Geoff,
Your approach sounds valid.  But I do think that understanding the system
of the language is a tool that could serve students well.  I teach Spanish
as well as English.  I found it much easier to learn a second language
becuase I understood how my native language operates.  Not teaching grammar
deprives students  of important insights that they can use to learn other
things.

Katy Perry
Tartan High School
Oakdale, MN




>At 01:44 PM 2/14/01 -0600, you wrote:
>>It seems to me that the neglect of the discipline of grammar tends to
>reduce speech and writing to > a collage of direct quotations, as in "He
>was all like 'Think 'different,'"'
>>instead of, "He suggested that I think in an unconventional manner.'
>>Grammar is the study of the rules by which we generate new statements of
>>our own.
>
>Let me respond as a former believer in the purity and sanctity of grammar,
>but one who has since undergone the baptism of fire in the secondary school
>classroom.
>
>I think the point that the most members of the list would make is that
>knowledge of the rules of grammar have no bearing on the ability of
>students to create meaning from language - either through writing or
>through reading.  For example, knowledge of the definition of an appositive
>does in no way guarantee that a student can use the form correctly.  (I
>didn't even know what it meant until I came across it in a grammar book
>after I started to teach grammar, and I've been speaking the King's English
>for over 50 years!)
>
>Therefore, the struggle is to find the means (a) to teach students how to
>grow in their ability to create meaning and (b) to convince the "powers
>that be" that this should be the goal rather than knowledge of the specific
>rules of grammar.
>
>In my classroom, I have begun to teach a structure of usage that seems to
>work.  Instead of making students identify grammar constructs, I show them
>how to use the tools of grammar to create meaning.  For example, they can
>use an infintive phrase to express "where" or "when" - and then, create a
>different kind of meaning in a different way using a dependent clause.  At
>no time does the student need to learn the definitions. Just so long as
>they know how to use them!
>
>Therefore, most people who have come to the same conclusion that I have are
>not neglectful of grammar discipline - just concerned that students study
>what they need to know to learn something really useful in life.
>
>Does this help?
>
>Geoff Layton
>
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