Susan Witt wrote:

>I am coming to the conclusion that both types of learning are needed for
>children to gain the most mastery of grammatical structures and sentence
>syntax -- that either one without the other will ultimately fail kids.  I'm
>thinking that each type of learning has different functions.

Absolutely. Courtney Cazden has written about the balancing of
implicit/explicit strategies with respect to Reading Recovery, and Jim Gee
has written about the necessity of "replacing" what mother nature provides
in kids' language learning with explicit structures.... These are not
articles specific to grammar instruction, but I think the questions are
generally relevant. Sequencing of strategies is important, and so is the
question of what a student already knows.

  Activities geared towards language
>play, experimentation, and developing implicit understanding can help refine
>their impressions.  Thus, I envision a curriculum that goes back and forth
>between these types of instruction.

With respect to gtrammar instruction, the problem is one of WHAT is
explicated -- wh. pretty much covers the history of discussion on ATEG.
WHICH meta-language, which concepts....

>Actually, I doubt it[ imitation] is under utilized because teachers object
to it.  I
>suspect is has more to do with teachers never having heard of it as an
>instructional tool. I'm wondering if there are some readers out there who
are wondering what I
>mean by sentence structure imitation?

My point was different, but related. I would argue for imitation of
passages or whole texts, not sentences. The difference is that, since I'm
not a grammarian, I start with a bigger unit of analysis than the learning
of sentence structure. Like everyone (?) else on this list, I'm interested
in bringing grammar back to help students to become better writers &
literacy learners. But for me, questions of identity (motivation) enter the
picture from the start. The question of explication has to follow what it
is the student wants to know. Woops - I'm about to veer off topic so I'll
stop here.

Judy


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