>In spite of this disagreement, most seem to agree that a guidelines
>document (and therefore a curriculum built on the basis of same) must
>include the text- or discourse-level function of clauses/sentences as an
>area of study. Anyone dissenting? Shall we debate it?

I agree that a guidelines document will be helpful, but I would hope it
to be a minimalist document, given the differences among
 schools of linguistics. It might just have to be that way
until more huge data sets get analysed every which way to demonstrate
what is truly useful & for what, and what can be left by the wayside.

In any case, I think the strongest contribution that a guidelines
document can make to rendering the field of language study both
exciting and accessible to teachers and students would be to name
some of the tensions between perspectives that have been brought up
on this list -- to let teachers know that there are different
descriptions of language, that the description they
choose should be useful for their pedagogical purposes
(it should provide the meta-language teachers want to share with their
students for talking about the subject of the course, which could be
language itself).

In other words, give teachers some options. Let them elaborate
the guidelines with extra materials as they see fit. The guidelines
document could include references to good materials of various kinds.
It would posit a common if rudimentary metalanguage that would grow
through the investment of teachers' own interests and concerns --
bottom-up, not top-down.

my two cents
Judy


Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183

Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake