Cornelia:
 
Thank you for this helpful posting.  You seem to know your way to the
sources for state standards and the National Curriculum (which I had
never heard of).  Are they online, and can you supply URL's?  Thanks!
 
Michael Kischner

  _____  

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cornelia Paraskevas
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 6:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Scope and Sequence



Ed and others concerned about the scope/sequence project:

 I understand the concern about terminology, but I don't share the
fundamental belief that nothing about scope/sequence can be resolved
until we resolve the issues with terminology.  Instead of starting from
isolated examples that have not allowed us to move in our scope/sequence
project, I believe it is more productive to first establish a general
framework and then look at specifics.  

For the general framework, it is useful to look at state standards:
almost all states have fairly explicit guidelines regarding students'
knowledge of "grammar," and these guidelines are fairly consistent
across states.  These guidelines must be considered as we decide what to
include in our project;  otherwise, each state will dismiss our project
as being irrelevant to their own standards.  

In addition to state standards, information from the National Curriculum
has been extremely useful;  that  document provides general guidelines
regarding scope/sequence, leaving specific details to each school.  

The general framework includes what should students know generally about
language, why should they know it and when should they know it.

First, the 'what':  they need to know basic structure and to understand
how  structural choices affect meaning. Most current research dealing
with the grammar/writing interface (including punctuation) considers
clauses to be the fundamental unit-not sentences-and that is useful for
a basic understanding of grammar, one that encourages students to see
the general, underlying structure of any construction:  a clause, then,
is any subject/verb pairing -finite or non finite.  A construction
headed by an infinitive, then, is a clause if it has a subject-explicit
or implicit.  Now, one  might argue that all non-finite constructions
are phrases and not clauses.  A quick look at established reference
grammars like Huddleston's newest book should solve that problem.  Our
terms will follow from our current understanding of language structure
in conjunction with traditional terminology;   where the two differ, an
explanation should suffice to make the differences clear.

'Why" should they know it?  Because -using the example with
infinitives-understanding about finite/non-finite constructions can be
useful in their writing, as they try to move from less fluent to more
fluent syntactic constructions.

"When" should they know it?  Obviously, after they have mastered basic
structure in writing;  the sequence of learning is becoming clearer in
recent years through the work of scholars like Katharine  Perera who has
been researching the development of writing abilities in young students.

 I believe that any scope/sequence project should not be rigidly
prescriptive;  rather, it should consider our current understanding
about language structure, our knowledge about writing abilities and text
development as well as general state requirements.   In other words,
"good old grammar" is not enough to give students the kinds of knowledge
we want them to have.  A final request-there's no need to badmouth
linguists.  We are professionally trained to understand the structure
and functions of language-just like biologists are trained to understand
living organisms.  

Cornelia Paraskevas

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