Bill,
   I have been well trained in process approaches, and, in fact, got drawn
into composition as an interest by the work of Murray (my teacher),
Elbow, Macrorie, Graves and the like.  It certainly was liberating to
think of writing as meaning-making and not simply an exercise in formal
compliance.
    I think the core insights of process approaches aren't in question. 
Writing is discovery and writing is revision, and more experienced
writers tend to see it that way, in contrast to poorly trained writers
who simply look to correct their errors.  (See for example the fine
research of Nancy Sommers.  But all the studies seemed to show that
successful writers approach writing as a meaning-making, evolving
task.)>
   I think it's wrong, though, to simply make the observation that SOME
people become successful writers without direct grammar instruction. 
The same is true, I suppose, of successful teachers or successful
baseball players. It's not a given that everyone can or will accomplish
that goal.  As a matter of fact, it is becoming increasingly apparent,
to anyone not stuck defending an old ideology, that ignoring grammar,
as an experiment, has been a colossal failure. The level of
understanding of grammar )and therefor, of language, since grammar is
at the heart of it) is terribly low, even for English teachers.
    I think whole language advocates seem more in the literature camp than
in the composition camp.  Most writing teachers I talk to are very
uncomfortable with the status quo.  We often feel someone is looking
over our shoulders and expects us to clean up the error in our student
writing, but we are supposed to do so without the benefit of any kind
of curriculum or shared understanding.  Somehow, minimalist practices
are supposed to work, but the vast majority of students who come to
college, even a fairly prestigious one such as my own, do not know
sentence boundaries, and most teachers I have talked to will say
something like "I've given up on the comma; I'm just trying to work on
fragments and run-on sentences." It's a story of compromises, often of
looking the other way in the hopes that better practices will "rub
off" through exposure.
   There are two quick ways to respond, both of them, I think helpful.
1)  If we really are expected to reduce error (or get students to
punctuate according to the handbooks), we need to have a much wider base
of understanding.  I fond 65 technical terms in Hacker's punctuation
section in her handbook.  You can't even read the rules without knowing
what  "clause" or "phrase" or "compound sentence" or "movable adjective"
means.  Constance Weaver tries to reduce the terminology needs to a few
terms, but this seems nonsensical to me, a matter of avoiding the tough
questions about the consequences of minimalism.  We can't seem to reject
these goals and we can't seem to commit to what it would take to
accomplish them.  Our students suffer.  Part of what we could do, and do
very easily, is come up with what students should know in order to follow
conventional punctuation practices. I say punctuation, since so much else
about Standard englsih is somewhat questionable. and brings up other more
political issues about the right to our own language and so on.
2)  This approach is much nearer my heart.  It means simply admitting that
good writers manipulate their sentences all the time, that true revision
often happens at the sentence level.  What's needed is a contextualized
view of this kind of decision making, starting with the notion that a
sentence is not a complete thought, but a move in a series of related
moves.  In other words, extending the insights of process theory down to
the level of the sentence and not simply assume that these decision are
merely in conformity to some sort of rule book (especially when the rule
books aren't in harmony with actual practice in so many ways.  See Edgar
Schuster's book or Pinker's chapter on Language Mavens). We need a view
ofd the sentence (and sentence level revision) that's influenced by the
practices of successful writers.
    A good deal of functional or rhetorical grammar is already in place. 
When people think "grammar", they may very well be unaware of these
options.
   I believe we have a better chance to be successful with composition
teachers than with literature teachers, if only because writing
teachers must face the consequences of not teaching grammar every
working day of their lives.
   In addition to my part in a New Public Grammar panel, I am going to be
part of a special interest (language)group at next March's 4 C's
conference.  Our group topic will be "What teachers and students need
to know about language." My opening move for my own talk, I think, will
be to take the "need to" out of it and ask "what will it benefit
teachers and students to know about language." We somehow get hung up
on the notion that rare human beings do fine without conscious
instruction. I'm not convinced that even they would be at all "harmed"
by looking at the real language we share as humans, by bringing its
complex wonders to conscious light. Focusing on "need to" has
unnecessarily prejudiced the discussion.



Tim,
>
> Which incorrect conclusions of the Braddocks and Hillocks report are
> you talking about? Their main conclusion, that teaching grammar has
> no beneficial effect on composition, still seems valid to me. It is
> true that the grammar being taught was usually old-fashioned, taught
> in isolation from the actual practice of composition, or focused more
> on usage and mechanics than basic grammar, but that was how
> composition was often taught in those days.
>
> It is their second comment, that teaching grammar may be "harmful" to
> students, that receives the most complaints from proponents of
> grammar. But even here the complaints are not all that justified.
> What they actually said was that the time spent on grammar was taken
> away from the actual practice of writing and for that reason might be
> harmful to students' progress in learning composition.
>
> As for why some college composition teachers are so opposed to
> grammar in the composition classroom, you need to go back to what
> used to be done in many composition classes and, indeed, in some
> entire composition programs. That was the intense focus on errors in
> composition and the related attempts to use the teaching of
> grammar-as-syntax and grammar-as-correct-usage. We had a long battle
> to get rid of that approach to composition and to focus attention on
> actual writing instead. If you even suggest that you are interested
> in going back to grammar, those who remember the battles are bound to
> look at you with horror. You would need to explain pretty quickly
> that you are not proposing to go back to the old methods but to try a
> modern approach.
>
> The same unhelpful use of "grammar" was, by the way, also the main
> approach to teaching composition when I began teaching secondary
> English in 1961. I did it for 3 years (if I remember correctly) until
> personal observation led me to conclude that this was going nowhere.
> I have never gone back. I have occasionally tried introducing some
> lessons on both kinds of grammar, because it does, after all, seem
> intuitively obvious that some knowledge of grammar or some lessons on
> the mistakes students make would work, but I quickly rediscovered why
> I had abandoned them in the first place. One often forgets that what
> is intuitively obvious (the world is flat) often turns out to be
> untrue. As someone pointed out earlier, you do not need to teach any
> formal lessons in grammar (of either type) to teach composition
> successfully.
>
> Bill
>
>
>>I agree with Paul's comments about the age factor, and want to add
>>that my original comment about English teachers who seem to hate
>>grammar was meant primarily to refer to college-level people. This
>>is the level I am most familiar with. In my experience, speaking
>>anecdotally again, most secondary English teachers are very much in
>>favor or grammar, though I'm sure there are exceptions.
>>
>>It is mostly the college-level people who have taken the incorrect
>>conclusions of the Braddock and Hillocks reports and mounted
>>intense, aggressive campaigns against grammar teaching at both the
>>secondary and the college levels. I'm sure there are exceptions, but
>>this has been my experience. Of course, what the college people say
>>often filters down to the secondary level, either in official policy
>>or just in lore, so either way it does its damage.
>>
>>Tim
>>
>>Tim Hadley
>>Research Assistant, The Graduate School
>>Ph.D. candidate, Technical Communication and Rhetoric
>>Texas Tech University
>>
>>________________________________
>>
>>From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Paul
>>E. Doniger
>>Sent: Sat 10/1/2005 9:29 PM
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Hostility toward grammar teaching
>>
>>
>>Christine,
>>
>>Excpet for liking math, I'm with you (but I like music theory, which
>>is a kind of grammar, too). It seems to me that most of the people
>>who are hostile to teaching grammar are English teachers of my
>>generation or a little older - I'm 58 (a.k.a., they're my
>>colleagues). I just heard this week some anti-grammar comments from
>>an  otherwise excellent English teacher. Some attitudes will only
>>change, I suspect, as the old guard retires; however, though the
>>newer generations may be more open to teaching grammar, they may not
>>be well enough prepared to teach it (we've been seeing a thread on
>>this issue again recently). What you say about beliefs that are
>>puzzling rings home to me, too.
>>
>>Curiously, I am rehearsing my theatre kids in The Mouse That Roared,
>>and there's a line from professor Kokintz in response to the
>>question about his Q-bomb -- a WMD of immense power -- that it's "a
>>peace weapon."  I see that as a laugh line!
>>
>>Paul D.
>>
>>Christine Reintjes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>	Who are these people who are hostile to grammar teaching? Are
>>they people
>>	who aren't knowledgeable about grammar and feel threatened?
>>Why is it hard
>>	to define grammar? Isn't it the structure and patterns of a
>>language? I'm
>>	wondering what is really at stake here.
>>
>>	I find grammar studies interesting and fun. Am I unusual?
>>It's probably a
>>	combination of nature and nurture like most things. I also
>>like math, and I
>>	know some people say they detest math, but no one suggests
>>that as a reason
>>	not to teach math. I'm glad to learn about this controversy
>>which I've been
>>	unaware of most of my life. I began my career as an ESL and
>>college English
>>	teacher at my community college in 2000. I was amazed to learn that
>>	teachers were forbidden to teach grammar. I'm still amazed. It's so
>>	puzzling, but then many beliefs are mind boggling to me like
>>usi! ng violence
>>	to make the world peaceful.
>>
>>	--
>>
>>	Christine Reintjes Martin
>>	[log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>	----Original Message Follows----
>>	From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W."
>>	Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>>
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>>
>>
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