Edith,
   You're right on target with the suggestion. I meant speaking. It's an
issue we have been dealing with as a discipline for some time; if
language is acquired naturally, then why teach grammar? I think there's
much evidence that writing is quite different from speech, even in its
grammar (and I don't mean only Standard English.) That transition
deserves much more conscious teaching than we currently give.
   I like Bill's analogy. It's more like basketball than it is like walking.

Craig



 Craig,
> Thank you for this. It is very good. I do have a question about the last
> sentence in 5: Particularly important is the role of conscious knowledge
> in acquisition of structures and rhetorical options more common to
> writing than reading.
> Did you mean "more common to writing than to reading" or "more common to
> writing than to speaking"? The latter makes more sense to me.
>
> Edith Wollin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:53 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: rationale for teaching grammar
>
>    Two areas of recent discussion--the official NCTE position and the
> relative importance of explicit versus unconscious knowledge--were
> addressed in our draft position on rationale, worked out on the NPG list
> and presented at the ATEG conference. I am folding it in here in the
> hopes that we can embrace or amend it as seems appropriate. The first
> point attempts to directly address NCTE's still official position.The
> early draft was much harsher than this version, but I think the critique
> is still very much in place.
>
> Craig
>
> Rationale for Teaching Grammar
>
> 1)  Response to NCTE.
>      The Hillocks' report on Research On Teaching Composition, the
> foundation for NCTE's current anti-grammar position, is now twenty years
> old and out of touch with recent shifts in our understanding of grammar,
> notably functional, rhetorical, and cognitive approaches.
> The usefulness for teaching grammar was measured in very narrow terms,
> reduction in writing "errors" over short term. Grammar teaching was
> deemed "harmful' primarily because it pulled instruction time away from
> reading and writing, which were a priori labeled "higher order
> concerns." Little attention was paid to the possibility that grammar can
> mean many things, that reducing any activity to "avoidance of error" is
> fundamentally reductive, or that school-based traditional grammar of the
> time was not a particularly accurate description of the language.
> Particular damage was done by presenting these conclusions as
> definitive, when, in fact, they were simply reporting the
> ineffectiveness of teaching a faulty or impractical understanding of
> language when measuring short term growth on controlled, holistically
> assessed writing samples.  For a sympathetic consideration of the
> context for these mistakes here and in England, see Hudson (2005) and
> Kolln and Hancock (2005). One result has been a progressive loss of
> knowledge about grammar within the field. We have also seen re-emergence
> of regressive practices to fill the void of no instruction.
> Professionals have continued to avoid reconsideration of grammar in part
> because they have insufficient knowledge to draw on.
>
> 2)  People who have considerable knowledge of grammar seem universally
> to find that knowledge valuable, not just in specialist enterprises, but
> in everyday language interactions, in reading, in forming/revising their
> own writing, and in helping others.  That knowing about grammar is
> valuable but teaching of grammar is not seems counter-intuitive.
>
> 3)  It may very well be that any "higher order concern" is not easily
> addressed in short term spurts.  It's a solid truism in writing
> instruction that growth in writing is not adequately tested within a
> semester. The same is roughly true for reading; many students who take a
> post test after a half year or year will score lower on the follow-up
> test, which would seem to be saying that they have been harmed  by the
> instruction. Even indications of growth are often within the margin of
> error for the test.  This has been rightly attributed to weaknesses in
> the tests as measures of long-term progress and long-term growth. It's
> hard to measure short term, for example, the extent or usefulness of a
> student being engaged by writing or reading. It may very well be that
> knowledge about language shows its value over longer periods of time,
> especially when the focus is not on teaching to a narrowly focused test,
> but on cultivating maturation of the student. Students may experience
> periods of awkwardness as they try out the new rhetorical tools that a
> rich exploration of grammar brings to the fore.
>
> 4) Animosity toward grammar is connected to a narrow and distorted view
> of what grammar is about.  For most people, it is a catalogue of
> constraints that language needs to conform to in more formal registers.
> The progressive anti-grammar position has never questioned that narrow
> view and has never tried or succeeded in lessening the burdens of
> correctness.
> Rather than argue against the validity of these surface "rules", the
> argument has been that direct teaching of grammar has little effect on
> their reduction.  The prevailing view is that they can be addressed "in
> context" and with a minimal metalanguage, a minimal need for conscious
> understanding. The position fails on three counts.  It fails to replace
> or diminish a fixation on "error". It fails to provide the complex
> understanding necessary for a dialogue about error "in context" to be
> useful. And it fails to acknowledge the rich role of grammar in carrying
> out the work of discourse, in building purposeful and effective writing.
>
> 5)  The question of whether knowledge of grammar is useful is best
> understood as a question about knowledge about language.  Language can
> be acquired naturally in language rich environments, but that does not
> mean that reflection on language is not natural or valuable or that
> cultural knowledge about language should not be valued and passed on.
> Students come to school with a rich language already acquired, but they
> do not know the conventions of standard English, do not know how to use
> their own natural grammar as rhetorical resource in critical reading and
> writing, and  have not yet acquired the language or conventions typical
> of the academic disciplines. Particularly important is the role of
> conscious knowledge in acquisition of structures and rhetorical options
> more common to writing than reading.
>
> 6)  A much better measure of what it means to teach grammar "in context"
> is looking at the work of grammar when grammar is working well,
> especially in contexts the student has yet to master. Grammar is a
> natural and inevitable component of all languages, one that would be
> there with or without our awareness of it, one that makes meaning
> possible. Words are not words apart from their grammatical functions.
> When language is working well, the role of grammar is below
> consciousness. But grammar is best understood in precisely these
> situations, when it contributes smoothly to the clarity and
> thoughtfulness of effective discourse. "Error in context" is not a true
> context approach to grammar.
>
> 7)  Modern linguistics is not a unified or uncontentious field, but
> solid insights are available from rhetorical, functional, and cognitive
> perspectives.  We are beginning to collect a solid body of approaches
> that aid in interpretive reading and effective writing.  Rather than a
> set of limiting constraints, grammar can be thought of as a
> meaning-making resource. It can be incorporated into the "higher order"
> activities of reading and writing as an enormously useful adjunct toward
> their goals.
> It is also worth studying in its own right as central to language, to
> our most communal resource as members of human communities.
>
> 7)  State standards universally call for mastery of writing conventions
> and fluency with more formal discourse, but they do not present a
> reasonable path to accomplish those goals. Official opposition to the
> teaching of grammar has not changed the demands, but has simply asserted
> that these achievements cannot be taught directly. We believe that every
> student has the right to achieve mastery and the right to have the
> notion of mastery articulated as clearly as possible.  We believe that
> curriculum should be structured with the assumption that mastery is
> possible for all students, not just a talented few.
>
> 8) People knowledgeable about language are much more likely to see
> dialect forms as rule-driven, as nonstandard rather than incorrect, much
> less likely to see them as indicative of the abilities of the speaker.
> Ignorance about language creates a climate in which myths about language
> and language prejudice can flourish and grow.
>
> 9)  We believe that any student graduating from a public school system
> should have spent a considerable amount of time studying language,
> including the grammar of his/her native language and its role in the
> making of meaning.
>
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