There are important points here that need to be addressed.  
>
>To say the war against grammar is phenom[e]nally stupid is taking a huge
>leap.  Because what happens when we teach the whole of traditional
>grammar?  If we have an English teacher that understands it, and if he/she
>can convey what he/she knows to students, what have we accomplished?  

You would no more higher a grammar teacher who didn't know it then higher an algebra, geometry, history, or geography teacher who didn't know his field.  Grammar is much easier than any of those.  

Do
>we make better communicators?  I doubt it.  Maybe.  But, those are two
>tremendous if's.  


I think we do as well as those in the subjects just mentioned as well as elsewhere.  A student from a history class may forget the entirety of the class ten minutes after he picks up his C- minus and goes home.  It is no more appropriate to expect otherwise with him than it is for us to expect better communicators.  The only reason we do that is to excuse ourselves from the task.  Grammar is the only subject where this sort of talk is tolerated.  Everywhere else it is recognized as excuse making.  


Because as our language is, each of us comes away from
>everything with a slightly different understanding than the rest of us. 
>What traditional grammar tries to do is defy that statement.  Even if,
>though, we have a super-grammarian that understands all of traditional
>grammar well enough to be able to teach it, he will spend his entire
>school year trying to teach it to students.  Will he?  


Its honestly not that hard.  One chapter in an algebra book demands more numerous terminolgy, more subtle concepts, and far more boring exercises than an entire semester of traditional grammar.  

Possibly.  If he
>does, however, what other things have been missed?  I've known students
>who can ace every grammar test yet cannot string a sentence together
>--myself included perhaps.  

I know students who can Ace a geography test who can't tell me where Iraq is.  This sort of anecdotal evidence is too charged and too personal to be counted on.  

>
>To me, though, this is how we teach 'just what is necessary'.  We learn to
>walk by walking.  We learn to speak by speaking.  We learn to write by
>writing.  When we learn to walk, sometimes we fall down and we learn how
>to avoid it.  The same holds true with speaking and writing.  The problem
>is that with speaking and writing we sometimes don't know when we fall. 
>That's where the English teacher fits in.


We learn to think by studying grammar.  It helps us find our way through complex sentences.  It is not the sort of training that you can see an immediate and conscious result from.  When I produce a sentence spontaneousl and automatically I am using grammar.  That spontaneous and automatic production is improved through a better understanding of its parts.  Students and teachers alike may not notice the improvement because it happens on that level.  However, you would have to be a mad man to tell cooks not to bother with terms like grains and meat because they are mere abstractions.  You would have to be equally as mad to conclude that an understanding of grammar did not help writing.  Saying that noun and verb is too abstract denies the simpler abstractions of cooking and the more complex ones of algebra.  To think that students can't handle it or that it doesn't benefit them is just excuse making.  We can say along with the Algebra, History and Geography students that with some students it goes in one ear and out the other but we have no right to generalize to the entire subject based on that any more than they do.  The fact that we allow this and indulge ourselves in it is an embarassment to the field and to all of American education.  

Teaching grammar is not merely to teach writing.  This is a huge mistake.  Teaching grammar is teaching the basic organizational principles that underly all thinking: grammar, rhetoric, logic, composition, foreign language learning, critical thinking are all improved through the study of grammar.   Without the study of grammar you condemn students to an aimless wallowing through difficult text until they intuit it which they often never do.  


>Phil Bralich wrote:
>> And this is the point that grammar advocates need to make.  You cannot do
>> s/v agreement without being introduced to subjects and predicates,
>> internal clauses (the man from whom mary got the books is/are here),
>> person, number, (throw in gender), participles, gerunds, a little on
>> tenses -- Each of these beg questions in other areas.  In short the whole
>> of traditional grammar is required.  This is also true of parallel
>> structure, the correct use of passive and so on.  The whole is hopelessly
>> interlocked and when you are recommended to teach "just what is necessary"
>> for anyone of these, that means the whole of traditional grammar.  This is
>> why the NCTE position and the whole of the war against grammar so
>> phenominally stupid.  Its as those the whole field were taken over by C-
>> students looking to avoid work.
>>
>> Phil Bralich
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>>From: Fay Sweney <[log in to unmask]>
>>>Sent: Jul 24, 2006 8:22 PM
>>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>>Subject: Re: Traditional Grammar
>>>
>>>The SAT always includes subject-verb agreement problems, just as Nancy
>>>Tuten's posting illustrates.  One type is like Nancy's example, with
>>>prepositional phrases between the subject and verb which have have
>>> objects
>>>that are different in number than the subject.  In another type there is
>>> a
>>>delayed subject, as in this practice question from "The Official SAT, a
>>>Teacher's Guide" published by College Board:  "At the heart of the
>>> program,
>>>enthusiastically endorsed by the city's business association, is plans
>>> for
>>>refurbishing neighborhoods . . . ."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Fay Sweney
>>>701 Foster Ave.
>>>Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
>>>208-664-2274
>>>[log in to unmask]
>>>
>>>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
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>>
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>> --
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>
>
>James Bear
>Destination:  Quietude
>
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