Craig,

Let me say in return that everything you say is also clear and sensible, and
I agree with it. Not everything that is true is useful in every context. One
person whose primary concern is educating students in reading and writing
will focus on what students need to know and the best methods for teaching
it to them. Another who studies how language works may focus on describing
the principles of syntax and phonology that are at work in the human mind.
The latter person may well celebrate the marvels of human language skills.
The former may find it less relevant to do so.

For my entire career I taught both writing and syntax courses. I've written
textbooks in both areas. Although each field informed the other, my classes
and emphases in the two areas were very different. But they never seemed in
conflict in any way, and it always surprises me when people say they are. (I
certainly don't mean you, Craig.)

It's been years since I read Pinker's *The Language Instinct*. I agree with
his assertion that we are born with brains that come structured with certain
properties (call them instincts if you like) and that among these is a well
developed ability for children to acquire the language that is spoken around
them without special instruction. The evidence for this seems to me
overwhelming. But I do not recall Pinker ever claiming that an innate
capacity for children to acquire language precludes the need for educating
them in language skills, and I would certainly never say so.

My position in brief:

Kids have an innate capacity for learning language. What they pick up and
the speed with which they do it is amazing as hell. Just knocks your socks
off. They also need lots of education. They need to read a lot, write a lot,
and be trained in reading and writing.

My position may be wrong, but it is not contradictory. (I could expand on
why it isn't, but a six-paragraph post is already long enough.)

Dick



On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Dick,
>    Everything you say is very clear and sensible, and I would agree with
> it. I have made the same arguments, or tried to, in my classes. Yet I have
> become increasingly uncomfortable with the position over the last few years.
> It's not that it's wrong, so much, as that it relies very heavily on
> thinking about grammar as a formal system. It's true in a very limited
> domain.
>    You could make somewhat the same case about vocabulary. With few
> exceptions, our students are experts in vocabulary in that the words which
> they are using are being used in ways close to the ways they are being used
> by those around them. If they have non-mainstream ways of using a word,
> chances are good they share those non-mainstream uses with a community of
> users. And describing that knowledge would certainly take a great deal more
> than a single semester. Plato (Socrates), if my memory is correct, made the
> argument that the concepts tied to those words are innate. But I believe if
> you tried to make the case that our students are masters of vocabulary, you
> would be met with a very different kind of resistance than you get from
> making that claim about grammar. What they know about words is sophisticated
> and complex, and they may have a hard time describing that knowledge to us,
> but it's not enough.
>    If knowledge of grammar is separate from putting that knowledge to work
> in the world, and if our prime focus is on whether the forms being used are
> "grammatical" (shared by others), it's easy to say that the grammar the
> child has is an expert grammar. But if grammar is inherently functional,
> then the fact they they are "poor writers" and "inarticulate speakers" means
> that they lack expertise, a very critical expertise, which comes with full
> acquisition of a grammar. If the "domain of grammar" includes use (and not
> simply correctness), then they are not experts.
>    From a functional view, we can't fall back on the notion that the
> grammar is already there or will inevitably happen on its own (more or less
> biologically, as Pinker would have it.) We have to more or less mentor it
> into being. Automaticity is a feature of language that allows for attention
> to be more centrally on meaning while some kinds of processing are happening
> at a below conscious level. The grammar the student presents in production
> has become automatic, and we certainly need to respect what the student
> knows, even unconsciously, as we mentor progress. But we seem to be missing
> the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room--far too many students are far
> too inarticulate. It has become far too easy for educators to ignore grammar
> (other than error) when addressing that very real problem. If the teaching
> of grammar is primarily a description of forms or of the rules for the
> generation of forms, then the gap between grammar and the higher aspects of
> literacy seems very wide. But if the domain of grammar includes the
> production of effective text, then there is no gap at all. One can't happen
> without implicating the other.
>
> Craig
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 10:05 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Domain of Grammar
>
> On the topic of "evidence that 'native speakers' are 'experts' in their own
> language":
>
> One could teach a college course called "The Grammar of Everyday Speech"
> exploring the syntactic principles that underlie the language of average
> people who speak a more-or-less standard American dialect. (That is
> basically the syntax course I taught for over 30 years.)  At the end of the
> semester students would discover that (1) one semester is not nearly
> adequate to cover the topic and (2) the syntax of even casual speech is
> extraordinarily complex and sophisticated. One could also teach a course
> called "The Grammar of an Average 8-Year-Old" and draw the very same
> conclusions.
>
> It is unquestionably true that native and non-native speakers who are
> fluent in a language have internalized an impressive body of knowledge. An
> 8-year-old might be incapable of mastering the rules of a game like chess
> despite repeated exposure but will have mastered language rules that are a
> hundred times more complicated.
>
> It is in that sense--and only that sense--that our students come to us as
> language "experts." Most of them have little conscious knowledge of the
> principles they have internalized. A good many of them are poor writers and
> inarticulate speakers. These "experts" are in our classes because they need
> training to become even close to expert in other important senses.
>
> One might make a credible case against the above position. One's case
> cannot be credible, however, if one confuses one sense of "expert" with
> another.
>
> Dick
>

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