Why does 'innate knowledge' persist? Chomsky himself never did deliver on
it. (Remember the Putnam and Goodman arguments?) Perhaps what we mean,
speaking as pedagogues, when we talk of children coming to us `hardwired'
with grammar, is that once articulate, children have an estimable ability to
perform linguistically. But `performance' is not the same as `competence'.
For instance, the child who says `Where are yous going?' to a group is not
competent in the way that the child who says `Where are you going?' is
competent.
The difference between the two children's linguistic performance is
explainable in terms of grammar: though both are performance capable, one is
competent either as a matter of luck (he had good exemplars for his copyist
behaviour when he learned to speak) or as a consequence of his instruction
in grammar. (Instruction in grammar will certainly help the child who is
hardwired to say `Where are yous going?)
Sophie
----- Original Message -----
From: Herb Stahlke <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 12:41 PM
Subject: Re: Is direct grammar instruction needed in grade school?
Johanna makes the crucial point that grammar needs to be a part of any
liberal education, a point I make as regularly and forcefully as I can in my
classes, but to apparently little effect. The lock that popular folk
linguistics and its perceptions of prescriptive grammar has on K-12
education is stunningly powerful. We'll get nowhere with this issue until
we can address that popular position.
I must disagree with Johanna on one point. It has never been established,
except apparently by default that "Children DO come hardwired with some kind
of knowledge of general language structure." This is still contested
territory, as Geoffrey Sampson's Educating Eve demonstrated. I don't know
that Sampson's right either, but let's recognize a belief for what it is.
Herb Stahlke
<<< [log in to unmask] 8/15 5:34p >>>
An important correction to Geoff Layton's posting ... children do NOT
come " 'hardwired' with
the basic grammar, syntax, and usage rules of their native language."
'Hardwired' means 'genetically built into the brain', 'present as
knowledge at birth'. No child is born with innate knowledge of French or
Swahili. Children DO come hardwired with some kind of knowledge of
general language structure, but not with the rules for any particular
language. I've noticed a trend among numerous colleagues recently to
confuse the concept of 'innateness' (true, inborn hard-wiredness) with
the subconscious knowledge _acquired_ during the child's early years,
birth to school age. Acquired subconscious knowledge is not innate. This
is an extremely important distinction and we shouldn't muddy it.
This is not intended to diminish the importance or strength of
children's acquired subconscious knowledge of their native language. It
is present, it is strong, and it is very useful in grammar teaching,
although it is not clear to me that all children are ready to understand
talk about language in the early grades. Since children use language for
communication, they tend to focus on the meaning of a message rather
than its form. I think different children reach readiness for
metalinguistic talk at different ages. I worked informally for a few
hours with a middle school class on this, and found that the children
differed widely in how well they were able to grasp what was going on (I
was having them use tests like 'the ____' or 'we will ____' to discover
which words in a given list were nouns vs. verbs).
I think it is very important for children to learn grammar terms and how
to analyze sentences and texts. I believe this is crucial for their
later years, when they need to be able to talk about language with their
writing teachers, and understand usage rules when editing their own and
others' output. I also think that, given how central language is to
human interaction, it is important for children to understand how it
functions, just as it is important for them to understand how their
bodies or their societies function. But I don't know whether such
instruction needs to begin in grades 1, 2, or 3. We have insufficient
research on this subject. I do believe it can productively begin in
grade 4 or 5, and that that is not too late, especially if children have
been doing generous amounts of reading and writing in grades 1-3.
Given all this, you need to pay attention to your local context. Does
your school district have learning standards that include grammar terms
and sentence analysis? Do you give standardized tests that test this
kind of knowledge? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, it
is clear that the children will need instruction (although there is no
guarantee it will be successful--this points more to the inadequacy of
the standards and the tests than to the inadequacy of instruction. It's
useless to require kids to learn something they're not ready for).
I would like to know more about the background and specialization of
your consultant. How this person understands language and how language
is learned is extremely important to their ability to pronounce on your
programs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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