Wheeler (I guess we are no longer on first-name basis) assumes that
I make a number of assumptions and then "upon this foundation of
ignorance" I hurl accusations. Well, I may hurl accusations, but I'm not
so sure of the ignorance part.
      She notes that her students have to take two courses, and her
students  "learn English sentence structure"  in the second one, where
she uses Max Morenberg's Doing Grammar.  I found this interesting,
especially since Professor Morenberg wrote an article for Syntax in 1994
(Volume 11, No.2) in which he questioned the effectiveness of his own
teaching of his own course, using, I assume, his own book. In 1994,
while editing the newsletter, I attempted not to challenge people, but
(to myself) I did question Morenberg's approach. I just pulled out the
article and reread it. As I understand it, he spent ten of fifteen weeks
on sentence structure, and then used the last five to discuss sentence
structure in literature and to examine the work of Loban, Christensen,
etc.
     The fundamental problem with Morenberg's approach is that ten week
is simply not enough time for current students to develop an effective
conscious command of syntactic structures. Wheeler writes, "Thus, while
it is indeed untested, I suspect that students engaging in such
life-long (K - 16) discovery learning of language structure would indeed
emerge with a 'strong analytical grasp of sentence structure.'  Nobody
ever claimed such mastery would emerge after one semester." But the
future teachers that Wheeler is teaching were not brought up in such an
environment. They have almost no conscious analytical sense of grammar
when they enter their college courses. Indeed, it would not surprise me
if many of these students think, as many of my Freshman do, that "of" is
a verb, and "is" is not. In effect, what I am asking is if she has any
proof that they have it when they leave her courses?
     If we want these future teachers to believe that syntax is
systematic, and that a knowledge of it will indeed help them and their
students, the first thing we need to do is to convince them of that
fact. And the only way to do that, I would suggest, is to give them as
much control of the "system" as possible. Take, for example, the
question of clauses. It is fairly easy to teach students definitions and
the ability to identify clauses in "selected" sentences. Teaching them
to untangle the clause structure in any sentence that their students may
read or write is quite another matter. It takes much longer, and it
requires going over numerous texts, randomly selected by the students,
as well as by the instructor. But without such an analytical ability,
the future teachers will find themselves unable to effectively apply
what they have learned in any of the courses taught by people on this
list.
     Wheeler claims that what she teaches "goes to challenge their
erroneous, and damaging presumption that there is one and only one
'proper English' and that all others are flawed, imperfect renditions of
the Standard.  Students emerge from Language & Teaching understanding at
a deep and personal level that the structure of language varies by time,
place, audience and communicative purpose, knowledge which they then are
able to use with their students to help students code-switch between
language
varieties in their speech and writing." Challenge, it may. Convince, I'm
not so sure. Of course they will tell her that they are convinced. She
is giving the grades. I would suggest that this "lesson" can be taught
much more economically, in terms of time, and I still question her
students' final ability to discuss, intelligently, such things as clause
structure in any text.
     As I think I noted in my original post, when there was a debate in
Syntax on main ideas in main clauses, several teachers told me that the
entire discussion was beyond them because they did not understand
clauses. Similarly, from something I read, teachers in England
complained about their new standards because the teachers themselves
could not understand clauses. Most of these teachers had been required
to take a course in grammar, perhaps even two courses. The problem, I
think, is that too many of the people teaching teachers insist on
"teaching" lots of stuff that is interesting (for the "professors"), or
that fits an ideological/politcal framework. I wouldn't have a problem
with this, if the future teachers already had a solid analytical command
of syntax. But there are many English teachers who cannot identify
subjects and verbs, clauses, participles, etc. i.e., the basic
structures of English. There are many teachers who, as I noted in my
first post, think that "because" is a coordinating conjunction. Not only
are these teachers  teaching things that are wrong, they are teaching
things that hurt students, not only on standardized tests (as I noted in
the first post), but also in the students' reading and writing.
     I still believe that teaching things such as language differences
(in ways that require a lot of class time) is irresponsible and
unethical.  Many of us have jobs because the public (and our colleagues
in other fields) believe that students can't "write." Although they say
"write," many of these people have in mind grammatical errors. As
primarily a teacher of Freshman composition, I have to agree with our
colleagues. Many of my students have major problems with fragments,
splices, etc., and, more importantly, they have problems in using the
basic syntax of the language to clearly express the ideas in their
heads. It is for this reason that we have jobs. Likewise, those of you
who have jobs teaching grammar to future teachers have them because the
public (and our academic colleagues) believe that you are teaching
future teachers how to deal with these problems. My questions are are
you? And, if so, how effectively? To the extent that you are not, I
consider you unethical and irresponsible -- you are not meeting the
responsibility implied by the very existence of your jobs.
      I found the discussion of September 11 and grammar interesting,
but again, I found most of the discussion going in the wrong track.
Certainly language differences are important, but other than by teaching
foreign languages, we are not going to be able to do very much about
that in teaching grammar. As a composition teacher, I became interested
in the teaching of grammar because of the syntactically garbled
sentences that crossed my desk. For students who do not have a good
background in reading, a conscious command of syntax, a command that
they can apply to any sentence that they read or write, is very helpful.
Are we giving them (and their teachers) that command?  If we do not,
will these students be able to participate effectively in the many
complex debates about policy that will be forthcoming?
     To do so, we do not need to discuss many (most?) of the
constructions that are discussed on this list. Rather, for example, we
need to enable students to identify prepositional phrases and subjects
and verbs in their own writing, thereby enabling them to see that the
meaningful subject of a verb is in a prepositional phrase, and thus the
sentence needs to be rephrased.
     I will, of course, be interested in any responses, and I will be
especially  interested should Professor Morenberg respond to it.
Ed V.