This is a reply to messages from long ago. I've just been trawling through my inbox.
I am doing research into the benefits of grammar teaching at ***teacher education level*** (different from the debate about grammar teaching and children's literacy development, but not irrelevant).
I am NOT for "traditional" grammar. However, I am proposing that teacher students will benefit from some kind of abstract, structural (formal) knowledge of language. The approach being taken in our institution is generative (they receive a yearlong linguistics course - six weeks of which focus on syntax). I hasten to add, in light of someone's comment about 'inflicting' generative grammar on the 'innocent', that it is the formal approach that is taken. The students do not have to understand the Chomskyian philosphy, or even draw trees. The idea is that it is a way of learning about the word classes and sentence structures (of English in this case) in a way that allows the teacher students to perform structural analysis for practical, pedagogical purposes somewhere down the line.
I am doing empirical, data-driven research based on the course they take (thus the treatment received).
I also take into account previous input and, perhaps more importantly, what _kind_ of metalinguistic knowledge of grammar they already seemed to posess, and how that changes after the course. It is quasi-experimental only because a control group was not possible.
When I speak at seminars and conferences, or talk to people who are practising teachers in the TESOL world in particular, my proposed approach is often read as being traditional and opposed to the existing ethos for children's literacy development - for some of the reasons given by the previous respondent below Robert Einarsson's reply. I therefore receive a lot of feedback from people who believe this type of approach to grammar goes against the 'language in use, language in context' etc. movement and the importance of literacy to overall cognitive, cultural and political development (something with which I ideologically agree).
I'm hoping that my research will help show it doesn't have to be one or the other, even if the generative approach is seen as being close to traditional grammar by a number of educationalists. The nature of metalinguistic knowledge in literate adults is an under-researched one. In the context of teacher education it is surely important? Perhaps then it might be clearer how the teachers' knowledge can be adapted to fit with research coming out of literacy classrooms. I also agree with Jeff Glauner's point that a language to talk about language emerges from this approach. In the UK at present, this also happens to match the metalanguage given in government policy documents on teacher education and primary school literacy objectives.
Siobhan Casson
University of Durham
UK
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Einarsson
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: Quantitative Research
Ed lists are all good reasons (copied below) why there seems to be
a "dearth of quantitative research" on the pro-grammar side.
However, I was wondering if another reason might be that the ethos
of traditional grammar, and traditionalism in general, simply do not
match with the ethos of quantitative research. Isn't the drive toward
quantitative research in the classroom part of the whole anti-
tradition movement? It seems to me that people who are
interested in traditional grammar would have more scholarly
motivations, less scientific; more rationalist world views, less
empirical. The ethos of classroom experimentation does not fit
with the ethos of grammar teaching. This would also imply that
those who DO use quantitaive research would be predisposed
against grammar. Also, I heard someone in the social sciences
talk about a new movement toward QUALITATIVE research,
instead of quantitative, in the softer sciences. Grammar teaching
might be one of the softer sciences.
>on the question of quantitative research. There has been very
> little done recently, for a number of reasons:
>
> 1.) Cost. Collecting and analyzing samples (oral or written) is
> time-consuming and expensive.
>
> 2) Legal issues -- getting permission to use (analyze) samples of
> writing from an entire class is not as easy as it was 30 years ago.
>
> 3.) Deciding what "grammar" is to be studied. (Someone already raised
> this question, but it is complex, especially since, even in this group,
> there is little agreement on the definition of grammar. Are we talking
> usage, or syntax?)
>
> 4) Samples -- how will samples be chosen? How will we know that the
> students have, or have not, had instruction in precisely those
> constructions that are to be analyzed during the preceding 6 months?)
>
> 5) Are the samples (raw data) available for inspection. As I suggested in
> my essay on the definition of the T-unit, in the previous, famous
> research, the researchers all defined the T-unit differently. Unless we
> can see the raw data, the studies are highly suspect. (See:
> http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/Essay009_Def_TUnit.htm)
>
> Note too that the recent discussion (and different opinions) on how
> language is "mastered" in the first place also affects any quantitative
> research. One of the reasons that O'Hare's study is flawed is that he used
> the previous work of Hunt, O'Donnell, and Loban which showed that
> subordinate clauses naturally blossom between seventh and ninth grade.
> Probably for that reason, he chose seventh graders to study. But, once one
> sees what is going on, his doing so created a "sling-shot" effect which
> invalidates any application of his research to anything other than seventh
> graders. (And it may not be valid for them either.)
>
> I suggest that any quantitative study of the effectiveness of any
> approach to teaching grammar will be flawed until we get a better
> understanding of the natural development of what Hunt called "syntactic
> maturity." And we are a long way from that because we can't even agree on
> how to define basic terms. Ed V.
>
-----------------------------------------------------
Sincerely, Robert Einarsson
please visit me at
www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb
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