Thanks to Herb for the below. Why not add these examples to "teaching tips"? I think it's especially important for teachers to understand the power of linguistic prinicples like "given/new" structuration to illuminate the semantics of a range of sentence types & dispell canards like 'don't use passive voice' It would also be useful to include specific examples where there are none -- in spare time, of course.:) judy [The ideal would be to build up enough concrete instances for teachers to 'get' the principle at work and so be able to design examples of their own...=-- an online grammar course? At 03:05 PM 12/8/00 -0500, you wrote: >Judy asked me to write up a bit on the topics I deal with in >summer workshops on rhetoric and grammar. Here are notes on three >topics illustrating the sorts of things I've done that have worked >reasonably well. BTW, I have used Martha Kolln's excellent book >_Rhetorical Grammar_ in some of these workshops. > >1. What's new and what's old > >A not commonly observed generalization about the functional >dynamics of sentence structure is the fact that constituents get >longer the farther into a sentence you go. This fits nicely with >the fact that English, like many languages, tends to put newer >information later in a sentence than older information, and newer >information, being stuff we don't know, takes more words and is >therefore longer. One obvious correlate of these facts is that we >extrapose subject noun clauses: > >That it will snow tonight seems likely. >becomes >It seems likely that it will snow tonight. > >But we can do the same thing with relative clauses: > >Some guy who had been waiting by the curb came up to talk to me. >becomes >Some guy came up to talk to me who had been waiting by the curb. > >This also accounts for many uses of the passive, where the agent >is either unimportant and not mentioned or new information and put >at the end in a by phrase. > >A cloud scudding overhead presaged the tornado. >becomes >The tornado was presaged by a cloud scudding overhead. > >And it accounts for the preposition phrase indirect object, for >the choice of moving a verb particle beyond the direct object or >not, and for the use of existential sentences vs. BE sentences >with indefinite subjects, indefinites usually representing new >information. > >In other words, a single, broad, functional principle involving >sentence perspective provides a cohesive unifying theme for a >variety of grammatical structures that then take on some >rhetorical significance. > >By the way, I posted a teaching tip on ATEG describing an >exercise I use to teach the role of voice in discourse. > >2. What do we agree on and what might we argue about? > >This is, of course, a heading for talking about presupposition >and assertion. Roughly speaking, main clauses assert and >subordinate clauses presuppose, except, of course, when they both >do the opposite. I try to pick politically loaded sentences to >illustrate this. For example, > >The President, whose sexual morals have been unfairly impugned, >will soon leave office and move to New York. > >I then ask students to disagree with the sentence, and, of >course, they want to disagree with the relative clause, but to do >so, they have to, in effect, restate the relative clause, whereas >if they want to disagree with the main clause all they have to do >is say, "No, he won't." We then discuss why burying a >controversial statement in a relative clause makes it hard to >attack and how such discourse gets used. That gives them a reason >to listen to political statements, usually ones that make their >blood boil, but they learn from this some of the tricks that >skilled propagandists may use. > >One direction I've taken this in is to look next at comma >splices, and students frequently discover that one of the spliced >clauses isn't really functioning as an independent clause but >rather as a presupposed clause that they would mark in speech with >lowered intonation. This has helped to make sense of what they're >marking when they mark comma splices and how to help students >avoid doing this in writing. > >And, of course, not all main clauses assert and not all >subordinate clauses presuppose, so this lets us look at >indefinites, gnomic sayings, conditionals, questions, negatives, >etc. from a functional perspective. I never cover all of these in >a single workshop, but we usually touch on one or two of them. > >3. What's background and what's foreground? > >I like to take 100-word passages from a variety of sources and >ask students to decide what's foreground information and what's >background in the passage. The terms are generally clear enough >intuitively that they are able to do this without much coaching. >Then we start looking at how we identify or mark something as >background, and they frequently observe that background sentences >and clauses tend to have auxiliary verbs in them and foreground >clauses don't. This allows us to discuss the syntax and semantics >of Tense, Aspect, and Modality and to do so in a context that >makes the details relevant. There's also a strong tendency for >foreground clauses to be main clauses and background subordinate, >and so this topic dovetails nicely with the Given/New discussion. >Using real published text also provides enough exceptions to these >generalizations to prompt some good discussion of why these >correlations don't always work and what other devices are >available. > >*************** > >That's content enough for a two-week halfday summer workshop, and >it represents the sorts of things I've done. I sometimes get into >other topics, depending on the audience, like Givon's irrealis >scale, sequence of tenses, discourse cohesion and sentence >combining, etc. Typically, after we've gone through some >presentation and analysis of both my examples and examples they've >found, we then develop lesson plans appropriate for the levels >they teach. At the end of the term we all leave with binders of >lesson plans, all of which have been tried out in groups and have >been critiqued by the participants and by me. > >I hope that provides a sense of ways that one can use discourse >and rhetorical function to organize and teach grammatical topics. >I know from comments others have made that there is a lot of this >going on, and this seems like a great site for sharing this sort >of information. Thanks to all of you who are involved in keeping >ATEG and the site going strong. > >Herb Stahlke > >Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D. >Professor of English >Ball State University >Muncie, IN 47306 >[log in to unmask] > >To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html >and select "Join or leave the list" > >Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/