book, teachers and librarians should feel that they are required to correct no more than three errors in a piece of work and children will hopefully have improved their mechanical writing skills. I doubt, and hope that proofreaders will be in less demand as a result however for computers do not always pick up typos, repetitions or homonyms – and how many of us remember to use the spell check or pay any attention to the green squiggly lines? Complete, with a succinct guide to grammar and sentence construction as well as an answer key, this is an excellent and highly usable resource.