I'm thrilled to see the interest in the relation between sentence grammar
and text-level needs on this list. I share the intuition of fellow listers
that truly conTEXTualizing grammar will boost motivation and make grammar
more clearly useful for students, and have had it confirmed by teachers
and students themselves in presentations to schoolteachers and college
writing teachers and college students.

I'm writing a grammar book (aimed at
college students, though written to be accessible to a wider audience)
that tries to avoid the pitfalls that have been mentioned in this
discussion so far. (1) I'm aiming for a terminology that sticks as close
to traditional grammar as possible, introducing some distinctions that are
made in linguistics or redefining some traditional terms to more closely
parallel linguistics usage, in order to enable easier discussion between
linguists and English educators; (2) I am currently working on the most
magic chapter for me, the one on how text-level needs determine sentence
grammar. I am using ideas from both systemics and American discourse
analysis, and doing some research of my own on texts, including student
essays. (3) I include discussion of social attitudes towards grammar which
is objectively framed, examining why 'good English' is considered 'good'
and 'bad English' is considered 'bad'. I have shared the manuscript with a
number of teachers, and would be happy to share it with more.

For those of you trying to motivate 'disadvantaged' or 'at-risk' or
'basic' learners to be interested in grammar, I STRONGLY recommend
actively using their own varieties of English as a hook to make them
interested in language structure. I recommend, for example, reading, and
perhaps having your students read and discuss, works like those of James
Sledd, who overtly speaks of enforcement of standard English as the
efforts of whites to make blacks act more like whites. It's hot stuff but
it's a GREAT way to engage students in taking language seriously. Lisa
Delpit's book 'Other People's Children' is invaluable for any teacher to
read, black, white, or green. And it's an easy and compelling read.

Maybe a good way to handle it would be to start by discussing the social
significance of different kinds of English, then moving into a comparison
of rules for different kinds of English (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes
'American English' will provide great background information, and is
readable for the non-linguist). You can't get very far without grammatical
terminology; voila, students might see how grammatical terminology is
relevant to discussions of race and class relations in the US!

I'm also very gratified to see the strong feelings about how teachers
should be trained -- with solid grammar training -- and agree that it
needs to be part of every teacher's education, esp. those heading into
language arts. But I'll add this: it is imperative, in our diverse
society, for every teacher to understand language variation. 'At-risk'
students USE their choice of English structure to convey social messages;
a great deal of miscommunication and incorrect assessment of student
ability happens because teachers haven't been taught about the different
traditions of talk of various American communities. THe
Wolfram/Schilling-Estes  and Delpit books are an excellent source for this
as well.

A last note on reading: If reading is slow and effortful for a student,
it is natural that they will not stick with it, even if the subject matter
is interesting. Again, an understanding of a student's home English can
sometimes shed light on reading difficulties. But reading is a really big
problem for all kinds of students in our current world. Maybe a way into
their minds on this would be to _read to them_ for, say, just ten minutes
a day, but on topics that are directly relevant to them -- whether it's
hip-hop or Nike or whatever. If they are piqued by the subject matter, and
you then say they have to read the rest on their own, might that work? I
can already hear everyone groaning about how clueless I am on what it's
like to work in these classrooms, and you're dead right. So if what I say
here about reading is pie in the sky, forgive me. I know that it's a
struggle to get these students interested in ANY aspect of education in
many cases, if not most.

I'll close with my usual sermon: If we continue to say things like 'the
grammar in their writing is atrocious' or 'they don't know any grammar',
our own understandings of the problem will be skewed. Every human being
who is speaking is following complex rules of both structure and social
appropriateness. If someone can't write according to the rules of formal,
standard English, it's because they have either had insufficient exposure
to that kind of English (e.g., through lots of reading), or because they
were unmotivated to learn it when they were exposed to it. Also, lack of
practice in thinking analytically will lead to poor writing. Language
encodes thought: garbage in, garbage out.  You won't fix
the thinking by hammering the student with grammar rules. When thinking
improves, writing will improve. Much 'bad grammar' comes from transferring
structures typical of speech to writing, or from using rules from a
nonstandard version of English in writing. This isn't a 'lack of
grammar', it's use of grammar rules which are disfavored for particular
reasons.

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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184     Fax: (805)-756-6374                   ~
E-mail: [log in to unmask]                           ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba                     ~
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