Theoretical linguists use the term "grammar" to refer to a person's 
entire language competence, including not just sentence structure but 
pronunciation and word formation. Whether pragmatics and discourse are 
included depends on your theoretical affiliations. This is obviously 
different from the layperson's use of the term. I was using it in this 
technical sense, so I apologize if that wasn't clear.

As to learning by internalizing, second-language research shows that 
people do acquire a second language (or dialect) by immersion; that is, 
they _subconsciously_ construct an internal grammar as they learn. 
Whether they ever perfect that new language/dialect or not has to do 
with amount of exposure, motivation, and various other internal and 
external factors. In this sense, the whole-language people are right. If 
children of normal intelligence are interested in reading and writing 
and if they do a lot of both, they will indeed internalize much of the 
grammar (including rhetorical structure) of whatever they are reading. 
If this starts early and continues through K-12, we will have much 
better writers. Not all will be talented, but most will be competent.

That doesn't mean that people can't learn about _style_ and points of 
prescriptive grammar via instruction. My point is that they can't learn 
much, especially in a short time, by being taught. The way I envision 
grammar teaching working well is as (a) an opportunity to learn 
grammatical terminology and analysis in order to be able to talk about 
and learn about language; (b) an opportunity to understand consciously 
how language works; (c) studying language as a medium of 
expression--similar to studying color theory, design theory, music 
theory, kinesiology and physics for athletes, etc. Part of understanding 
consciously how language works is understanding how grammar shapes our 
meaning and information flow. These are the goals Craig calls for.
(c) is what I think Craig meant in his post. Taking an explicit look at 
fine writing and analyzing it is a great idea! But doing that _alone_ 
will not internalize the structure of that kind of writing and make it a 
natural skill. Only if this kind of study is very consistent and very 
long-lasting, with lots of practice of writing as well as analysis, and, 
once again, lots of reading of the target language/dialect.


Take vocabulary, for example. During the school years, it has been 
estimated, children learn about 5,000 words per year. How many of these 
words are they taught through the (largely poorly-designed) vocabulary 
curriculum? At most a hundred? Two hundred? I doubt that it's that much. 
They learn the rest by reading and hearing the word in context, and 
searching the context for clues to the word's meaning. The more 
exposures they have to the word in more contexts, the more refined their 
  meaning of the word will become. And they do this mostly 
subconsciously. The same thing happens with grammar rules. The reader 
subconsciously notices structures that fit certain rhetorical and social 
contexts, and builds a grammar to suit. Everybody learns at least a few 
different spoken styles of their dialect; nobody teaches them those 
styles. If young people of today are learning a narrower range of 
styles, maybe it's because they are not motivated to learn different 
ones--people around them demand less; they accept the narrower range of 
styles. I'm sure you'd find that many young sci-fi and fantasy fanatics 
internalize the rather stilted language of that genre and are able to 
reproduce it. Yet they can't identify a noun if their lives depend on it.

Many students get the five-paragraph essay formula dinned into their 
heads in high school, but they don't write good essays when they come to 
college--not even good five-paragraph essays. And as we know, good 
writing often does not follow a formula. A good writer creates a pattern 
that works, often subconsciously, including revision.

People who want to learn a second language do best by living in the 
country where that language is spoken and using it every day. Once 
again, not everyone has the same talent for language, but anyone who 
does this will internalize far more grammar rules than they are ever 
taught or even think about. I have experienced this myself several 
times. Granted, I'm a talented language learner, but I've noticed that 
anyone who lives for a long time in another country learns it better 
than those who study grammar rules and vocab. lists. I imagine there is 
research to support this.

I'm not trying to support the whole-language people in abandoning 
grammar teaching altogether. But we must acknowledge the realities of 
language acquisition and use them to our advantage by incorporating 
massive amounts of reading and writing in the language arts curriculum. 
Grammar is only to serve the points I outlined above. My MAJOR goal is 
to disabuse everyone of the notion that the preferred dialect can be 
taught through a grammar curriculum, especially a very short one. We do 
not produce good writing by thinking consciously about the structure of 
the upcoming sentence before we write it. We do a lot of editing to 
perfect our writing, true, but that is the conscious part. And often we 
use little explicit grammatical knowledge to do so. When I revise a 
sentence, I rarely speak to myself in grammatical terms. I try 
different options, moving things around and changing words, until it 
sounds right in context. Once in a while I rely on explicit knowledge of 
grammar, for instance once in a while I notice that I'm changing a 
passive verb to an active one or vice versa. In most cases, I only use 
conscious knowledge of grammar when I need to reduce the word count. 
Then I go on a preposition hunt and a nominalization hunt and a 
"schematic verb" hunt ('make', 'do', 'take', 'have', etc.).

I believe one of the greatest contributions linguists can make to 
grammar teaching is pointing out that there is a natural acquisition 
process; the learner can be trusted to absorb things on her own. Along 
with this goes the fact that children come to school with a large 
grammatical knowledge base, whatever dialect or language they speak, and 
that can be used in grammar teaching (for instance, in learning the 
names of parts of speech and classifying words they encounter).

This will be my last post for a while. I'll be away until the first of 
the new year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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