Dick,
     "What the students in front of us would most benefit from knowing" 
is a very thougtful way to frame it. What knowledge about language is 
useful? It may be that different purposes (punctuating well, for 
example, or writing more coherently) might motivate different answers. 
Certainly students who are adjusting to a new language and new culture 
have additional needs.
     I am being hired as a consultant to an area urban high school. I 
will meet with English faculty and sometimes with Social Science faculty 
over a period of a few months to discuss the curriculum and to discuss 
ways in which they can turn around a rather dismal record (less than 
half graduating; much fewer than half for traditionally "at risk" 
students.) In New York, that means in part getting better results from 
the Regents exams.
     I feel as if I have already had some success with the same at risk 
cohort at the college level, which is one reason I'm being courted as a 
consultant. I have a much better sense of what they need to know to do 
well in college.  If anyone has addressed this directly at the high 
school level and has any kind of model program, I would be most grateful 
to know about it. Does anyone have experience with a writing center at 
the high school level? That is one possibility that has been bandied about.
    As tangent to that, any advice on a reasonable fee? What's the going 
rate (range?) for this kind of consulting? Feel free to respond privately.

Craig



On 8/31/2011 5:37 PM, Dick Veit wrote:
> Asking about the domain of grammar is worthwhile, but it's a question 
> without a definitive answer. Everyone from the ivory-tower linguist to 
> the average schlub on the street would agree that it includes the 
> study of nouns and verbs, but as we move away from that core, the 
> boundaries become a matter for private stipulative definition.
>
> This is akin to a discussion I just had about "the Great American 
> Songbook." Everyone agrees that it includes the work of the 
> Gerschwins, Kern, Arlen, Mercer, and the other Tin Pan Alley greats. 
> But the edges are fuzzy. Is there a beginning and an end? Can we 
> include Stephen Foster? How about Billy Joel? Again, many strong 
> opinions but no definitive answers. Apart from the core we agree on, 
> everyone is free to stipulate their own definition.
>
> As we've seen, a discussion of grammar's domain can be quite 
> theoretical (and astonishingly intemperate!). It can also be conducted 
> on a purely practical level. In a high school "grammar" class, should 
> we introduce questions of punctuation? How about phonology? I just 
> retired after many years teaching a "college-level advanced grammar 
> course" that was focused almost exclusively on syntax. I am now a 
> volunteer teaching an "intermediate ESL grammar class" that includes 
> not only syntax but also pronunciation, pragmatics, semantics, 
> punctuation, vocabulary, language etiquette, cultural differences, 
> job-interview skills, and even (last week) hurricane preparation. On 
> the most practical level the domain of grammar is determined by what 
> the students in front of us would most benefit from knowing.
>
> I am interested in hearing more about theory. I'd also like to hear 
> what school teachers and college faculty include in their own 
> "grammar" courses.
>
> Dick
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Spruiell, William C 
> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
>     John,
>
>     Maybe a terminological split would be handy here. On the one hand,
>     there's "the material about language we want to teach." On the
>     other, there's "grammar." Because linguists have used the word
>     "grammar" for so long in rather specific ways, linguists won't
>     tend to think of phonology as grammar (although there certainly
>     are positions that don't view the distinction as ironclad). As
>     Craig has pointed out, a lot of the public is accustomed to
>     thinking of "grammar" as "the stuff we're supposed to say in a
>     different way, because the way we say it is Wrong" Neither the
>     public nor (most) linguists would typically think of including a
>     unit on deceptive advertising language in the category of
>     "grammar," but I certainly think that kind of thing should be in
>     all English curricula, and I suspect most, if not all,  people on
>     this list would agree.
>
>     What would be the effect if, instead of "grammar," we think of the
>     area as simply "language analysis"? Those linguists who firmly
>     believe that "grammar" should refer only to morphosyntax,
>     conceptualized as a separate component, probably won't object to
>     "language analysis" being defined much more broadly, and certainly
>     neither would functionalists; in effect, no one's staked out a
>     claim on "language analysis." [1] Yes, it's vague -- and there
>     would be a danger of someone thinking that talking about literary
>     metaphors for ten minutes constitutes a language analysis unit --
>     but it's certainly as delimited as "social studies" or some of the
>     other mainstays of public education.
>
>     I used to like the label "language structure awareness" for this,
>     but I've come to think that that doesn't sufficiently foreground
>     analytic reasoning.
>
>     --- Bill Spruiell
>
>     [1] Note -- please! -- that I'm not saying here that restricting
>     "grammar" to morphosyntax is either a good or bad position, nor
>     (more particularly) am I suggesting that that position is Bob's.
>     It *is* the position of a number of linguists, but both they and
>     linguists that firmly disagree with them (like me) would largely
>     agree that a wide range of language phenomena should be discussed
>     in English classrooms. To a certain extent, it's the terminology
>     that's the hang-up, and that's partly because the terms have
>     become rallying flags in position wars. I'd be happy to call the
>     entire area something totally new, like Theeb or Floortst, if I
>     thought people would go along with it. In fact, letting a
>     classroom full of students decide what new term *they* want to
>     call it would be a great opening activity for a unit on it.
>
>
>     On Aug 30, 2011, at 11:00 AM, John Dews-Alexander wrote:
>
>     Picking up on a point made by Paul, I want to ask the question,
>     "What is the domain of grammar? What does grammar encompass? What
>     does it NOT encompass? What aspects of grammar should/should not
>     be incorporated into the language arts curriculum?" (I am
>     referring to only the grammar of English.)
>
>     If we talk about language sounds (phonetics) and how we use them
>     (phonology), are we talking about grammar? Do we need to concern
>     ourselves in the classroom with breaking language down into it's
>     basic units of meaning (morphology) to examine the construction of
>     words? Are the rules for forming phrases, clauses, and sentences
>     (syntax) the Sovereign of Grammar and how far do we take the
>     teaching of these "rules"? Do we go beyond this level? Do we
>     consider larger units of language (discourse) and its aspects of
>     cohesion, coherence, clarity, information structuring? What about
>     all of the context that informs our understanding of language
>     (pragmatics) -- is that grammar? Do we even consider including
>     stress, rhythm, and intonation (prosody) even if they have a huge
>     impact on meaning?
>
>     What supports the teaching of grammar? Is it valuable/worth while
>     to look at the history that informs/shapes the grammar (historical
>     linguistics)? Is a unit on animal communication worthwhile in
>     order to emphasize what makes human language/grammar so special?
>     Where do we even start with all of the social/cultural
>     implications of grammar
>     (dialectology/sociolinguistics/anthropology/sociology)? Would we
>     be doing a major disservice by failing to team up with our
>     neighboring science teachers to discuss the cognitive/neural basis
>     of grammar (cognitive/neurolinguistics) -- what we know about
>     grammar and the brain/cognition is fascinating, but is it a part
>     of grammar to English teachers?
>
>     We must teach literature as well, but do we bring grammar along to
>     analyze these canonized writings? (stylistics/text analysis)
>
>     It's a big question, I know, and certainly one addressed before,
>     but the composition of this list has changed quite a bit, and I
>     think that it is a discussion worth revisiting for the benefit of
>     all members. Of course, reality precludes us from using an ideal
>     definition of grammar in many cases, but I'm more interested in
>     what that ideal would look like to begin with.
>
>     I know this also brings into question the relationship between the
>     English/Language Arts teacher and the linguist (or the role of
>     those with a foot in both camps), but I'd like to believe that we
>     all agree by now that no harm comes from a sharing, amicable
>     relationship at a minimum.
>
>     I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks!
>
>     John
>
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