On 16-May-09, at 10:20 PM, Craig wrote:
> I have never been convinced by those arguments. Students don't
> complain
> about those rules; they are simply limited by them. I don't say
> that as
> an elitist teacher, but as a teacher who has taught many students that
> other teachers have given up on. You don't help students by giving
> them
> a false description of language because you believe they aren't
> capable
> of the truth.
Hear, hear!
A few weeks ago, I posted the following to my blog:
I think today is the first day that my son asked me about a
prescriptive grammar rule. He's in grade two, and he asked me if it
was true that you can't start a sentence with and. I asked him why he
was curious, and he said that he'd seen it in books but his teacher
had said that it was against the rules.
I asked him why his teacher might do that, but he couldn't imagine a
reason, so we talked about how kids often tell stories with and
between every "sentence" and I asked him how it sounds if you use the
same word(s) too many times. In the end, we agreed that you can start
a sentence with and but that doing it too much sounds funny.
Which seemed to satisfy him, until he added, "but you can't have two
ands in the same sentence, right?" So we got to look at the
difference between coordinating clauses and phrases, and he had no
trouble seeing the difference once it was brought to his attention.
If a seven-year-old can notice a discrepancy between what he's being
told and what he sees, and if he can understand the facts of grammar
with a little Socratic questioning, why do we teach all these fake
oversimplifications?
Best,
Brett
<http://english-jack.blogspot.com>
-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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