1. The innateness argument is irrelevant to the question of whether or 
not children have unconscious knowledge of what a noun is. However they 
learned it, they have learned it well before age 5, but not 
consciously. None of us can access the knowledge and mental processes 
that are happening while we use language; they are not any more 
accessible to conscious awareness than is the work our brains are doing 
when we see color or walk. Our brains have billions of neurons, and 
only a small portion delivers conscious awareness.

2. Don't confuse explicit awareness (ability to point at a word and say 
"that is a noun") with unconscious knowledge. The same kids who don't 
know what a subject is form tag questions all the time, choosing the 
correct pronoun in the tag to agree with the subject ("Susie has a 
puppy, doesn't _she_?") My point is, you can use the unconscious 
knowledge to help kids master the conscious knowledge: if they feel 
that a word sounds right alone after "the", then it is called a noun. 
My own students master this in less than three minutes, even those who 
have had no grammar. I worked with middle-schoolers who were also able 
to do this. I experimented with a 5-year-old who thought is was 
hilarious when I asked if we could go "desking". She and I played with 
other words in this way and she was right every time about whether a 
given word was a noun or a verb (we did not use any grammar terms in 
this game; just whether the phrases sounded silly or not). Jean 
Berko-Gleason proved with a landmark study a few decades ago that 
children will pluralize a nonsense word correctly, indicating that they 
know in an unconscious way what a noun is.

3. It is a truism in linguistics, proven by decades of research, that 
infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers need no direct instruction to 
learn their native language. Their brains are built to learn language 
(whether through a brain organ devoted exclusively to language, as 
Chomskyans believe, or through more-general cognitive processes, or 
some mixture of the two). All they need is to hear language being used 
around them, and for those around them to interact with them 
linguistically (by talking with them, not teaching them what nouns 
are). This learning process is very different from conscious learning 
of grammatical terminology and analysis techniques. This _does_ require 
instruction. But that instruction must be both accurate and 
well-designed, which the current K-12 curriculum is not. I am wondering 
whether either Eduard or Phil has looked at any of the language-arts 
grammar materials currently being used in K-12 schools.

4. Don't confuse the learning situation of children who speak 
nonstandard English with those who speak another language entirely. 
There are similarities, but both the social and psychological 
situations are different.

5. I find Wheeler and Swords' choice of "code-switching" unfortunate, 
because the term covers two phenomena: (1) switching between languages 
within a sentence, and (2) speaking different languages in different 
social situations. They are advocating the second of these -- teaching 
children to switch to standard English when it is required. 
Incidentally, code-switching of either kind is not a burden to the 
human mind if the speaker has a high degree of fluency in both (or 
more) languages. It occurs quite naturally in multilingual communities 
the world over. Americans have funny ideas about multilingualism 
because so few of them speak another language with any degree of 
fluency at all. Multilingualism is the normal case around the world, 
not monolingualism (another fact demonstrated by linguistics research). 
I have said in previous posts discussing this work that we need to 
replicate it in more schools to prove the method's effectiveness.

Code-switching of the second type is the desired _outcome_ of the 
method they use. The method itself is called "contrastive analysis". 
The teacher and students contrast the grammars of English and their 
home dialect during the grammar lessons. Then they discuss where and 
when each is appropriate and do creative writing and role-play 
exercises choosing which dialect to use when and discussing their 
choices.

6. If you haven't read either the Wheeler and Swords article or their 
book, you can't judge what they are doing. As I have said before, they 
do not mention in the published version of the article the fact about 
the improvement in test scores. I don't know why. It was mentioned in 
an earlier draft of the article which Rebecca shared with me. In the 
book, they cite other experiments and programs that are achieving good 
results with teaching African Americans standard English, but I don't 
know what methods are being used in those programs, because I have not 
yet read the research they cite.

The book has a full set of lesson exemplars for the major differences 
between standard English and African American English. Others can 
create materials for other local dialects. For instance, someone could 
create a similar set for teachers in Eastern Kentucky and other areas 
where Appalachian English is the first language of many children. 
Obviously, such programs are of use in schools in which most of the 
kids speak the same dialect. There are ways to handle grammar 
instruction in other situations that are better than the current 
method, but I don't have time to go into that right now.

7. As to children whose native language is not English and who have to 
learn it, immersion is not the best method. Teaching children to read 
and write and a new language at the same time is a cognitive 
disadvantage native speakers do not face. Children should be brought to 
literacy in their own language, which skills then transfer easily to 
English. Children need 5-7 years to achieve full academic fluency in 
two languages. I don't know what the hurry is. 4th graders are not on 
the job market. Children are much more open to learning and feel both 
valued and confident when their own language is valued and taught. 
There is plenty of research evidence on this, too.

Research on English learners and speakers of nonstandard English is 
widely available. I'm not going to compile a bibliography. I've given 
some relevant references in past postings.

Can anyone on this list rapidly list the seven rules they follow when 
forming a tag question in English? I'm addressing those who haven't 
tried before. Sit down and work them out. Who taught you those?

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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