Karen: If there are so many problems determining the correct answers to questions about grammatical terms, then my question is why teach them? My contention (agreeing with John McWhorter) is that all of our students (well, perhaps excluding the non-native speakers) know all of the terms of English grammar, even the most complex. They use phrases and clauses and adjectivals and nominals and every other term we can come up with flawlessly and effortlessly. So, then, why teach these terms? They certainly don't need to know the definition of a preposition or prepositional phrase (even Greg Colomb find prepositions difficult to define, taking what might be called the Justice Potter Steward approach to defining pornography, "I'll know it when I see it").
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 17:37:14 -0800
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SAT question
To: [log in to unmask]
If I'm understanding you correctly, Craig, you're calling for a test
of grammar that requires explicit knowledge of grammatical terms.
One practical hurdle to doing it that way would be that we would
have to agree on a set of concepts that would form the basis of the
test, and we all know how much variation and bickering there is
about definitions of terms, and even analysis (as the question of
what to call the "who" clause that kicked off this discussion
shows).
As it happens, I just wrote (for other reasons) a quiz of explicit
grammatical knowledge that I put on my website. It's far more
demanding than anything I expect we would want to give high school
students, but perhaps that's closer to what you are calling. And
yet, I also suspect that there will be plenty of people who
violently disagree with my answers to some of the questions, or the
approach itself.
Weeding out such issues for a high-stakes test would be extremely
fraught. The current format does have the virtue that many more
people can agree that a particular part of the sentence needs fixing
without necessarily sharing the same analytical framework.
And while I don't necessarily disagree that certain categories of
students could theoretically be at a disadvantage here, on a
practical level it's also true that every question that makes it
onto an operational form undergoes very rigorous statistical
screening that's pretty good at weeding out questions that perform
poorly, for example when lots of high-performing students wind up
picking a wrong answer, say because they're too literate for their
own good. (That's not true of practice questions, of course,
especially not for ones written by most test-prep companies.)
If anyone is interested in my quiz, you can find it at
http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=node/295
On 1/5/2015 5:08 PM, Hancock, Craig G
wrote:
I think it's a mistake to call this a rule since I know
of no instance of its formulation as a rule. It's a pattern of
usage, and if it tests the ear, then it is favorable to those
whose discourse communitites are most similar to the makers of
the exam. If Dick is right with his examples, then someone who
has spent much time with the bible would be at a disadvantage.
Why did the Elizabethan ear hear it differently?
Choosing between "those" and "they" is artificial, since
they are not normal alternatives for each other. (They
versus them
or these versus those would make more
sense.)
It is silly to think that we either test error or can't
test knowledge about grammar at all. If our goal is to deepen
understanding about language, then we should build a
curriculum and then test what we teach. If the SAT focuses on
error reduction, then much valuable classroom time will be
spent preparing for that. If the SAT tested language
knowledge, then the curriculum would shift accordingly.
I agree that essays under timed conditions on topics that
the students have no opportunity (or need) to research tell us
very little. My own rule of thumb is that a strong sample
tells us something, but a weak sample may just mean a bad day.
In decades of testing (and placing) incoming first year
students, I have come to trust reading comprehension tests as
better predictors, perhaps because writing can be improved
dramatically just by adjusting what the student is trying to
do, but reading seems to take much more time. At any rate, we
do a five week summer program that teaches us much than we can
learn from a few tests. The fact that high school teachers
give grades that can't be trusted should give us all pause.
A teacher who has worked with a student should know much more than we can learn from these
tests. Technically, the SAT derives from a need to remove
the schools from the equation.
Meanwhile, students come
out of high school year after year without knowing what a
"phrase" is. If we thought that was important, we could
teach it and test it.
Since we are the Assembly
for the Teaching of Grammar, we should advocate teaching
grammar, not avoiding it. Tests that focus on error and not
on knowledge about language are part of the problem.
Craig
From:
Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Geoffrey
Layton <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 6:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SAT question
My question (as always) is: why teach "the
rules"?
> Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 18:09:56 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: SAT question
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> These are interesting perspectives all-around.
Regarding tricky questions, my concern is with the "No
error" option that seems to be part of every question.
I'm wondering if a student cannot label a particular
error as we've been discussing, would that lead to a "No
error" answer? If "No error" were not provided, then
selecting "by them" as the definitive error seems more
likely.
>
> Regarding standardized tests, I am in favor of them
and glad to see the reasons some of you provided to
support their use. My issue has always been with
including questions containing such subtle errors that
they lead to more head-scratching than definitive
answers for students.
>
> This is true for grammar exercises in textbooks
too. I've always been a fan of questions that reinforce
the rules being taught rather than veer into confusing
exceptions. Agreed?
>
> Linda
>
>
>
> Linda Comerford
> 317.786.6404
> [log in to unmask]
> www.comerfordconsulting.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Hagen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 3:57 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: SAT question
>
> I have my own issues with the SAT, but I�m going to
be the advocatus diaboli here, because the contrary
position is not as flimsy as you perhaps believe.
>
> First, no one who knows anything about standardized
testing is claiming that the answer to a single question
like this, in isolation, can indicate whether someone is
an adequate college-level writer. The real claim
(although I suspect you�ll object to this one too) is
that, when taken in aggregate, a series of questions
sampling a wide variety of usage problems is, when
combined with the score from an essay, an adequate
stand-in for the thing we�re really interested in: how
ready is the student for college-level writing. In other
words, the claim is that the ability to edit someone
else�s writing to conform to the norms of standard
written English can serve as a reasonable proxy for the
ability to produce one�s own college-level writing.
>
> That claim is one that is subject to empirical
testing, and there is published literature providing
evidence that there is a reasonably good correlation.
How persuasive those studies are can be the subject for
a later discussion, but College Board has assembled a
non-trivial body of evidence to support the use of the
SAT Writing test, correlating its scores to grades in
freshmen composition classes (which, I trust, are not
graded with multiple-choice tests). That evidence isn�t
unassailable, but this isn�t just a test cobbled
together by uninformed amateurs, and if you�re going to
attack it reasonably, you need to get into the
psychometric weeds.
>
> But why should we use a proxy measure at all? Why
not just directly assess their writing ability, as Craig
asks? The question is how can we do that in a way that
is as fair as possible to as many people as possible and
provides useful information to allow test-users (i.e.,
admissions officers) to make informed decisions. What
are the alternatives?
>
> (1) No standardized test of writing at all, in
which case, we rely on high school grades alone. If we
go this route, not only do we lose the ability to
compare students, since grading standards vary wildly
from school to school, and even from teacher to teacher
within a school, but we also lose the ability to
determine whether a particular grade average means that
the student is college ready or not (because of grade
inflation).
>
> (2) Use a portfolio to assess writing ability. This
method allows for more authentic writing, but there is
no protection against cheating, as a portfolio cannot be
created under proctored, secure conditions. In any
high-stakes assessment, some students will cheat.
>
> (3) Administer a standardized writing test that is
a pure essay test. Intuitively, this seems like the best
thing to do, but in fact, the reliability of essay-only
tests is very bad. Writers are much less consistent from
session to session, and graders have their problems too.
There was a study a few decades back that showed AP
tests would be significantly more reliable and make
better decisions at the score cut points if the essays
were removed. Of course essays are still on the APs.
This is really a matter of �face� validity, that is, of
making the test conform to what test users think it
ought to contain, rather than really providing any
useful information.
>
> To me, a bigger weakness of the SAT Writing test is
the essay, as it�s currently structured. In addition to
the lower reliability of the essay than the other
components, it�s not an authentic task. And College
Board hasn�t, to my knowledge, provided very good
evidence to suggest that the essay actually adds
anything to the overall score. This situation may change
with the new SAT, where the essay will be radically
different, but I remain skeptical.
>
> You dismiss this particular question as �tricky,�
but I�m not sure I agree. The universal sentiment of
everyone who answered the question seemed to be that it
felt wrong, even if they couldn�t advance a theory as to
why. If a student wrote this, I suspect that most of us
would note it as an infelicity (mentally, at least, even
if we�re not marking errors explicitly). I�d further
venture that a student who had an accumulation of this
sort of phrasing in a paper would not receive the
highest grade.
>
> A tricky question would be one that depended
narrowly on some particular rule that is found only in
some usage books, or enforced only by a few editors. For
example, if students were expected to mark �which� in
restrictive clauses as an error, I would call that a
fussy trick. To my knowledge, the SAT steers away from
such points of disputed usage.
>
>
> > On Jan 5, 2015, at 10:33 AM, Hancock, Craig G
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > I can follow Karl's logic, but what it seems
to come down to is that it's an error because people
whose use of language matters generally say it that way.
My own inclination is to think the pattern of using
"those" derives from shortening a noun phrase in which
"those" functions as determiner. "By those people who do
not approve of it" becomes "by those who do not approve
of it." You can't use "them" as determiner (at least in
standard English). It's interesting that there are three
passives in the sentence, none problematic.
> > Does anyone believe for a moment that someone
who sees this as an error is better prepared for college
than someone who doesn't? Every time I look at these
tests, I wonder whether they are doing much more harm
than good. Whoever designs them seems to be looking for
tricky little ways to catch people. Is our primary
purpose for studying language to avoid error? What
exactly makes an error an error, especially if usage
differs? Why don't we test knowledge about language
directly? Shouldn't we, as proponents of TEACHING
grammar, be arguing constantly for that? Catching people
on some obscure (and questionable) error diminishes the
subject.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English
Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Karl Hagen
> > Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 12:51 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: SAT question
> >
> > This problem has nothing directly to do with
who/whom (a distinction that the SAT does not test).
> >
> > You can�t just look at the single word
following �by.� The object of the preposition is
�them/those who did not approve it,� and the required
word has to do with how it functions in this unit, which
is a noun phrase headed by them/those.
> >
> > The relative clause �who did not approve it�
modifies them/those. But �them,� as a personal pronoun,
virtually always stands alone in the noun phrase. It
doesn�t take modifiers like the relative clause. I won�t
get into a detailed analysis of �those," as modern
accounts differ from a traditional analysis and the
differences aren�t to the point here. Suffice it to say
that �those� isn�t a personal pronoun and doesn�t have
the same restriction.
> >
> >> On Jan 5, 2015, at 9:34 AM, Jane Saral
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >> A recent SAT "ID the error" question
reads:
> >>
> >> Although it is widely regarded as a
masterpiece now, when it was built
> >> A B
> >>
> >> the Eiffel Tower was compared to a
"ridiculous smokestack" by them who did
> >> C
> >>
> >> not approve of it. No error
> >> D E
> >>
> >>
> >> C just sounds wrong. I would say "by those
who did not approve of it." But isn't the "them/those"
word the stand-alone O.P. of by, unaffected by the
relative clause that follows? This does not seem to be
dealing with the who/whom question; "who" is correctly
the subject of "did not approve."
> >>
> >> So why is this an error?
> >>
> >> Jane Saral
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