You may want to look at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/home.htm to
supplement whatever text you select.Please keep us informed about your
search. Good luck - Sandy
At 09:43 AM 2/15/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Rebecca,
>Who are the publishers of the texts you mentioned? I'll be teaching a
>course called "Grammar" for the first time next year. I'm looking around
>for some useful and interesting things for my high school students.
>
>Thanks,
>Katy Perry
>
>
> > Geoff,
> >Useful treatment you seem to do. I'm wondering what text you use to back
> >up your approach.
> >
> >As for me, having tried Klammer and Schultz, Analyzing English Grammar for
> >a year, and finding their treatments both too detailed for my students and
> >their statement of sentence types imperspicuous, I'm returning to my
> >favorite, Morenberg's Doing Grammar, accompanied by his The Writer's
> >Options: Lessons in Style and Arrangement, in order to anchor the work
> >closer to the writing process. I like Morenberg's treatment of sentence
> >types and his exposition on relatives, noun clauses, infinitives etc.
> >
> >Further, I have discovered that my department tells students to take
> >Advanced Grammar IN ORDER to improve their writing... gad.... so... I'm
> >hoping that the Writer's Options book will help me anchor more in the uses
> >of grammar in writing.
> >
> >ciao,
> >
> >rebecca wheeler
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Geoff Layton wrote:
> >
> >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
> >
> >To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> >at:
> >
> ><http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html>http://listserv.muohio.edu
> /archiv
> >es/ateg.html
> >and select "Join or leave the list"
> >
> >Visit ATEG's web site at <http://ateg.org/>http://ateg.org/
> >
> >
> >--
> >*******************************************
> >Rebecca S. Wheeler, Ph.D.
> >Assistant Professor
> >Department of English
> >Christopher Newport University
> >1 University Place
> >Newport News, VA 23606-2998
> >
> >Editor, Syntax in the Schools
> >The Journal of the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar (ATEG), an
> >assembly of the NCTE
> ><http://www.ateg.org/>http://www.ateg.org/
> >
> >phone: (757) 594-8891; fax: (757) 594-8870
> >email: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >*******************************************
> >
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>and select "Join or leave the list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
Sandra Smith
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
