Middle school & secondary English education majors are not exactly
thrilled about taking a required English grammar course.   I have
been thinking of ways to motivate them by showing them how
grammatical choices and functions are text-driven, so that they can
understand the relationship between sentence level grammar and
written (or spoken) texts.   I think this is a key to helping them
see the relevance of grammar-study and moving them away from the
relatively meaningless taxonomies and parsing of "traditional
grammar" (at least as they are taught in isolation).

One tradition that has paid attention to this kind of
textlinguistics is systemic functional grammar--Michael Halliday, et
al.     That tradition has given a lot of attention to pedagogical
grammars, I have been told, but I never encountered any of these in
the American educational system.

I have worked a little with systemic grammar myself.   Just last
year I studied Linda Gerot and Peter Wignell's book _Making Sense of
Functional Grammar_ (that is systemic functional grammar).  The book
(an Australian publication available here in the US) does a fairly
good job of making Hallidayan functional grammar accessible to
undergraduate students.  I was a little frustrated at times when the
book failed to use the kind of linguistic reasoning I am accustomed
to in setting up categories and justifying analyses of sentences. I
sometimes felt I was being asked to accept too much "on faith."

As I thought about using this approach in my own English grammar
class, two objections stared me in the face: (1) students who are
somewhat familiar with "traditional grammar" have to learn a whole new
set of terminology--and that is a tedious task for most and a
formidable challenge for some;  it is also formidable to require this
kind of tedious learning in a course that is required for education
majors (who may rather not be there); (2) young teachers going out
into our school system (where sometimes the worst kind of "traditional
grammar" still reigns) would be at a total loss of how to make use of
what they learn about systemic grammar.  It would be totally foreign
to the kind of textbooks now widely in use in the US.  It would take
more determination, skill, and courage than most of our graduates
have to be able to take their knowledge of systemic grammar into
middle and secondary school class rooms.

So despite these two giant negatives....fools press on where angels
fear to tread!  Does anyone know of other materials in the systemic
functional tradition or does anyone have any experience using this
approach with teachers in training here in the US?  Could you dispel
either of my big negatives?  Thanks.

Mike Medley




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R. Michael Medley       VPH 211                Ph: (712) 737-7047
Assistant Professor     Northwestern College
Department of English   Orange City, IA  51041
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