Ed,
What exactly do you think "morphology" means? When you say things such as
"Members of this list, of course, want to teach
grammar, but a focus on linguistics (morphology,
sociolinguistics, etc.) is not going to help
teachers who themselves cannot identify subjects
and verbs"
it would appear that in your effort to help
students identify "subjects and verbs" you are
bypassing one of their best built-in linguistic
resources--the inflectional and derivational
morphemes that identify nouns and verbs and
adjectives and adverbs. Native speakers of
English have a built-in understanding of the four
"form classes," based to a great extent on
morphology. And lessons in the classroom on the
various morphemes that signal the parts of speech
are real eye-openers for students who think they
know nothing about grammar.
What is a noun? A word that can be made plural
and/or possessive with inflectional morphemes. A
noun is also a word that can be formed by adding
the derivational morpheme -tion to a verb; -ness
to an adjective; -ment, -er, etc. You can help
students identify a noun by discussing its
function as the headword of a noun phrase. You
can also identify a noun by the words that signal
it: When you see "the" or "a" or "my," you know
you're at the beginning of a noun phrase. And
when students learn about the various functions
that noun phrases perform--subject, direct
object, object of preposition, etc.--they are
well on the way to understanding sentence
(clause) structure.
What is a verb? It's a word that can be put
into the past: Use it in a sentence with
"yesterday," for example, and then try it with
"tomorrow" to see its various forms. It's a word
that has both an -ing and an -s ending. It has a
past and past participle, too, but they're not
always easy to spot when the verb is irregular;
the -s and -ing are never irregular! (For the
past participle, use a verb with "have.") How
else can you help your students to identify
verbs? Sometimes verbs are easy to spot on the
basis of their derivational suffixes: -ize,
-ify, -en, or such prefixes as be- and en-. And
the verb is that word in the predicate that
patterns with auxiliaries. (That "tomorrow"
version of the verb probably added the modal
auxiliary "will.")
We've mentioned before on this list how to
identify where the subject ends and the predicate
begins: simply substitute a personal pronoun (he,
it, they, etc.)--or even a demonstrative, such as
"this," or simply "something" or "someone"--for
the subject.
This is not traditional school grammar, Ed. It's
also not a part of KISS grammar, as far as I can
tell. Linguists have taught us these concepts,
ways of helping our students use their internal
expertise.
As for sociolinguistics, we do our students a
real disservice when we don't discuss the
language, the grammar, of their daily life as
contrasted, for example, with the language of
politics or church or the schoolroom. That
discussion doesn't replace "subjects and verbs";
it puts those clauses into their social context.
Traditional school grammar fails students when it
doesn't help them use their own expertise; it
doesn't show them how much they know as speakers
of a language. Linguistic grammar helps students
recognize their native expertise; that conscious
understanding can give them confidence in their
ability as speakers and writers.
Martha
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>Christine and Amanda,
> As usual, the topics under discussion are
>extremely complex, and I do not have the time
>(or energy) to respond completely and clearly
>here. I would suggest that many teachers label
>students' dialects as "bad, wrong, stupid and
>defective" primarily because they are required
>to teach grammar and have little idea of what
>else to teach. I'm aware of all the obstacles
>that Amanda lists. (I've been at this for 25
>years.) I do not, however, see "research" as
>being the best way to overcome the obstacles. It
>was, after all, officially sanctioned "research"
>that led to the conclusion that teaching grammar
>is harmful.
> My own efforts are heading in the direction
>of writing for the general public. The KISS
>site, which is still not complete, is primarily
>an attempt to demonstrate what could/should be
>done. Over the years my explanations of KISS
>have been criticized as nothing different from
>traditional grammar, idealistic, etc. There
>will, of course, still be such criticism, but
>the sequence, instructional materials, and
>hundreds of exercises on the KISS site do
>illustrate a scope and sequence of instruction.
>Home schoolers have a distinct advantage with
>KISS — they can control the sequence of
>instruction. But there are more and more
>classroom teachers who are joining the list, and
>I expect some of them to start to implement some
>across grade-level instruction.
> I've started writing a monthly column for a
>small local publication that is distributed in
>the local newspaper. In essence, I'm trying to
>use the column to practice writing for the
>general public. The essence of my argument is
>that students are not being taught to identify
>subjects and verbs — and they should be. I'm
>hoping that I can get members of the public not
>only to see that, but also to start asking why
>the students in their schools are not being
>taught this.
> To address the general public, I will be
>describing the silly things that are going on in
>the profession — such as the misguided focus on
>teaching teachers sociolinguistics. This will,
>I'm sure, not sit well with many members of this
>list, but most members of this list have shown
>little, if any interest in helping teachers in
>K-12. I'll note, by the way, Bill O'Rourke's
>"'Lion Tamers and Baby Sitters': First-Year
>English Teachers' Perceptions of Their
>Undergraduate Teacher Preparation" (English
>Education, Feb. 83: 17-24) He wrote:
>
> "Should an English education staff be proud or
>ashamed of the fact that fifteen out of
>seventeen graduates, after one semester of
>teaching, tell us that the one thing they wish
>the university would have offered them is a
>course in how to teach grammar? If it was a goal
>to purely reflect the public schools in our
>teaching, this evidence would tell us to be
>ashamed. If our goal was to reform the English
>curiculum in secondary schools, then maybe we
>should be proud. I taught the linguistics
>methods course at UNL and I taught it with one
>overall goal: to make language instruction in
>our secondary schools more than grammar. We
>covered history of the language, lexicography,
>dialect, semantics, usage, public doublespeak,
>and grammar. But we talked about grammar in
>terms of what is the purpose for teaching
>grammar, what does research tell us about its
>relationship to writing and speaking, what is
>the thinking behind the different types of
>grammar? It seems to me that this type of
>approach, this questioning beyond just the
>methodology, is precisely what English education
>should be concerned with." (21-22)
>
>Members of this list, of course, want to teach
>grammar, but a focus on linguistics (morphology,
>sociolinguistics, etc.) is not going to help
>teachers who themselves cannot identify subjects
>and verbs. I haven't been able to get much
>support for this idea from this group, but
>perhaps I can get the parents and the business
>world to put pressure on the schools to make a
>change. The obstacles that Amanda lists are
>actually not that serious, at least from the
>perspective of the KISS Approach. If it is
>spread over a number of grades, KISS does not
>require much time in class, or from the teachers.
>Ed
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>
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