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I apologize for so many posts, but I'm cleaning up after
the semester and will be away from my mail for a
while.
    Bill Murdick is, of course, right when he says that it
is easy to test the effectiveness of teaching grammar.
(See below.) The problem is -- what difference does it
make if students can identify prepositional phrases?
Identification for itself is not, from my perspective, a
worthy objective. A better objective would be, for
example, to see if, having learned how to identify such
phrases, those students who make s/v agreement
errors by making the verb agree with the object of a
preposition, can use their new knowledge to edit and
correct their own mistakes. Such research is a lot
more difficult to handle.
    In addition, most of the anti-grammar research is
based on lengthy, and time-consuming, statistical
studies. As I think I have noted on this list, my critique
of much of that research is now available at
httP://www.sunlink.net/rpp in the Teachers' Section.
Because there has been a lot of discussion of the
research, particularly on NCTE-Talk, I'm planning to
spend much of my upcoming break working on the
"Research" Section of my "on-line" grammar course.
In addition to several documents on the theory, etc., I
will be making available my analysis of about fifth
essays written by college Freshmen. The essays are
about sexual harassment and make interesting
reading in themselves (if you want to know how
college Freshmen think).
     Merry Christmas to everyone on this list. I really
enjoy the discussions.
Ed V.
 
>>> Jim Dubinsky <[log in to unmask]> 12/10/97
12:01pm >>>
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From Bill Murdick:
 
        I will check out Ed Vavra's web site when I get
through
this semester, but for the moment I cannot understand
why
testing your own teaching methods is so complicated.
 
If you are asking elementary students to identify
prepositional phrases
in passages (e.g. in the park; along with the others; via
M Street;
to whoever is ready; besides you and anyone else
similarly experienced),
then all you have to do is ask students to identify the
prepositional phrases in a passage at the beginning of
the year,
and then see how many they can identify in that same
passage
at the end of the school year.
 
(Of course, if you wanted to get scientific you would
use two
passages in both sessions, half the students reading
passage 1
at the beginning and 2 at the end, and half the students
reading
passage 2 at the beginning and 1 at the end).
 
If the students can identify a significantly larger
number in the
post-test, you have the beginning of a basis for
claiming that the
students are learning the grammar. The next step
would be to re-test
them at the beginning of the next year (after 3 months
of vacation)
to see if the learning is retained.