The following is a preview of the Sixth Annual
ATEG Conference and of the Workshop that I
will be giving before it.  Both will be held at
Pennsylvania College of Technology, in
Williamsport, PA. Since the deadline for
proposals has been extended through the
second week of June, a specific schedule has
not yet been  made. (The workshop is on July
27; the conference, on the 28th and 29th.)
 
Ed Vavra
[log in to unmask]
 
A Conference PreView
 
Although there is still room for a few
presentations, the following have been
accepted:
 
Martha Kolln (State College, PA): "The
President's Report"
William McCleary (Livonia, NY): "(Still) trying to
find an answer to the problem of 'error' in
writing"
Cornelia Paraskevas (Monmouth, OR):
"Grammar Textbooks" and "The
Reading-Grammar Connection"
Jim Kenkel (Eastern Kentucky) & Robert Yates
(Central Missouri): "Grammar and Literacy:
Embedding Outside Sources in Text"
Audrey Caldwell (Shillington, PA): "Syntax
Book Reviews: What Should be Covered?"
Frank Peters (Bloomsburg, PA): "Creativity in
Short Phrasing"
Jim Brosnan (Providence, RI): "Teaching
Grammar Through Technical Documents"
Carolyn G. Hartnett (Texas City, TX):
"Functional Grammar for English (Not Latin)"
Stephane Dunn (Granger, IN): "Using Humour
and Creative Techniques to Teach Students
the Common Sense of Formal English"
Margaret Enright Wye (Kansas City, MO): "To
Pause, To Separate, To Terminate: A
Prolegomena to Understanding Punctuation"
Kevin Griffith (Columbus, OH): "Surrealism
and Grammar: Creatively Reinvigorating the
Classroom"
Heping Zhao (Fullerton, CA): "Particle,
Complement, and Phrasal Verb: Rethinking
'ON'"
R.A. Buck (Charleston, IL): "Simplifying Tree
Structures in the Grammar Classroom"
Brock Haussamen (Bridgewater, N.J.):
"Between Restrictive and Nonrestrictive:
Amplifying Clauses"
 
Julia Karet, who teaches English in Miyazaki,
Japan, is planning on attending the
conference.  In response to my request that
she speak, she responded:
 
You probably can talk me into giving a  short
presentation as long as you understand that it
won't be in technical language.  One of the
reasons I want to attend is to get ideas about
effective ways to teach relatively complicated
English grammar structures to nonnative
speakers.  I am sometimes stumped on how to
explain errors to students in a format that will
be useful.
      What I would do is bring samples of
Japanese students' writing which illustrate
common grammar mistakes.  Our students are
at a 420- 450 TOEFL level.  I would then
discuss various approaches I've tried to
address these problems.  We do not teach
grammar as a discrete skill at MIC.  It is only
taught "in context" - as part of writing
assignments for content courses (social
sciences and humanities) or integrated skills
English courses.
 
Friday evening, there will be a short business
meeting, followed by a discussion of the
editing/review policy for Syntax in the
Schools. As usual, I will be at the Gennetti
Hotel front lounge on Thursday evening,
where we usually meet and socialize. (EV)
 
 
Pre-Conference Workshop:
The Kiss Approach to Grammar
in the Curriculum, K - College
-by Ed Vavra, editor, Syntax in the Schools
Thursday, July 27, 1995
 
During the eleven years that I have been
editing Syntax in the Schools, people have
expressed an interest in what I have to say
about teaching grammar. The newsletter,
however, is not the place for me to develop my
ideas at length. Nor can they be adequately
presented in 20 minutes during an ATEG
conference. Participants in this workshop will
actively follow the sequence and some of the
materials I have used in teaching teachers and
in teaching Freshman composition. I will also
suggest how this approach could be made the
foundation of the K-12 curriculum.
The approach does not require a textbook.
Everything most students need to know can
be listed on a single page, explained on four
or five. Students (and thus workshop
participants) work with essays and
paragraphs written by their peers. In effect,
students become their own grammarians. In
working with high school and college
students, perhaps the most difficult step in the
approach is in getting them to recognize
prepositional phrases. The last hour of the
workshop addresses this problem with CASA,
a computer program that runs under
Windows. (The program will be available for
the cost of a disk.)
 
Registration Information:
 
The registration fee for ATEG conference
participants is $10; for all others, it is $20.
Please make checks payable to ATEG. The
registration deadline is July 20, 1995.
 
Tentative Schedule
 
 9:30   Coffee & doughnuts
10:00   What Do Students Need to Know
        about Grammar -- and Why?
11:00   Step I: Prepositional Phrases
12:00   Step 2: S/V/C and Clauses
 
1:00    Lunch Break
 
2:00    Step 3: Verbals
3:00    Step 4: Other Constructions
4:00    More on Syntax, Reading, Writing,
        and Thinking
5:00    CASA: Computer-Assisted Syntactic
Analysis
6:00    End of workshop