Gretchen,
   You shouldn't sell your class short.
   One of the problems with many "empirical" studies of grammar is that 
the outcomes have been so narrowly defined. I had a long standing 
disagreement with a colleague I otherwise admire (and agree with) until 
I realized that he thought my advocating grammar instruction was to 
REPLACE instruction in writing. Now I'm wondering how widespread that 
is; the Hillocks report (and Graham and Perin) seem to compare groups of 
students who have had grammar instruction with those who are actually 
writing and find not at all surprisingly that the groups that write do 
better on follow-up writing tests. Therefore, as this "impeccable" logic 
evolved into an NCTE position, "Grammar in isolation" is harmful because 
it takes valuable time away from reading and writing.
   I am a writing teacher who has come to feel that teaching of writing 
is inhibited by a lack of shared understanding about language. I would 
never in a million years present it as a replacement.
   What Gretchen seems to be saying is that she has different short term 
goals. One is to make students into explorers of language, looking for 
themselves rather than looking to the teacher for answers. Another is 
that she would like students to have a deeper understanding of what a 
noun is than the simple "person, place, or thing" definition that they 
come in with.
  Is that useful? In isolation, it may lack payoff. What we need, I 
think, is for a sense of how a deeper knowledge might build year to year 
so that the teachers who get these students the next year can count on 
the students knowing about nouns, build on that, and maybe put it to 
work in productive ways.
   But we need to get our post-testing focused on what we are tying to 
accomplish; in this case, are the students more excited about language 
and do they have a deeper understanding of what nouns are (and other 
aspects of language she might explore in the same way.)
   It is hard to defend grammar study without the sense of knowledge 
about language as a useful goal, and it's hard for one teacher to do 
that alone.

Craig

Gretchen Lee wrote:
> In a message dated 9/10/2007 5:45:53 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, 
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>     Though it is clearly desirable to trial approaches which engage
>     students' interest and involvement, one should not confuse the
>     latter with effectiveness in improving studens' production of more
>     accurate grammar.
>
> *Hello,*
> ** 
> *I absolutely agree that empirical evidence is necessary.  I'm a 
> loooong way from a book.  However, my students are lucky to be from 
> the upper middle class and in some cases, the wealthy upper class.  
> Their production of "correct" grammar is very good, barring a few 
> "between you and I" and lesser/fewer problems.  My aim is to engage 
> them in analyzing grammar and making it seem interesting at the same 
> time.  I can't teach lesser/fewer with countable nouns if they don't 
> know (and don't care) what a countable noun is.*
> ** 
> *At this point the class is less about error detection/prevention than 
> it is about helping them find out that grammar is fascinating.  With a 
> little luck, they will stay interested enough to want to take a 
> linguistics class in college, rather than avoiding it at all costs.  
> My little class is obviously silly in many ways (see original subject 
> line).  But for the first time in many of their lives, grammar is a 
> class to which they look forward. I hope that's worthwhile.*
> ** 
> *Thanks,*
> *Gretchen*
>
>
>
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