Elizabeth,
   I didn't mean to post my message as a direct reply to your, so I'll
start with a direct apology. Your own post may have presented a view
different form mine, but was not at all what I was responding to. It
was simply the most recent post on this issue, and it's sometimes
easier to hit reply.
   When I said "from the first..." I didn't mean ATEG, but the Scope and
Sequence project. Form the first, it has been a language awareness
approach, not an error reduction approach, in part because the
consensus has been that you can't reduce errors without a base of
understanding.
   I am now teaching 62 Educational Opportunity Program students, most
from inner city New York, so I know the problems of a front-line
teacher. I oversee the teaching of 120 others in the same program.
Obviously, I can't teach the scope and sequence we will propose to
these students in the five weeks of the summer or even the fifteen
weeks of the fall, when I'll have many of them again. I have been
working long and hard at my own version of a grammar appropriate to
those students, and I may not be far off from publishing it. Bu the
scope and sequence recommendations are an attempt to make sure that
students coming out of high school will one day know a great deal about
language. If a student knows what a clause is, if they know the core of
what makes a sentence a sentence, if they know what a compound
structure is, and so on, then we can actually have a conversation about
punctuation that is likely to have a lasting impact. If they know the
role of repetition in creating coherence, then we can look at their
paragraphs with that lens in mind.
   The fact that scope and sequence isn't appropriate for poorly trained
high school grads is an argument that undercuts itself. With a scope
and sequence in place, they won't be poorly trained. My students know
that a run-on sentence is wrong, but they can't define one or recognize
one, so error reduction can't happen until they know more.
   We have liberals and conservatives in congress, and sometimes work can
be done despite that. What I have seen so far is equivalent to a
filibuster. If it's not done the traditional way, then work won't be
allowed to proceed.
   I am happy that people want to see the project continue, as I do. I'm
just not optimistic that it can happen through ATEG.

Craig
Craig:
>
> I don't think it is quite fair to equate a request for a basic Scope and
> Sequence with a request to return to Warriner's or to a traditional
> grammar
> approach. That was not my intention.
>
> Elizabeth Ward
>
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