Ron,

I will have to concede your (and Craig's) point.  I remember personally the 
task it was to teach 7th graders out of Paul Roberts' books.  But, as I 
recall, there were few English teachers around who understood GT grammars 
then (I did feel quite out of place) and the subject was taught as a 
substitute for traditional English grammar and literature.  I felt they were 
completely out of place in the sections on literature, which were 
attrocious.  Be that as it may, I fear that there are some today who will 
rush in and write curricula that use functional grammar or some other 
approach as a substitute for the traditional types of analysis and parsing. 
New theories may be great approaches to language understanding, but in the 
classroom they seem to me only as practical as the extent to which they are 
capable of providing insights from current thinking in the science of 
linguistics.  I respect Halladay for his knowledge of languages, but what I 
think his theory is lacking is a sound mathematical base for language 
description.  Admittedly, linguistics has a ways to go, but without an 
introduction to some of these basic mathematical concepts in the realm of 
language at an earlier stage of learning, the field will continue to suffer. 
At least when I learned diagramming, I was turned on to analysis.  When in 
college I pursued both math and language (with graduate work in 
linguistics), so I must admit there is a personal bias and desire not to 
neglect either of these fields.

Bruce

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald Sheen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 2:40 AM
Subject: The lessons of recent pedagogical history was Rules


> Craig wites:
>
>>   I think it might be fine to teach generative grammar in the schools as 
>> a
>> discipline of inquiry, but I don't think it will help us develop a view 
>> of
>> language that will carry over into reading and writing. I believe both
>> functional and cognitive approaches have much more promise for that.
>
> Though I cannot provide titles, I believe that recent pedagogical history 
> is
> very much on Craig's side.   I believe in the late 70s, a number of books
> teaching generative grammar as support for writing skills were published.
> If memory serves me well, none were successful as pedagogical tools in 
> terms
> of improving writing skills.
>
> Ron Sheen
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface 
> at:
>     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> 

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/