This is forwarded from Johanna. My apologies if it also arrives on its
own.

Craig


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Scope and Sequence & Trad. grammar
From:    "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Thu, July 20, 2006 2:41 pm
To:      "New Public Grammar public grammar" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar"
<[log in to unmask]>
Cc:      "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Craig, I hope you will post this to the ATEG list if it doesn't make it
there. Thanks.

I can't believe we are going around these points again. I think one
problem is that there are several understandings of "traditional
grammar". I've been reading a quite interesting old book by H. A.
Gleason which traces two understandings of the term: one meaning the
way grammar has been handled in schooling, and one referring to the
school of grammatical analysis developed in _Europe_ in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (e.g., by Jespersen, who,
however, took a different tack from others in Europe, acc. to Gleason).
I think Eduard Hanganu may have the latter in mind more than the
former, and vice versa for those on the list who oppose "traditional
grammar". Surely, the two meanings mix, as some older school grammars
mixed the two. Our aim with the Scope and Sequence project targets
_today's_ methods, materials, and theory for teaching grammar. However
good European tr. gr. might have been, the current curriculum is
seriously flawed.

Two points are, I'm sorry, incontrovertible:

1) 200+ years of the study of language according to widely accepted
principles of study of human behavior (yes, they've changed over that
time, but so has linguistics -- in fact, linguistics has made a large
contribution to those changes) have led to a body of research results
that is simply far richer than anything found in the mass-produced
grammar teaching materials today, and than the content targeted in
state-mandated tests. Whatever merit European "trad. gr." had (and I'm
sure it had plenty) has been so diluted that it is barely noticeable in
modern teaching materials (esp. those for native speakers, not ESL
learners). It also has to compete with the other fatal flaws in the
curriculum and methodology. These centuries of research have also
revealed that some of the description of English and other languages
according to the European and definitely according to the current
materials is either inaccurate, vague, or incomplete. The persistence
of the idea that pronouns replace nouns is a prime example. They do not
replace nouns. They replace nominals, noun phrases, noun groups,
whatever you want to call them. I don't know whether European tr. gr.
claimed this, but even if it did, that's beside the point, because the
materials and methods we aim to reform DO. If European tr. gr. can
contribute to this reform, all the better! Another flawed point is
insisting on a single word as the "subject" of a sentence. Although
grammars also point to the "complete subject", students are still urged
to look for a single noun, because of the obsession with verb
agreement. Students miss an important insight about constituent
structure -- the fact that sentences are made of constituents of
varying sizes, not of a string of unrelated single words. This is
reinforced by also teaching that direct objects and so on are single
nouns, not noun-based groups or nominalizations like noun clauses and
gerund phrases. Hanganu quotes Chomsky, but if Chomsky found
Jespersen's grammar so compelling, why did he invent his own theory,
extremely different from many of the foregoing theories? I very, very
seriously doubt that Chomsky approves of the approach to grammar taken
in today's schools. I don't have time to substantiate this claim by
doing a search of his writings. I know I should do it, but I don't have
the time. I am projecting from his general approach to language.

2) The attitudes about correctness over the centuries have been mixed,
but generally, the stance of a few standard-setters like Lindley Murray
has won out, and become less informed and more rigid over time. This is
a plain-and-simple discriminatory attitude, as linguistic science has
_proven_. Again, I'm sorry if some people don't believe this, but
denying it is on a par with insisting that the moon is made of green
cheese. The discrimination is overtly stated in several writers of the
16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, including Puttenham, who proscribed the
use of the English of all except the "better-brought up sort" who spoke
like "the King" and resided in area about 60 mi. around London. Samuel
Johnson eschewed the vocabulary of carters and workmen and "others of
the inferiour sort".  Even Jespersen's famous book had a chapter on
"The Woman" and the various ways "women's language" was inferior to
that of men. Yes, this attitude was mixed with deserved praise of great
writing, such as that found in Shakespeare, but the element of social
prejudice cannot be denied. That element has continued down to this
day, and its effect is seen every year in the achievement gap in test
scores. Numerous studies have shown that teachers and the general
public are much more sensitive to differences between standard and
nonstandard dialects than they are to differences between their own
"educated" speech and the prescriptions of the grammar books (such as
"misuse" of "whom", "between you and I", etc.). In other words, they
find usages of other social classes far less acceptable than their own
bugaboos, most of which they are not even aware of.

That methods that include discussion of and respect for nonstandard
dialects can close the achievement gap has been _proven_, and it needs
to be proven on a wider scale and brought to the attention of the
powers who control curriculum and testing. Whatever we think of
standardized tests, what they indicate is important (and anecdotes of
teachers in such programs attest to it as well): these students do
better in all subjects, enjoy their grammar and language arts classes,
feel accepted in the classroom, and form better relationships with
their teachers. They are NOT so likely to drop out of school, never
fulfill their potential, and wind up in gangs, on drugs, in prison, or
dead. How can we not accept this? How is it not our responsibility to
prevent the waste of these lives? If this seems like hyperbole on a
grammar list, it's not. More than grammar contributes to these kids'
difficulties, but what, other than the change in the language-arts
approach, caused the change in scores? Control groups with the ordinary
curriculum still showed the gap. The kids' other subjects were taught
according to the regular curriculum.

Gleason's quotations of several early grammarians are very revealing:
words like "right" and "proper" are used with regard to "usage" and
"grammar", but they can be interpreted as meaning "effective" as much
as "correct, according to a privileged standard". Other statements
reveal whether the intended interpretation was discriminatory, as with
Puttenham and with other statements by Murray. The picture of the
evolution of attitudes, content, and methods from 1500 to the present
is subtle and mixed, as I have learned in recent years from posters to
this list and from more reading into the history of grammar pedagogy.

So if Eduard Hanganu and others feel persecuted, it is because they
seem impervious to all of this science. It reminds me very much of a
recent Senate hearing at which several Senators baldly stated that
there is no scientific consensus either that global warming exists or
that it is human caused.  Whether you believe in human-caused global
warming or not is not my point. My point is that there _is_
_international_ consensus among scientists that the planet is warming
and that it is probably human-caused. It's not 100%, but the beliefs of
scientists rarely, if ever, are. Look how long it took for plate
tectonics to be accepted as a theory of how the earth's crust works.
The Senators are just plain wrong in their claim. Mr. Hanganu
continually touts his expertise in linguistics; so why has he not
accepted the findings of the field he is expert in? How can he use this
training as a credential if his statements plainly disagree with these
findings? This isn't a straw-man or excessively personal attack. He has
put his views out there, he has claimed that they are correct, he has
critiqued others' views, and someone has to point out that many of his
claims are not supported by linguistics research. Why is this more
problematic here than with other sciences? Yes, particular analyses on
this list of a given construction differ. Some of the posted
explanations are just plain wrong on the facts; others differ in such
points as whether we will consider a participial modifier like "Having
paid the restaurant bill" a "clause" or not. We all know it is an
ellipted version of a larger clause, but the relation of that larger
clause to the participial in the grammar is what is at issue. In the
course of working out a curriculum we will have to settle these issues,
especially for the earlier grades. But wrong explanations will, I hope,
not be accepted.

I have often been wrong in my postings to this list. It hurts, but I
have learned from the corrections and they have broadened my
understanding _and_ my capability. Yes, my authority on English grammar
is diluted by these corrections, but it deserves to be!  I have been
more careful in my claims and have consulted sources like QUIGLS and
Huddleston and Pullum more often before claiming anything. I have been
guilty of armchair linguistics, which is a very bad practice.

As to the Scope and Sequence project itself, I strongly believe that we
have to come up with a fixed terminology. Textbook publishers, school
administrators, parents, and teachers will not accept five different
definitions of the "-ing" form of a verb, especially concerning grades
K-5 or 6. As the students advance in their understanding, an
appreciation of varied terminology can be introduced. Most linguistics
professors I know teach a vastly oversimplified version of linguistics
in their intro courses. They aren't diving into multi-layered phonology
or Optimality Theory as it concerns relative clauses in Japanese (a
made-up example). They get to the more-accurate subtleties later. I
heard more than one of my own ling. profs say "what you have learned
about language up to now is drastically oversimplified. Now we get into
the real nitty-gritty."

A good while ago, I proposed a definition for "sentence" for the
Scope-and-Sequence people to consider. Maybe it never made it to the
list because of my subscription problems. But if it did, I got zero
input on it. Several of us are writing or have written textbooks full
of definitions. There is a pretty fixed terminology in the current K-12
materials. We have something to work with. And our aim should be
accuracy, of course, but equally important is _saleability_.  This
might sound like pandering. But we have a very skeptical audience with
pretty much zero knowledge of how language really works, an extremely
ingrained tradition, and a very  hardened publishing industry (they
will only publish what schools or states ask for, period). I have a few
guiding principles in mind for our approach to terminology. If anyone
is interested, I would be glad to contribute. I don't have as much time
as I would like to devote to this project, but whatever contributions I
can make, I would like to make.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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