David Mulroy writes:

  In this connection, I am struck by the epigram on the Emails of
>Nancy Patterson, who is outspoken in her skepticism about the value
>of traditional school grammar, viz., "The text is a tissue of quotations
>drawn from the innumerable centers of culture."  It seems to me that this
>is true only of texts created without a mastery of grammar.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the Barthes quote speaks to my social
constructivist/hypertext theory quirks.   It's that intertextuality thing
that we hypertext people get all goose bumpy about.  But now that
constructivism has been brought up, it seems a wonderful topic to explore
through the lens of teaching grammar.  If you're allergic to constructivist
theory, you might at least get a perspective about why large segments of the
academy are connecting to constructivism and why teacher prep programs are
trying to ground pre-service teachers in that approach to learning.

In  constructivist classrooms,  focus shifts away from the teacher as the
holder of knowledge to the students.  A constructivist teacher/expert no
longer pours knowledge into empty student vessels, or deposits knowledge
into their heads as if it were money in a bank.  Instead students are urged
to be actively involved in their own learning processes and to reflect or
engage in deliberate metacognitive thinking.

A constructivist language arts classroom would probably not approach grammar
prescriptively but descriptively, challenging students to think about the
rules of the grammars they use and reflect on how those rules change when
audience or discursive form changes.

And, I dare to ask, how can one construct text without grammar? And that
mastery word.  Does anyone really "master" grammar?  I use text in far more
complex ways now than I did ten years ago, and I fully expect to use it with
greater complexity as I continue to use language to convey and construct
meaning.

Nancy





Nancy G. Patterson
Portland Middle School, English Dept. Chair
Portland, MI  48875

"The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumberable centers of
culture."
--Roland Barthes

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http://www.msu.edu/user/patter90/opening.htm
http://www.npatterson.net/mid.html

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