Herb, THANK YOU for summing up this issue so succinctly. May I print out and
share your summary with the students in my advanced grammar class? (I have
been toying with the idea of sending them off to the archives to read our
recent discussions, but I'm trying to get them excited about grammar, not
more frustrated!

Nancy

Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
[log in to unmask]
803-786-3706

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 10:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grammar Certification

Patty and Rebecca,

The two of you have expressed a realistic statement of the situation we
face.  We've gone through fifty years of resistance to grammar teaching that
was in one way or another all of the things it's been described as by
various participants.  It was a reaction to bad pedagogy, to bad content, to
a desire to place emotional and personal growth over the rigor of a
discipline, to the growth of constructivist pedagogy, to sloth, to
ignorance, and you could probably suggest a few more.  It probably had
something to do with global warming as well.

But where we stand now is that

1.  We have a cadre of teachers two generations deep who have not been
trained in grammar.

2.  We have school boards, PTAs, Chambers of Commerce, and other interest
groups all of whom think that grammar should be taught and that the content
should be about correctness, about dos and don'ts.

3.  We have widespread disagreement over content within the discipline, with
some advocating a narrow prescriptivism, some a traditional school grammar
as Ed Schuster calls it, some a more formal syntax under the influence of
linguistics, some a traditional scholarly grammar in the vein of Jespersen
and Quirk (me, for one), and some nothing apart from rhetoric for speech and
writing.

The ATEG Scope & Sequence project is an attempt to cut through this by
proposing a developmentally and linguistically valid curriculum that will
provide students with a vocabulary and with concepts and analytical skills
for talking clearly about a wide range of language problems.  Getting NCTE
to buy into this agenda will continue to be a struggle, but it's only a part
of the ongoing struggle we're involved in.

There is no question that it's frustrating.  All of us have felt that, some
of us for most of our careers.  People like Ed Schuster, Martha Kolln, and I
have been at this for forty years.  But we have to continue the fight,
because it's the only way we'll improve language arts education, and we've
probably got a better shot at it now than at any other time in the past half
century.

Hang in there!

Herb


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Patricia
Lafayllve
Sent: Sun 9/3/2006 9:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grammar Certification
 
Rebecca writes:

 

Children need direct instruction.  Using code-switching and anything else
that is meaningful is so desperately needed.  But the students studying to
be teachers need to be taught this stuff so that they can squeeze it in to a
jam-packed day.  AND we need to have teachers that know how to speak
standard english.

 

Sorry to be so frustrated.  It seems hopeless.  

 

Rebecca Watson

 

 

I am also feeling pretty frustrated - and I'm not even done with my graduate
work yet!

 

What I'm seeing is a circular argument.  We need to teach grammar more
effectively (there is a lot of disagreement on how, but we seem to agree
here).  We also need to include societal awareness of language variation,
class issues, etc.  There do not seem to be effective books which cover
these issues (yet!), which means we are "handicapped" when it comes to
teaching grammar more effectively.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

Unfortunately, I have no specific answers to my own concerns.  I keep hoping
the discussions here will bear some fruit - right now there's a lot of
dissent, which is healthy, but not a lot of practical application.  I'm
here, and I'm hanging in, because I learn a great deal from the majority of
these posts.  My hope is that this, along with my studies, will help me
become a better instructor in the long run.

 

Still - it can be very frustrating.

 

-patty

 

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