This statement of Craig's is, for me, a simple truth and expresses a goal
language arts teachers should strive for.

"I think it helps to know what a mature writer should be able to do with
language. Our question might be how attention to language can help us get
there.  It's not just FORMS, but putting language to work in productive
ways. Unfortunately, grammar is too often thought of as merely formal."

The very term "language arts" indicates that the human use of language is an
art, one that stretches beyond communication and into the realm of social
function and emotive expression. The consideration of grammar as strictly a
formal system to be memorized and regurgitated is a handicap to truly
teaching the art of language. I don't object to using grammar to teach
analysis, classification, and parsing skills, but it saddens me that we, as
secondary school teachers, often stop there. Expanding on that, grammar is
not the only aspect of language that lends itself to study by a developing
writer. But it is a good place to start!

John Alexander



On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  Bruce,
>     I would think that composition is ALWAYS involved with making
> meaningful choices. That said, I think you are raising interesting questions
> about what level students need to be before they can profit from attention
> to these issues. Since I'm teaching at the college level, I'm curious as
> well.
>    Apparently, there are languages in the world (I think Turkish is one) in
> which evidentiality is grammatically marked. Herb made that point in an
> earlier post and I ran into it again in my reading of Talmy Givon. We might
> be able to say that it is universally useful to be able to judge the
> possibility of truth for something asserted. This would include judicious
> use of the modals as well, one of the major ways in which assertions are
> qualified in English. If my memory is correct, social meaning comes early,
> epistemic meaning quite a bit later.
>    Are there people on this list involved in teaching journalism at the
> K-12 level? Part of the discipline of being a journalist is to make these
> distinctions very carefully. A good news story has considerable attributed
> meaning (sources), and sources are generally characterized in ways that
> would help us judge their credibility. This should also be part of what we
> learn to do in history and in the sciences as we evaluate the relative
> reliability of evidence.
>    I think it helps to know what a mature writer should be able to do with
> language. Our question might be how attention to language can help us get
> there.  It's not just FORMS, but putting language to work in productive
> ways. Unfortunately, grammar is too often thought of as merely formal. (I am
> not a disinterested commentator on this one.)
>
> Craig
>
>
> On 3/11/2011 9:56 AM, Bruce Despain wrote:
>
>  Are all of Craig's choices appropriate for all grade levels?  It seems
> that the description of the patterns is graded.  Maybe ATEGers can suggest
> the grade levels where a functional descriptions can or should be brought
> into the lessons on composition.
>
> The comic strip cartouches are very attractive devices for depicting the
> projection of thoughts and direct quotes, that students at most grade levels
> can relate to.  But this leaves a gap as there is no way to depict reports,
> ie, indirect quotation, however.  This and the fact that there is often
> backshifting of tense, aspect, and mode, is indication that the grammatical
> item is delayed till high school, but how does functionalism fit here?  The
> creation of "meaningful" writing and making "meaningful" choices, can only
> go so far.
>
> At which grade levels do the grammatical descriptions belong?  Is the
> functional description ("evidentiality") delayed till high school, when
> these patterns can all be compared and contrasted?  Are there other
> functional concepts beyond meaningful and evidential that belong at these
> various stages?
>
> 1) (Spot dropped dead.) "drop dead" as an idiom derived from the subjective
> complement pattern
> 2) (I saw Spot drop dead.) the verbs "see" and "hear" as verbs that select
> an infinitive phrase as object
> 3) (Paul said "Spot dropped dead.") the quoted assertion in a sentence
> 4) (I believe Spot dropped dead.) the content clause as an object of
> thought (factive)
> 5) (I heard Paul say that Spot dropped dead.) the sensation verbs of (2)
> allowing embedding of (4) in a recursive projection
> 6) (According to a source close to the owner, Spot dropped dead.) the
> adverbial phrase of justification
> 7) (A source close to the owner alleges that Spot dropped dead from poor
> nutrition.) selecting partial propositional content of an assertion as
> object
>
> Bruce
>
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