I applaud Janet's admonition to frame grammar instruction within
instruction about how writing is the process of creating an informational
text that is cohesive. Anyone who's been reading recent postings here has
seen that a lot of us believe that this has to be a -- if not _the_ --
major purpose of grammar instruction.

I think clause-level grammar is more relevant to discourse than Janet
says, however. Essentially, every single choice made in structuring a
clause is determined by discourse concerns. While I do believe that
learning about clause-level grammar is a worthy end in itself, there is
much more justification for teaching it within a discourse approach.

What clause-level (and below) grammar provides is the vocabulary for
talking about phrases, clauses and sentences. Those are the units in which
meaning is 'packaged', and how they are arranged with respect to one
another is what determines topic identification, topic maintenance, topic
continuity, effective transitions between topics, and coherence of ideas.
If we want to be able to talk about how a particular text does or does not
accomplish fluent information delivery, we'll need the vocabulary. We'll
also need the analytical skills that would allow students to, say,
identify adverbial phrases so that they can consider options for their
placement; identify subjects and consider alternative choices of referent
for the subjects of their sentences in an essay; identify antecedents of
pronouns so they can test how they use them in writing for cohesion;
identify what phrase modifies what head word, so that they can avoid
problems with dangling modifiers and subject-verb agreement.

Principles such as the given/new distinction and the theme/rheme
distinction are extremely useful in relating grammar to writing. So is
explicit attention to sentence types such as passive or pseudo-cleft and
how they are used in particular discourse contexts to accomplish purposes
of topic continuity, putting new information where it is expected by the
reader, and relating upcoming content to content already introduced.

I think the reason grammar is so 'hard' for most students is that they do
not receive consistent, level-appropriate, interesting, challenging, and
practical grammar instruction from an appropriate age onwards. They are
not accustomed to stepping outside of language. They also confuse
'correctness' and 'sounding proper' with assuring effective communication.

These are problems without quickie or late-introduceable solutions,
however.

I've weighed in before with the opinion that no explicit grammar should be
taught before about 3rd or 4th grade; Janet suggests some explicit focus
on language in first grade. What do other listers think on this point?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184     Fax: (805)-756-6374                   ~
E-mail: [log in to unmask]                           ~
Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm   ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba                     ~
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