Sorry, I just realized that these are W. Nelson
Francis's definitions ("The Three Meanings of
Grammar") that Hartwell builds upon in his essay.
CLM
--- Lorna <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
---------------------------------
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I want tothank you all for the fascinating
discussion of Patrick Hartwell's glorifiedarticle,
which I read last spring in a graduate seminar on
teaching first-yearcollege composition. I had a hard
time, way back then, falling into thewhole-language,
anti-grammar line; I remember asking if the class
could atleast read "Closing the Books on Alchemy" for
clarification, arequest dismissed as suspiciously
right-wing. At that time, a number of the teaching
assistants and graduate studentsin this class,
including me, suffered from deep confusion about how
to teachgrammar. We had been forced (dare I sayit?)
to endure blackboard-filling tree diagrams in
Linguistics and mind-numbingincoherence in translation
in Theory; yet as writng tutors and teaching
assistants,we were expected to be able to
helpundergraduates avoid sentence fragments and
pronoun-antecedent disagreementwithout using
grammatical terms any more explicit
than"pointer-outers."
Way backthen, I was a teaching assistant
in a first-year composition class in which
theconfoundingly popular professor failed any paper
with five or more "majorgrammar errors."
Outrageously, I thought and still think, this
professorrefused to cover any of those errors in class
and spoke of"grammarians" with contempt. No member of
the English faculty that I could find could offer any
realguidance (other than sending students to the
writing center) on how to teach orwork with students
on the tremendous grammatical problems the
teachingassistants were seeing in student papers: not
only Connors and Lunsford's big20, but also
organizational issues of syntax, ESL concerns, etc.,
etc., etc.
I acceptedthe absurdity of the situation
and began to put my hands on every book orarticle I
could find, theoretical or practical, remotely
connected to theactual teaching of WEAP. (Some of
mymost valued resources were written by members or
former members of ATEG.) I teach developmental
English at a largecommunity college now, so I am
learning every day that some things can and mustbe
taught explicitly—what a surprise to find, for
example, that a first step infinding subjects and
verbs is crossing out prepositional phrases! See such
a technique as representative ofsilly, stupid
mavenhood if you like, but my students must pass (some
unfair andineffective) writing and grammar tests in
order to get where they want to go. I work very hard
every day to get and inventthe how-to grammar
knowledge and skills censored in graduate school, the
nutsand bolts of the teaching of it, the needed
know-how. Hartwell's article should be
carefullyanalyzed and challenged, not sanctified as
untouchable.
--Lorna Nelson
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: "Hadley, Tim"
Sent: Oct 19, 2007 4:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Patrick Hartwell's Article
John and others,
John has “hit the nail on the head” with
thisstatement:
>The real implications of this research seems to be
that thereis an incredible dearth of quality evidence
on the question. Rather than acknowledgingthis, the
researchers choose to do as Elley and Braddock and so
many othershave done before and make the ridiculous
assumption that a lack of evidence tosupport teaching
grammar proves that it is ineffective. If such
conclusions aretaken as valid, then the opposite
assumption can also be made: the lack of highquality
evidence to support the prevailing belief of the
anti-grammar crowd isevidence that teaching grammar
does improve writing.
I wish everyone could read this statement. It
summarizes theessence of the overwhelming a priori
bias that existed against grammarteaching since at
least 1945 at high policy-making levels.
Quick note: Earlier Geoff said that he thought Martha
hadrefuted Hartwell’s article. Actually, Martha’s
excellent articlecame out in 1981—“Closing the
Books on Alchemy," CCC 32 (1981):139–151—and was
aimed primarily at the earlier (1963) Braddockreport.
Tim
Timothy D. Hadley
Assistant Professor of Professional Writing
English Department
Missouri State University
Springfield, MO 65897
office 417.836.5332, fax 417.836.4226
[log in to unmask]
Editor, ATEG Journal
From: Assembly for theTeaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
johnwhicker
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Patrick Hartwell's Article
Janet,
Thank you for the links; I found them very interesting
if somewhatdisheartening.
The most intriguing aspect of the grammar study is
that two out ofthe three studies they found to be
worth mentioning were 30 + years old (The(in)famous
Elley study and the less well known Bateman and
Zidonis study). Thethird study (Fogel and Ehri, which
received the highest quality rating) wasfrom 2000
gives some indication that teaching grammar may help
improve writing(something strangely dismissed and
downplayed by the researchers).
The disheartening aspect of the study is that,
ignoring the studythey themselves rate higher in
quality than either of the others as well as
theminimal positive results found in the Bateman study
as inconsequential, theychoose to conclude that "there
is no high quality evidence to counter theprevailing
belief that the teaching of the principles underlying
and informingword order or ‘syntax’ has virtually
no influence on the writingquality or accuracy of 5 to
16 year-olds." It seems to me, based on thefact that
they could find only three studies worth mentioning
and two of thoseshowed some positive if not conclusive
indications that grammar instructionmight improve
writing, that the researchers should have concluded
that there isno conclusive "high quality evidence" to
SUPPORT the prevailingbelief that the teaching of
grammar has no influence on the writing qualityeither.
The real implications of this research seems to be
that there is anincredible dearth of quality evidence
on the question. Rather thanacknowledging this, the
researchers choose to do as Elley and Braddock and
somany others have done before and make the ridiculous
assumption that a lack ofevidence to support teaching
grammar proves that it is ineffective. If
suchconclusions are taken as valid, then the opposite
assumption can also be made:the lack of high quality
evidence to support the prevailing belief of
theanti-grammar crowd is evidence that teaching
grammar does improve writing. Thisassumption might
even be the more rational considering how many
researchershave tried and failed to put the final nail
into grammar's coffin. The sheervolume of bad studies,
and the very questionable nature of even
thoseconsidered to have "high to medium" or "medium
tohigh" quality should hint at some positive aspect of
the teaching ofgrammar that resists all efforts to
banish it completely.
These of course are far from good reasons to teach
grammar, butthey follow the same logic as the
continued argument that if there is nohigh quality
evidence showing improvement then no
improvementoccurs; having no conclusive either way is
not evidence against. Thereal implications of this
research is that quality research needs to beconducted
less we continue to simply rehash old and questionable
studies.
The findings on sentence combining also simply come to
the sameconclusions made thirty years ago, and will
likely be treated in the same way.
At the risk of being cliché, "the more things change
the morethey stay the same".
John Whicker
Utah Valley State College
----- Original Message -----
From: Castilleja, Janet
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: Patrick Hartwell's Article
I currently teach a grammar class for prospective
teachers. I always
have them read the Hartwell article, which I believe I
first read around
1985 or 86.
I would encourage anyone interested in a synthesis of
research into the
effect of grammar-teaching on student writing to read
these reports:
http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=229
http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=232
The EPPI Centre "conducts systematic reviews of
research evidence across
a range of topics and works with a large number of
funders" according to
their website. What they are trying to do is
influence public policy by
studying research that has been done in a number of
areas, including the
teaching of English, to determine what the research
actually shows.
Their question is "what has been shown to work?" I'm
surprisedmore
people in the US aren't aware of this group.
Janet Castilleja
Toppenish WA
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol
Morrison
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2007 3:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Patrick Hartwell's Article
Thank you. I am only halfway through his article, but
it seems quite important. I currently give formal
grammar instruction to four freshman sections of basic
writing (at the most basic level) and I am trying to
figure out why so few of the other composition
teachers do this. I am sure that there is value in it,
but I suppose that this needs to be proved.
CLM
--- Bob Yates <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Carol,
>
> In the grammar course I teach for pre-service
> English teachers, I make specific mention of them.
>
> If there is one grammar Hartwell leaves out, it is
> one that describes the kind of grammar an second
> language learner of English needs to have.
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
> >>> Carol Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
> 10/18/2007 12:30 PM >>>
> Can someone tell me whether the (5) categories of
> grammar that Hartwell outlines (Grammar 1-Grammar 5)
> are commonly referred to when one speaks of teaching
> grammar? The article to which I am referring is
> "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar."
> Until reading this article, I did not realize that
> grammar had been divided into those classifications.
> Thank you.
>
> Carol Morrison
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit
> the list's web interface at:
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>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
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