Geoff,

What I think you have discovered is that learning has to be meaning-based.
It has to be meaning-full.  And it has to have a meaningful context.  Let's
face it.  If the isolated teaching of grammar turned students into better
language users, it would.  Believe me (and Susan Ohanian who has paid even
closer attention to this than I have), the vast majority of English
classrooms out there still provide traditional grammar instruction.  But
that instruction is either so meaningless to students that they can't even
remember getting it, or it is so distasteful or disconnected that students
didn't learn much.

The issue that we should be talking about here is not whether or not grammar
should be taught, but HOW it should be taught.  And it seems that the
systematic teaching of grammar is not the best approach.  Meaningful grammar
instruction has to be more organic and tied to a context.  That is what all
the learning theory points to, by the way.  I'm not talking about just
grammar here.  All learning generally requires a context.

I think what surprises me most often when I read discussions on this list is
the lack of consideration for what we know about how people learn.  The
people on this list are probably not representative of the way most children
learn, especially the subject of grammar.  Children do not seem to bring to
awareness their knowledge of grammar  through the isolated teaching of that
grammar.  It makes no sense to them.  What does make sense to them is
conversations about the language they use, and then frequent, meaningful,
and "just in time" individual direct instruction about particular problems
they are having.

For what it's worth, I don't think NCTE is "anti-grammar."  In fact, I think
that's a rather ridiculous assumption.  I DO think NCTE members are trying
to say quite clearly that there has to be a better way to teach grammar, to
define grammar, to deal with grammatical issues in meaningful ways.



Nancy G. Patterson, PhD
Portland Middle School, English Dept. Chair
Portland, MI  48875

"To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can
learn."

--bell hooks

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http://www.npatterson.net/mid.html

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