Hello--
 
I've been reluctant to get involved in these ATEG discussions because I'm
already going crazy trying to keep up with two California Listservs in
what has for several years been my major interest, reading and the
teaching of reading.
 
However, I can't resist replying to Sharon's request for information,
since these questions have plagued many of us.  There is an excellent
summary of research on teaching grammar in the Handbook of Research on
Teaching the Eglish Language Arts (1991; the article is by Hillocks and
Smith).
However, I don't recall reading there about any summaries of research
dealing with a developmental hypothesis. A decade ago, though, there was
an intriguing article by Jean Sanborn:  "Grammar:  Good wine before its
time."  It was published in Vol. 75 of The English Journal.  I don't
recall Sanborn having done any experimental research on this topic, but
maybe she has since then.  Anyway, her developmental hypothesis was about
the same as yours, Sharon.
 
Something else you might find useful is my 1996 book, Teaching Grammar in
Context.  In the second chapter I've dealt with some of the experimental
research, and in the third chapter I've discussed some of the research
(mostly from the 1970s) on trends in children's syntactic development.
If you do dip into this, please let me know what you think.  I personally
think more experimental research is needed, with a different thrust (see,
for instance, Martha Kolln's work and the extremely small body of
research on teaching grammar in the context of writing, if improving
writing skills (syntactic fluency and versatility, editing) is one's
aim.  We need more research of this sort, and I myself think it would be
great to have research based on this developmental hypothesis, if there
isn't already some such research.
 
Connie Weaver