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.