The assumptions an instructor makes about teaching grammar are
influenced by the assumptions the instructor makes about the knowledge
students have about grammar.

This is not an assumption I make.

Craig writes:

    As writing teachers, I think we are used to wondering how to move 
our students forward despite the fact that they know almost nothing 
about language and about how meaning is built within a text. 

*************
The native speakers of English that I teach KNOW a whole about language.
 There are vast domains of English I don't ever have to teach because
they have no trouble with it.  This, of course, is not the case with
non-native speakers.

From my experience, all my students know they have an obligation to
construct a coherent text.  Again, perhaps, in different parts of the
US, students don't "know" that what they write has to be coherent.   I
have never had a student tell me that he/she did not know that what they
had to write had to make sense.  

From these assumptions, my goal in teaching writing is to have my
students become conscious of the knowledge they have and then how to use
this conscious knowledge to evaluate their own writing to make it
clearer.

Bob Yates
Central Missouri State University 

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/