Eduard, I absolutely agree. A noun is a car, a doll, a pencil, a cloud, a
chair.
But these are not names of things. Do we need to give a theoretical
definition to first graders? If we do, we should find something better than
A noun is the name of a person, place or thing. The student has to learn
this by rote because it doesn't mean anything.
First graders have perfectly good brains. If they couldn't make
generalizations and apply them, they would not know how to speak at all. It
is the teachers who think the stuff they had to memorize as children is
simple. It is amazing how much we believe when the people around us tell
it, and when they give examples we make the connection, even though it
defies logic.
A proper noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. Ellen and Barbara
and Bob are names. When we get theoretical we can talk about naming words,
and talk about proper nouns, but not common nouns.
Can we find a better way to talk about common nouns, one that will not leave
the students confused when they try to apply it in new situations?
This definition leads to problems when the students are learning more
sophisticated uses of language. The same system that talks about persons,
places, and things also talks about words called articles, which are only
three, a, an, and the.
We need to be able to deal with a class of words that tell which car, or
doll, or pencil we want the child to bring to us. These words can be
articles. They can also be possessives, or demonstratives, or each, every,
which, what, or any. These are the referential determiners, and usually
only one of these can be used before a noun. There is another group of
determiners, quantifying determiners, that can be used alone or with
referential determiners to tell about the noun.
I am not advocating teaching this to first grade students. It can be very
important for international students who ask: Sometimes you use a or an and
sometimes you use the, and sometimes you don't use anything at all. How can
we tell which one to use when?
My argument is that if we don't want grammar to be confusing, we should not
give confusing definitions. A noun is the name of a person, place, or
thing. may be simple, but it does not provide clarity. In fact, this
definition is confusing.
Maybe we could say that a noun is a word that tells something about a
person, place, or thing. Then later we can talk about groups and words that
help us find which one in the group.
Maybe we can just provide examples.
However, it's good to avoid giving lists of isolated words. Paul's example
of the use of the word chair as a verb is one example of the reason this
system is confusing.
It would be useful to help the students learn to identify the nouns in
sentences, and in the process they can discover a lot about nouns.
We also need to have teachers who have dealt with various relevant theories
so they can help lead the students to understanding, instead of boring the
students with rote recitations.
Whatever we do, let's not leave the students thinking grammar is the word
that comes before drills, or that grammar doesn't make any sense because the
definitions are irrelevant.
Jean
Jean Waldman, retired lecturer
University of Maryland
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