When I was teaching undergrad grammar courses, one of the reasons I used Greenbaum's Oxford English Grammar is that it was thoroughly corpus-based.  The only examples students read in the text were real-world, and they had problems with them more than once.  I also used newspaper, magazine, and internet text for analysis.  One always revealing exercise was identifying and counting uses of passive voice in a newspaper article, and then examining what made those uses appropriate.  One of the tasks I would set for homework later in the course was a grammatical analysis of some grammatical aspects of a poem.  Here they ran into real problems.  Part of it was, I think, that they had not been trained to look at poetry in that way, but part of it was also that I'd occasionally throw at them an Early Modern English poem, 16th or 17th c.  The syntax of those was frequently complex and used unusual word orders, and that gave them fits.  Those always led to productive classroom discussions.

Herb 

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of R. Michael Medley (ck)
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 1:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: how heavy a lift is grammar/explicit literacy instruction

Since I seem to be in pedagogical mode these days, I find that I am connecting more with the posts like this one from Susan van Druten.

> This year after
> using the low-interest but easy sentences, I decided to use the 
> sentences from interesting news stories (thanks to FARK).  Boy, did I 
> experience an eye-opener!  Their success rate when way down.

Is this is literacy issue or not?  I suspect that it is a pedagogical issue.  When we teach students 'grammar' using very simple sentences, then we can expect them to get lost and not perform well when all of sudden they are presented with the complexity of real-world texts. How can this chasm between exercises with simple sentences and a complex text be bridged?  I tend to bridge it by working with sentences that the students actually produced, assuming that those are more complex than sentences in the  exercises.  They have ownership of these sentences, and they don't really feel any ownership of either the simple sentences of the exercise or the complex sentences of the authentic text.

Having said that, I want to affirm that I do favor the use of authentic texts.  I would suggest using more syntactically complex texts from the start, providing scaffolding as necessary for learners to see how the grammar (also punctuation, etc.) is working (or not working) in those texts.  The teacher can present the text using color coding and different fonts to focus attention on the desired linguistic elements of the text.

I think that systemic functional grammar has the potential for guiding teachers to work with authentic texts, and that's why I am a fan of Coffin, Donohue and North's EXPLORING ENGLISH GRAMMAR.  They provide a healthy role model for how to examine grammar in the context of authentic texts.


R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University


Susan van Druten wrote:
> Every fall I start my 11th graders with a review of conjunctions with 
> the purpose of getting them to punctuate compound sentences properly.  
> I have experienced limited success with improving run-ons.  Because 
> they have overcompensated by putting a comma before every "and," I 
> have asked them to underline what is being compounded in the sentence.  
> This year after using the low-interest but easy sentences, I decided 
> to use the sentences from interesting news stories (thanks to FARK).  
> Boy, did I experience an eye-opener!  Their success rate when way 
> down.  Plus they didn't comment on the interesting news story.  To see 
> if this is a literacy issue, I will try a little experiment.  I will 
> read the story out loud and have a class discussion about the news 
> story and what it means.  Only then will I give them the worksheet on conjunctions.
>
> Susan
>
>
> On Sep 25, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Scott Woods wrote:
>
>> Craig,
>>
>> I use several methods to teach advanced literacy explicitly.
>>
>> For paragraph structure, I have students read paragraphs that have 
>> been indented, following Christensen, to show their levels of 
>> generality.  I point out how one sentence leads to another, and have 
>> students explain to their partner the relationship of each sentence 
>> to the others. I also italicize antecedent structures and bold all 
>> consequent structures. This allows students to see how one sentence in discourse refers to another.
>> Following this, I present the same paragraphs in scrambled order, 
>> initially including the bolding and italicizing.  Students unscramble 
>> the paragraphs, usually working with a partner initially, later 
>> working independently and comparing, discussing, and defending their order.
>> This forces them to think very hard about the structure of 
>> paragraphs, something that takes explicit instruction and practice.  
>> When they write their own paragraphs, I have them italicize and bold 
>> the antecedents and consequents to show the connections in their own 
>> writing.  I also have them highlight each sentence to show its 
>> function: blue for openers, green for topic sentences and 
>> conclusions, yellow for the next level of generality, and pink for 
>> detail sentences.  Students can look at their own paragraphs and see 
>> how they are organized and cohere.  This also reduces the amount of 
>> time I have to take on each paper; if students have done the careful 
>> work of structuring their work and have shown me how it is 
>> orgainized, I can read for other features and give other feedback.
>>
>> Scott Woods
>>
>> From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Fri, September 24, 2010 9:26:43 AM
>> Subject: Re: how heavy a lift is grammar
>>
>>
>>     One reason I raised questions about literacy is that I am now 
>> teaching a class of twenty-two students, all opportunity program 
>> first year, who all scored below college level on reading and writing 
>> assessments. In previous years, they would have been funneled into a 
>> non-credit course. This year, they are taking analytical writing (3 
>> credit, writing intensive) AND a non-credit support course. I'm 
>> teaching both. It's my design. In effect, they are taking a five hour 
>> version of a three hour class. But what's most relevant, I think, is 
>> that I am making literacy the direct focus of the course. They are 
>> reading and writing literacy narratives, approaching academic 
>> discourse dialogically (using They Say/ I Say as a core text). The 
>> experiment, I guess (not totally new to me) is whether making 
>> literacy itself more explicit will be helpful in achieving literacy 
>> goals. The students, by the way, are encouraged to define their own 
>> goals. Since many have more than one language in their lives, being 
>> bilingual is sometimes an important part of that. One student just 
>> handed a paper to me about his history as a rap artist, about how he 
>> has developed his craft.
>>     I was/am generally curious about how we understand literacy as 
>> educators, and whether we simply expect it to happen on its own.
>>    It is obviously difficult to enter into public discourse without 
>> taking things personally, maybe even more so for those of us who have 
>> much at stake. That seems to me part of literacy as well.
>>
>> Craig


R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University
1200 Park Road   Harrisonburg, VA 22802
Ph: 540-432-4051 Fax: 540-432-4444
************************************
"Understanding and shared meaning, when it occurs, is a small miracle, brought about by the leap of faith that we call 'communication across cultures.'"  --Claire Kramsch

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