I'm writing to respond to Johanna Rubba's wonderful posting.  I'd like to
express my personal interest in seeing her book, so if you're listening,
Johanna, please put me on your short list!

> For those of you trying to motivate 'disadvantaged' or 'at-risk' or
> 'basic' learners to be interested in grammar, I STRONGLY recommend
> actively using their own varieties of English as a hook to make them
> interested in language structure.

Yes, this is a good idea, and some of us have done this. I've used it in
grammar 'games' - where we focus on the differences between "street
English" and "standard English" (not the best of terminologies, by the
way).  The interest level is peaked for a brief period.

> Maybe a good way to handle it would be to start by discussing the social
> significance of different kinds of English, then moving into a comparison
> of rules for different kinds of English

I'm afraid that this discussion would be fine for academics, like us, but
if you mean to engage inner-city kids in it, I doubt that you'd have their
interest for long - nor their attention. "Social significance" just won't
attract them.

> I can already hear everyone groaning about how clueless I am on what it's
> like to work in these classrooms, and you're dead right. So if what I say
> here about reading is pie in the sky, forgive me. I know that it's a
> struggle to get these students interested in ANY aspect of education in
> many cases, if not most.

Yes, it is something like pie-in-the-sky, but it's not a terrible idea.
The hard part is getting the kids to listen.  What I sometimes do is share
reading aloud with them - with the stipulation that they follow the text as
others are reading.  This works SOMETIMES for some of the students (you can
read to some of the students some of the time ...... ).

>  If we continue to say things like 'the
> grammar in their writing is atrocious' or 'they don't know any grammar',
> our own understandings of the problem will be skewed. Every human being
> who is speaking is following complex rules of both structure and social
> appropriateness. If someone can't write according to the rules of formal,
> standard English, it's because they have either had insufficient exposure
> to that kind of English (e.g., through lots of reading), or because they
> were unmotivated to learn it when they were exposed to it. ...You won't
fix
> the thinking by hammering the student with grammar rules.

Absolutely. Simple criticism or (worse) complaint has no positive outcome.
And ... you won't improve writing by showing students all the things
they're doing WRONG!  One of the problems we face at the secondary level is
that kids are turned off to writing because they KNOW they're no good at it
- their teachers have been telling them so for years!  No wonder they don't
read or write - where's the reward?

But in all fairness, it's not easy to refrain from pointing out that
"cause" is not "because" (or that "cuz" is not a word), that "what I done"
is wrong (or more simply and less offensively, "non-standard"), or that
"there" is not the same as "their." The big question we all need to answer
is the one about how to fix student writing without making the student feel
pig ignorant (egad, am I talking about 'self-esteem?'). We could all use
some good advice.

Thanks again, Johanna, for your thoughts.  I'm looking forward to the
continuing discussion - and to your book.

Paul D.