Craig,
There is no need to get defensive here. Constructive criticism is the
need of all academic endeavors, and should be invited and appreciated
in this forum. There are some problems which need to be addressed in
order for things to move forward, because:
1.Some members of the ATEG forum have trashed traditional grammar in
books and articles repeatind the idea propagated by NCTE that
the "good, old grammar" is just a bunch of absurd prescriptions.
2.Some have advocated the mixing of contemporary linguistics with
traditional grammar to make it "better," ignoring the fact that even
Chomsky defended the teaching of traditional grammar. Here is how
David Mulroy quotes him:
"I don't see how any person can truly be called "educated' who
doesn't know the elements of sentence structure, or who doesn't
understand the nature of a relative clause, a passive construction,
and so on.Furthermore, if one is going to discuss literature,
including here what students write themselves, and to come to
understanding, and to come to understand how it is written and why,
there conceptual tools are indispensable.
For these purposes, I think traditional grammar so-called ( say, the
grammar of Jespersen) remains today a very impressive and useful
basis for such teaching. I can't see any reason for teaching
structural grammars of English, or for teaching transformational
grammar in the manner of some instructional books that I have seen."
3. Some people are very opposed to the traditional nomenclature and
defition of parts of speech and parts of sentence, and believe that
it should be totally and completely discarded, but cannot offer
anything better because no contemporary grammar has been able to
offer a better grammatical taxonomy and better definitions for the
parts of speech and sentence of the traditional grammar. Again, David
Mulroy, explains that though the nomenclature and definitions of the
traditional grammar are not perfect, they are "prototypical" and more
than sufficient for most public school and college students:
"Fries was right that traditional grammarians have not been entirely
consistent in their definitions of the parts of speech. The parts of
speech are traditionally taught to young students, and the ways in
which they have been taught reproduce the way in which classificatory
schemes are usually internalized. One starts with the prototypes: the
clearest, most familiar examples of a category...As people grow,
they refine their criteria and in the end are capable of making more
or less scientific distinctions..."
At this time ATEG struggles with nomenclature and definitions because
there is confusion about them. Ed Vavra states:
"As long as this group refuses to make such distinctions, it will
fail. In effect, it is speaking and writing nonsense (as I understand
Hobbes to call it), since different members use the same terms to
refer to different constructions, and different terms to refer to the
same constructions. Clear definitions are first principles of
philosophy and of the natural sciences. It amazes me that this group
cannot understand that."
4. Some members have repeated again and again the myth of the "native
speaker" which is contained even in "Some Questions and Answers about
Grammar" listed by ATEG:
"All native speakers of a language have more grammar in their heads
than any grammar book will ever contain. Part of our goal as teachers
is to help students discover that knowledge."
People who still treat Pinker's theories as scientific facts need to
read Sampson's "The 'Language Instinct' Debate" and see for
themselves how much evidence there is against the notion of "language
innateness" or "Universal Grammar." They also need to read Davies'
"The Native Speaker Myth and Reality," and realize that a lot of the
students who participate in English classes are not "native speakers"
who "have more grammar in their heads that any grammar book will ever
contain," but *semilingual* individuals, that is, people who "never
achieve[d] native speaker status in any language." Davies explains:
"What semilingualism argues (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981) is that in
certain situations, either of a multilingual character or an
impoverished one, which creates a climate of disadvantage, children
may be brought up with no fully developed linguistic systems and what
they have will be either (a)a set (two or more)of partial systems or
(b) one inadequate system."
Such discovery would help teachers and instructors to understand that
their responsibility is not to bring to the surface the innner
grammarians inside their students, but to TEACH the *semilingual*
students English as "another language" so that such students could
use their mother tongue adequately at home, in school, and at work.
Eduard
On Wed, 19 Jul 2006, Craig Hancock wrote...
>Ed,
> It was AFTER he wrote those words that David Milroy was invited
to be
>our keynote speaker. I was delighted to meet him then and delighted
>that he was with us at our recent conference. I certainly don't want
to
>speak for David, who is perfectly capable of speaking for himself,
but
>he seems to think we are at least capable of redemeption. I am
>delighted to have among us strong voices for the value of traditional
>grammar.
>
>Craig>
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