Pat,

Since you're dealing with subordination anyway, you might have
them investigate what English uses subordination for.  One of its
purposes, and there are several, is to express what's called a
presupposition, that is, a statement that the speaker believes to
be true and believes the hearer also believes to be true, like the
relative clause in the following:

I told my children about the chubby, red-clad elf who slides down
chimneys every Christmas.

The sentence presupposes that Santa does the Christmas thing.  It
asserts that I told my children about it.  One thing you can do
with these sentences is put some obviously false, preposterous
notion into a relative clause and ask the students to respond to
the sentence, denying just the presupposition.  They'll find this
hard to do, but they'll find denying the assertion, the main
clause, easy to do.  This exercise can work well as part of a
study of foreground and background information, since background
information is normally assumed to be true, or presupposed.

Good luck with your course.  It sounds exciting.

If you have questions about this or want to explore it further,
please email me at [log in to unmask]

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

<<< [log in to unmask]  1/ 7  6:35p >>>
Hi, Everyone,

A friend of mine is setting up a grammar class at the high school
level.  She
is planning on it being a class on analyzing the language - not a
grammar-to-improve-writing class.  I've pasted her post to NCTE
(with
permission) here and am requesting any advice you have for her.
She's not
sure how to structure the class.

What should a high school grammar/linguists class curriculum look
like?

Thanks,
Gretchen in San Jose
*************
Jan, LouAnn and others,
    I will send you stuff as soon as I know what I am doing.  I
mean, I
know I am going to be teaching grammar, and I know we will cover
sentence structure, fragments, run ons, simple, compound, complex,
compound-complex and try to write a Henry James sentence (Or Jack
Kerouac sentence for that matter).  Also all sorts of phrases,
clauses,
verb and pronoun usage, general usage problems, coordination and
subordination and other logical type stuff.
    Just thinking of how to approach it.  I want to incorporate
technology,
use the friday writing and still see that the kids learn what they
want
to learn.  I am thinking of jigsawing some of the information so
that
certain groups become "experts" and present to the rest of the
class.
Might be where we can incorporate  technology there.  Powerpoint
etc.  I
think, in light of Brenda's thread, the friendly little gerund
deserves
his own web site don't you?

Pat Schulze in SD who is getting ideas as I type this.

Louann Reid wrote:
>
> I agree that when students want to learn something they will,
and that's
one of
> the key features of the class Pat describes--besides Pat's own
spirit and
> enthusiasm, as Jan points out.  Another key feature is that
grammar is being
> taught just as I believe it should be--as a study of language
structure to
> students able to deal with that kind of conceptual thinking.
Too often the
> debate over teaching grammar focuses only on the qualifier that
such
teaching
> has little effect on writing.  I agree that teaching grammar in
order to
improve
> students' writing has probably not been worth the time it takes.
 HOWEVER,
> teaching grammar so that people will understand their language
ought to be
> highly effective.  Good luck and keep us posted!
>
> Louann
>
> Monica Bomengen wrote:
>
> > Jan posted,
> >
> > <<PATS! - send syllabus/lesson plans or post on your web page
or let me
send
> > you postage! I'm interested in seeing how you tackle this.
> >
> > I think what may make the difference in this is that kids are
choosing to
> > sign up for it, rather than having it thrust upon them.
That--plus your
own
> > special spirit and enthusiasm--will make it work just fine.>>
> >
> > Absolutely correct.  When kids WANT and NEED to learn
something, they'll
> > seek it out.  What a great thing, that 30 kids signed up for
this course.
> >
> > Monica B
> > ______

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