Johanna:

If this is your recommendation for the book, I agree. On the thread 
John was looking for a book which would help him deal with basic to 
intermediate TESOL, and I though that the book was too difficult for 
such a purpose. For teacher trainees "The Grammar Book" is good, but 
it is still a reference book, as the authors state in the beginning 
of the book. The Linguistics department at Indiana State uses the 
book for teacher training and TESOL certification.


Eduard 




On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Johanna Rubba wrote...

>I'm trying to understand why the book Rebecca Watson refers to would 
>"jangle my nerves". I don't know what IEP stands for; that might 
help 
>me understand.
>
>Anyone who has read my posts on this list knows that I advocate 
>teaching grammar in effective ways. For beginning students (for all 
>students, really), visuals are great. I believe in nouns, verbs, 
>capitalization, and punctuation. How they're defined and how and 
when 
>they're taught is what concerns me. I use my own manuscript in my 
>structure-of-English classes, and most of my students consistently 
rate 
>it between 8 and 10 (10-high) on two criteria: (1) clarity and 
>accessibility of the information and (2) usefulness of the 
information 
>for their future careers as teachers.
>
>I don't recall anyone posting to this list who doesn't want 
>schoolchildren to come out of K-12 fluent in standard English. It's 
the 
>HOW and the WHAT and the WHEN that are at issue.
>
>As to The ESL Grammar Book, I stated clearly in my post that I was 
>referring to teacher trainees, not ESL students. Maybe it's better 
as a 
>reference book than a textbook. I haven't taught from it myself; I'm 
>just familiar with its contents. Students apparently find it 
>accessible, since it was in use at MT and Herb has testified to that 
>effect, and I imagine it is in use elsewhere, or else it wouldn't be 
on 
>the market anymore. I do believe that ESL teachers should have 
Master's 
>degrees, and that  they should have a full year of linguistics, from 
>phonetics to discourse. If you're going to teach language, you'd 
better 
>know your subject.
>
>As to learning linguistic theories when preparing to teach ESL, I 
don't 
>see what's wrong with it. Much of teacher education is _background 
>knowledge_, not necessarily stuff that you will translate directly 
into 
>classroom lessons. Teachers need good classroom materials that are 
>informed by linguistics, too, but those materials will not be theory 
>books. Such materials aren't widely available right now; that's one 
>thing some of us are working on. Teachers have also been known to 
>design their own teaching materials. Understanding how language 
works 
>is very useful for that endeavor.
>
>History majors who go on to be high school or middle school history 
>teachers learn more history in college than they ever teach, I 
assume. 
>I know much, much, much more about language than I ever teach, 
because 
>all of my classes are introductory, and I have no linguistics MA or 
PhD 
>students. A good number of students in our elementary-school teacher 
ed 
>program seem to believe that they don't need to know more about the 
>subjects they will teach than what is in the teaching materials they 
>will use for their students. This isn't good.
>
>Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
>Linguistics Minor Advisor
>English Department
>California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>Tel.: 805.756.2184
>Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>
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