>>  These two functions are fulfilled by grammatical choices,
>> although the patterns are tendencies rather than rigid rules.
>
>I wonder how many students want to be told about tendencies.  Exactly,
>what is the percentage of a tendency?  How much deviation must there be
>from a tendency for a text to be "ungrammatical"?

Bob, do you ever pay attention to weather reports? Some people don't.
If you were to guess how tall most people are, you would probably guess
close to an average height. You're old enough, been around enough, to have a
pretty good idea of what the average height was. If you were a martian
visiting earth with the mission to build a dwelling, wouldn't you want to
know what the average, maximum, and minimum heights of possible dwellers?
What do you think?

Judy



>
>The Redford example is not unexpected.  What is the point of instruction
>based on the following observation?
>>
>> My analysis of a text
>> about Robert Redford, for instance, finds Redford in subject position
>> 500 times, with no other subtopics or non-topics reaching anywhere near
>> that number.
>
>Would a teacher write:
>
>This text clearly has problems because the person the text is about is
>not in the subject position enough times.  In this text, it is X times
>and for such a text it is usually/often/frequently/always (I don't know
>the correct frequency adverb here) Y times.
>
>When I encounter such texts, I ask the student how this information is
>related to the claim being made in the text.  I don't have to count how
>many times the topic of the text is in the grammatical subject position.
>
>> Of course, this makes the most sense if one views grammar instruction as
>> a process of educating students about their 'writing tool-box'. It makes
>> less sense within a 'grammar as fix-it' philosophy, in which conforming
>> to standard grammar is the main concern. On the other hand, functional
>> grammar can be very helpful for students who have trouble writing
>> coherent texts, and have to fix this trouble.
>
>One of the texts that every writing teacher, especially a basic writing
>teacher, should read is Mina Shaughnessey's Error and Expectations.
>Shaughnessey  places  the problem of basic writing with movement from
>abstract to concrete statements.
>
>"[BW] papers tend to contain either cases or generalizations but not
>both.  If anything, students seem to have more difficulty moving from
>abstract statements down to more concrete levels than they do moving up
>the ladder of abstraction." (p. 240-1)
>
>There are issues of grammar in this "movement," but grammar instruction
>alone, "a tool-box approach" is not issue.  And, clearly, this is not an
>issue of controlling the standard.  It has more to do with expectations
>of the audience about how claims are presented and what appropriate
>kinds of generalization and support for such generalizations are.
>
>Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University
>


Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183