Tim,
    Thanks much for once again making this important point concerning
the lack of "solid research against grammar teaching."   One key, I
think, is determining what  we mean or ought to  mean by "functional",
"contextual", and "sentence based."  If you are right, then Fish's
notion that we can understand grammar as a system of "logical
relationships" and a system of forms outside the give and  take of real
world application (content?) is wrong.  For that reason, I would take
issue with "sentence based" and replace it with "discourse based," since
so much of  the decision making that occurs at the sentence level is and
ought to be discourse sensitive. We also find that far more than
"logical relationships" (Fish's terms) are at play. In other words, Fish
inherits students who know nothing about language and tries to remedy
that in a short space. But I think it's wrong not to at least put that
to practical use in the interpretation and creation of text, if not in
his course, then in a following one. And when you do, a much richer view
of language will come out of it.

Craig

Hadley, Tim wrote:

>Point of order (or whatever type of point this should be) regarding the existence of "solid research against grammar teaching":
>
>In this discussion, precision in terminology is extremely important. As a matter of fact, there has never been any solid research against "grammar teaching." There has been, instead, some research (I won't get into the debate right now about whether it was "solid") against the teaching of "formal," "traditional," "linguistic," "Latin-based," "non-contextual" (etc.--you get the point) grammar--which is an approach to grammar teaching that is more or less the opposite of a functional, contextual, sentence-based approach to grammar. The former (formal grammar) is believed, on the basis of some research, to be non-helpful to the improvement of writing. The latter (functional grammar) is now, and has been for more than 100 years, almost universally recognized as helpful, appropriate, and necessary to the improvement of writing.
>
>It is unfortunate that this distinction is often not made clear when this subject is discussed, and that many people, even among the English establishment, continue to believe that research has "proven" that teaching "grammar" (any and all grammar) is harmful.
>
>Tim
>
>Tim Hadley
>Research Assistant, The Graduate School
>Ph.D. candidate, Technical Communication and Rhetoric
>Texas Tech University
>
>________________________________
>
>From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of John E. Dews
>Sent: Tue 5/31/2005 12:24 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Response to Fish piece
>
>
>
>    Below is a response to the Fish op-ed piece I forwarded to the list earlier. There are already strong feelings against his methods -- I've already heard one person today complain that he is ignoring all the "solid research against grammar teaching."
>
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
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>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
>

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