The tag method is complicated for the _teacher_, not the students. The
teacher has to formulate the lesson carefully. For students to create
tags and use them as "erasers" is quite simple. It is very important
that the teacher sequence the lesson carefully and anticipate
complicated sentences. It is the job of the teacher to create effective
lesson plans, and this is a complicated task, whether we like it or
not. It is also the job of the teacher to understand quite well how
English works. How often is the reach for a simple lesson more for the
benefit of the teacher than the students?
"Who did what" will only work for a small number of sentences,
especially in middle school and beyond. A great number of sentences do
not have agent subjects, esp. in expository prose. This also
perpetuates the false notion that subjects are defined semantically, by
the meaning of the sentence. They are not. Subject choice is ultimately
not sentence-level, it is discourse level. Subject is not determined by
"what the sentence is about"; it's determined by the topic stucture of
the paragraph and "what the paragraph and whole text are about". It may
be true that the proposition-like semantics at the sentence level is
organized by the "topic" of the sentence and the "comment" about it.
This will help find subjects if we teach grammar at the sentence level,
in isolation from texts. Whenever I ask students to work with the
meaning of sentences in this particular way, I get more different
answers than with the tag test. In particular, students tend to go for
a single word or the simple subject with its pre-modifiers, and leave
out post-modifiers. In addition, subjects like "A piece of cake" tend
to render "cake" rather than "piece" as the simple subject.
This is why I emphasize the "erasure" technique. It gets the _whole_
subject more often.
Another thing I like about the tag method is that it demonstrates to
students that the students know grammar, even though they don't know
they know it. It is crucial for students to know this, for it will
counteract the common notion that people don't "know" grammar unless
they learn it in school. Students need to develop confidence about
their language skills and see that they can arrive at answers on their
own.
As to the yes-no question test, how do students find the subject when
there is no AUX? The AUX test works by showing that the AUX "moves" to
the front of the base sentence. There is no "do" in base sentences
unless they are negative or emphatic. Adding "do" to the front of the
sentence does not show where the subject/predicate divide is.
The applicant must fill out a personal-information form.
Must the applicant fill out ... ?
The applicant filled out a ... form.
Did the applicant fill out ... ?
If you want to keep the test absolutely equivalent, you have to insert
"do" in the base:
The applicant did fill out a .... form.
Did the applicant fill out ... ?
I would venture that the "did" form is not nearly as common as
sentences without "did", esp. in written language.
AUX is completely irrelevant to the tag test.
Note also that that test requires re-ordering sentences with initial
non-subjects, as does the tag test.
Different teachers handle different populations. "Basic writers" need
more-simplified instruction than average kids. Average middle-schoolers
(Rex's question was about 7th-graders) are capable of handling
relatively complex material, even if they have had very little previous
grammar instruction (the tag test requires minimal terminology and
definitions). We should start as early as we can in teaching the real
subtleties of grammar. Teachers have been asking for contextualized
grammar instruction for decades. If we keep restricting ourselves to
the sentence level, this will not change. We also need to be truthful
about how language works. I start with the sentence level for finding
subjects, but the very next step is looking at how subjects function at
the text level. The usual reasons for finding subjects are things like
subject-verb agreement, correct placement of modifiers, pronoun
agreement and clarity of antecedents, etc. This is fine, but it is
"correctness-focused" grammar instruction. It must be placed in the
context of exploration-based grammar instruction: using student's
existing (vast) subconscious knowledge of grammar and their developing
knowledge of text structure to help them learn conscious sentence and
text analysis.
We have to start challenging students in accordance with their
cognitive abilities. Otherwise instruction remains boring and students'
potential remains unrealized.
Johanna Rubba, Assoc. Prof., Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93047
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel. 805.756.6374
Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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