I am finding the debate on 'context' very interesting, since whatever you do
with learners (my 'grammar' learning groups are primary teacher education
students) there is still an underlying system that the teacher believes is
relevant for the learners to acquire.Gretchen Lee has given some excellent
examples of pedagogical content knowledge and methodology being used to help
learners acquire a system. Her students will not have developed new
statistical techniques, but have been taught some exisiting rules.

As far as grammar knowledge in primary classrooms here in England is
concerned, there are teachers who are not at all confident about even the
lowest level of any language 'system' - e.g. how to identify a noun and
explicitly explain what it is (in any theoretical framework). I do not
believe that is is adequate for them to work on the same level as what they
teach children, but this is what happens, since they learn from the
children's text books too.

In my own context, teacher education students are also lacking in any
understanding of a language system. While we could get into a functional
language theory debate about the role of a system of _grammar_ in language
(generative linguists will say it can be autonomous, functional linguists
probably not), when it comes down to it, teachers need some kind of subject
knowledge which equates to Gretchen Lee's maths knowledge that enabled her
to work with her students towards a less 'frustrating' and 'boring' way of
learning statistical methods.

Her students learnt statistics - i.e. a procedural knowledge about a system
which can be reapplied in different situations. Yet people are happy to
suggest that pupils in schools do not need to have knowledge in any way
equivalent about how their and other languages are patterned. They don't
know how to talk about language - and unfortunately at present we are trying
to rectify a decades long problem, since many teachers and future teachers
don't either.

Siobhan Casson
Durham
UK

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