[log in to unmask] wrote:
 
> I want students who plan to teach secondary English, ESL/EFL,
> students who might go on in linguistics.  But this is a small
> college, and there is not one full-time tenured professor here
> who is not a literature professor.
 
I find that the education faculty are often the best sources of
referrals to my grammar course.  The education faculty and their
students have a practical sense about education and a desire to know
about the language in order to teach it effectively.  Perhaps it would
be wise to get on the agenda of one or two of the education faculty's
meetings so that you can present your new grammar course to them.
 
Similarly, I have also found that I can win some faculty in English
(read here literature or creative writing) over to the college-level
study of grammar if I couch the discussion in terms that they
understand.  For example, when I pitched my grammar course to the
English curriculum committee (all literature profs with one creative
writing teacher), I spoke of Shakespeare and Dickinson as the greatest
grammarians in the language.  I did this partly because it's true
(verbal artists have a real understanding of the semantic and
grammatical potential of the language) and partly because I wanted them
to see that the study of grammar was relevant to the study of English
(in the narrower literature or writing sense of the discipline of
English).  Through that presentation, they came to see a grammarian as a
kindred spirit, not an anal retentive, drill-and-rote task-master.  They
even trusted me with some of their students.  Likewise, I then managed
to work myself into the syllabi of some of my colleagues classes, by
offering to lead a class or two on "stylistics" (read here the grammar
of literature).  The students immediately understood that we were
talking about grammar and that grammar offered a significant insight
into literature and/or their writing.  Many students enroll in my
grammar sections after those one hour discussions of grammar.
 
Here's wishing you the best,
 
Dan
--
Daniel Kies
Department of English
College of DuPage
425 22nd Street
Glen Ellyn, IL  60137-6599  USA
 
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