Herb, I don't want to speak for middle school teachers everywhere, but I'll try to respond to your comments as broadly as possible. Please note that even in our small private school, our English department disagrees with each other on this point. (pleasedontflamepleasedontflameplease . . . .) In a message dated 12/21/2000 9:49:29 PM Pacific Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes:<< Givon and McCawley may not be standard references, but Quirk certainly is, and I haven't seen that cited in the middle school discussion. ********************* Your question presupposes that middle school teachers teach enough grammar to warrant a $250 or so book to use as a reference. When I first analyzed what was going on in my classroom, I was puzzled by the apparent lack of transfer of grammar instruction to writing. So I went looking for my own experts -not on grammar points, but on how/why I should be teaching grammar. I found several - Hillocks, Weaver, Noguchi, Krashen, etc. The experts we middle school teachers read have convinced us that teaching grammar in isolation doesn't work to improve writing. We are still trying to figure out WHY we should take class time for teaching whole class grammar lessons. See below. **************************** [snip] Back to Herb <>> ****************** This, I think, gets to the heart of the problem. We may have different goals. Linguistics IS worth studying - for its own sake. The problem is that we English teachers have N number of minutes to prepare our kids to go on. We are expected to teach reading (not only reading, but reading across the curriculum), literature and critical analysis, poetry, vocabulary, writing (persuasive, narrative, descriptive, poetic, rhetorical forms, etc.), traditional prescriptive grammar (at some schools), test taking skills, study skills, critical thinking skills, and anything else they can loosely lump under English. All in a way that encourages kids to fall in love with reading and writing, and all in under an hour a day at most schools. Math teachers teach math. An hour a day. Many of us would applaud a separate linguistics class starting at any level - elementary would be fine. But we are judged on how our kids read and write about literature and their lives. All the grammar texts I've seen (even those that purport to be grammar and writing texts) start with traditional grammar drill. "Put-an-F-next-to-the-fragment-and-an-S-next-to-the-sentence" takes lots of time I don't have, doesn't seem to have any impact on the students' elimination of fragments, and ensures that my kids think that English is "stupid and boring." Most progressive English teachers I know are using reading and writing workshops because the research that shows how much better the results are when students have some choice and some buy-in to their work. I use the Internet extensively to give my kids and authentic audience for their writing. We use minilessons on s/v agreement, punctuation, fragment control, etc. Where do we fit linguistics study in to that hour? More importantly (and the reason I've been such an unceasing nag!), where do we find a linguistics program/text that is written for middle school? I've seen college texts (and Johanna was kind enough to send me hers) that are wonderful, but there is nothing that an isolated sixth grade teacher can easily use over the course of a year. (I exempt Ed Vavra's KISS because it requires a school-wide, multigrade buy-in, which I don't have.) So, as far as we are concerned, bring on the linguistics classes. Heck, I'd even study to be qualified to teach it! It's a fascinating field. But most of us aren't sure where or how to fit it in to what we do every day. As I've said before (I admitted I'm a nag!), we know what doesn't work. But there is no consensus as to what does. A separate linguistic class would be wonderful. An important question, though, is whose ox do you gore to get the time for it? As much fun and as useful as linguistics is, until you can show me what I can safely eliminate to make room for it and how it will help my kids in reading and writing, I'd fight for those minutes. And I'm willing to listen. Think how hard the math teachers would fight. Gretchen in San Jose [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/