A brief report for those of you who missed it (and nostalgia for those who
were there):

The eleventh annual ATEG conference convened on July 14 and July 15 at North
Hennepin Community College in Minneapolis, graciously hosted by David
Sawyer.  As always, our conferences are very satisfying occasions: spirited
conversations about grammar and teaching, thoughtful presentations, reunions
with friends.

The conference was preceded by the two-day minicourse on Grammar in the
Writing Classroom.  Martha Kolln, Rei Noguchi, and Amy Benjamin presented
their advice to teachers who, as many of us know, hunger for nuts-and-bolts
applications of grammar to the teaching of writing.

At the conference itself, Martha Kolln gave the keynote address in which she
analyzed the rise and fall (and slow resurrection) of classroom grammar in
American education since the 1930s. Her paper will appear in a future issue
of Syntax in the Schools.

Loretta Gray presented the results from a study by her and Paula Heuser
following up on Maxine Hairston's 1981 study of responses by non-academic
professionals to writing errors.  The study suggested that many errors may
be less bothersome to readers today than they were to the responders twenty
years ago.

James Alexander pointed out that because many writing errors are antiquated
usages, students might be told about their errors that they are not so much
wrong as old-fashioned.

Jeff Glauner presented materials from his on-line grammar text, available at
www.park.edu/jglauner/Index.htm.

Carl Gao discussed differences in specificity and perspective that
distinguish such common English prepositions as "at," "on," and "in."

Rebecca Wheeler and Johanna Rubba, in separate presentations, showed
examples of standardized grammar teaching materials and analyzed the
inaccuracies and dialect discrimination that they included.

Rei Noguchi discussed one of his core principles of writing, that greater
complexity at the word, sentence or paragraph level leads to greater length.


Robert Yates and Jim Kenkel challenged the notion that sentence-level
grammar principles are applicable to text-level organization.

Amy Benjamin demonstrated the use of student sentences for in-class
post-mortems of grammar problems.

At the Business meeting, members approved a new set of ATEG officers: Dave
Sawyer, treasurer; Paul Doniger, secretary; Pam Dykstra, vice-president; and
yours truly as president.  I presented plaques and gratitude to the four
outgoing officers: Martha Kolln, president; Ed Vavra, treasurer (both the
founding members of ATEG); Bob Yates, vice-present; Wanda Van Goor,
secretary.

The members decided that our publication, Syntax in the Schools, will now be
subtitled, "The journal of the Assembly for the TEAching of English
Grammar."

I presented drafts of a new project for the ATEG web page, Tips on Teaching
Grammar, a set of short, practical tips on a variety of grammar topics,
intended for teachers at different levels.  The Tips should be up and
running later this summer.  Those with suggestions may contact Pam Dykstra
or me.

Next year's conference will, if all goes as planned, be held at Park
University in Kansas City in July and will be jointly hosted by Jeff Glauner
and Bob Yates.  I look forward to it.


Brock Haussamen