Peter,
   The great irony here is that I don't have the time I'd like to take to
respond to your fine post because I have 62 opportunity program
students to deal with in our prefreshmen summer program. I'm off to
teach three classes; today we're dealing with integration of reading
and conventions for attribution for a paper due Monday. I wish I could
say I have magical final answers; I do have some "in progress" ones,
some of them stop-gap solutions to a problem that could be better
addressed K-12. I just want to say very quickly that these are separate
questions: what can we do to better prepare students coming out of high
school; what does a writing teacher do, in the meantime, with very
needy students who know almost nothing consciously about the grammar of
their language? This has to be done, of course, in conjunction with
other aspects of teaching writing, since 'avoiding error" is not enough
and is certainly not motivating. But it is important. It matters. >
   We suggested to Amy Benjamin that next year's ATEG conference more
fully integrate with the Connecticut Writing Project, and this would be
a delightful issue to address. What do we do in the meantime with needy
students and very little time? What do we do that would help prepare
them for a lifetime as writers and readers?
   To me, this underscores more than ever the need for a different
preparation, K-12. But the students we get, woefully underprepared in
many cases, deserve and need our thoughtful attention.

Craig


I am really enjoying this conversation (well, not the mean-spirited parts,
> but most of it).   I love Martha's and Rei Noguchi's ideas of helping
> students
> realize the intuitive knowledge they have.   Or as Martha puts it
> "Intuitive
> knowledge of grammar should be used--it can be enormously effective.  And
> it
> helps students recognize that they don't come to grammar class with a
> blank slate
> to be filled by new information.  It is truly empowering for students to
> recognize that in studying grammar they are learning in a conscious way
> the rules
> that they have been following subconsciously all their lives."
>
> But I remain a little skeptical.   I should say that I teach at a
> community
> college and that I teach lots of sections of developmental writing.   I
> have
> been struggling for more than thirty years to help my very motivated and,
> often,
> quite intelligent students master the conventions of standard written
> English.   I wrote a few days to ask whether reducing error was a goal of
> ATEG, and
> several of you responded in that indeed it is.   Several even took the
> time to
> explain that because so much emphasis has been placed on reducing error in
> the
> past that members of this group tend to talk more about other goals like
> "All
> students should have explicit knowledge about language." (as Craig
> recently
> pointed outA)   I surely agree that this is an excellent goal, and
> perhaps, if
> I were working on a "scope and sequence" for grades K through 12, I would
> want
> to build that in to that extended program of instruction.   But I have my
> students for 14 weeks.   And what seems more critical and more reasonable
> it to
> help them reduce the number of seriously stigmatizing errors in their
> writing.
>
>
> So, as someone recently wrote, I minimize the amount of grammar
> terminology I
> teach and then try to find a way to teach it that is works for them.
> Currently, I really teach only four function terms: verb, subject,
> sentence, and
> independent clause.   These allow them to master most of the major rules
> of
> punctuation, to avoid or revise fragments, run-ons, and comma splices, and
> to
> revise for subject-verb agreement.   I provide a little more in the area
> of
> apostrophes and pronoun reference and agreement . . . and that's about it.
>
> I would love for my students to be able to "identify the prepositional
> phrases in [a} passage and tell what word groups they modify and whether
> they are
> adjectival or adverbial" as Craig suggests.   However, that skill seems so
> far
> removed from what they need to survive in college and in the workplace,
> that I
> wouldn't dream of trying to squeeze it in to my 14 weeks with them.
>
> Martha's example illustrates the problem I have with this approach.   She
> says "simply substitute a pronoun for the subject of 'Simply believing in
> the
> students give(s) them the necessary confidence to succeed.'"   But my
> students
> have great difficulty identifying what the subject is in a sentence like
> that,
> so "simply substituting a pronoun" for the subject is not very helpful.
>
> Similarly, "A verb is a word that has both an -s and an -ing ending--or
> simply a word that you can signal with "might" or "could" is just not
> going to help
> my students.   "Signal" is not a concept they are familiar with.   And -s
> endings are a source of considerable confusion for my students.   They are
> not at
> all sure what words can and cannot take -s endings.
>
> Everyone is probably familiar with the accusation that traditional
> definitions of terms are COIK--Clear Only If Known.   That is a problem I
> (and many of
> you) have recognized for years.   However, I fear the definitions and the
> "intuitive" tests for various word classes are equally COIK for the
> students I
> teach.
>
>
> Peter Adams
>
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