Dear All:

 

Every semester, I ask students in my Pedagogic Grammar course to pick a
topic that comes up in K-12 "grammar" (loosely defined) - like
"subject-verb agreement," or "prepositions," or "the semicolon" - and
write a comparison/contrast essay based on examining the way six school
texts and two reference grammars deal with the topic. They get to pick
texts, and I ask them to choose topics and texts related to the age
level they plan to teach. I'm trying to get them to practice the kind of
thought processes involved in choosing a good textbook, and also trying
to expose them to the fact that there's variation.

 

As a result of reading these essays semester after semester, I've
started (inevitably) to notice recurring examples of what I've taken to
calling Stupid Textbook Tricks. Examples:

 

*         Defining a preposition as a word that connects a noun to
another word in the sentence. Verbs and conjunctions do that too.

 

*         Telling students a fragment "doesn't represent a complete
thought." Students who write fragments think they do, so the comment is
absolutely useless to the students it's directed at - and who among us
is certain that our thoughts are ever complete?

 

*         Telling students that "nouns are necessary for a sentence to
be grammatical." Not only is that wrong ("Run!"), when did you ever have
to tell a native English-speaker to use nouns in a sentence? They may
not know what to call them, they may use the wrong ones, and they may
well misspell them, but forget to use them without prompting? 

 

*         Asking students to use exactly ____ (fill in number here)
adjectives, or adverbs, etc. in a paragraph. Now that's a naturalistic
writing practice. "Why did you write that essay, Mr. Thoreau? " "Well, I
had this set of six hundred and twelve adjectives I needed to use...."

 

As you can tell, I'm partly writing this as an exercise in ameliorative
venting. However, it occurs to me that there is something ATEG could do
that could achieve a rare mix of utility and total, refreshing
obnoxiousness: Create a list of these that ATEG's membership agree are
annoyingly bad and post it outside the textbook display at conventions. 

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 


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