I am confident that Herb Stahlke has forgotten more linguistics than I will ever know. So, at the risk of being shown to be wrong, I am still going to take issue in some of his observations about linguistic theories and pedagogy. Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: >I strongly support Bill's concerns over the application of linguistic >theories to teaching. We've seen this trend in motion from the days of >Charles Fries' structural grammar back in the 50s, and it flourished >like poison ivy with the Paul Roberts' reduction of early >transformational grammar in the 60s. > I have read some of the papers on the debate that took place in College English and College Composition and Communication in the 1950s and 1960s on the role of linguistics and pedagogy. First, linguistic theories were absolutely crucial in challenging the privileged position of Standard English. I recommend a reading of Geneva Smitherman's 1999 paper in College Composition and Communication for a review of this debate. The use of linguistic theory lead directly to the NCTE's resolution on a Students' Right to their Own Language. To give a very simple example, without a theory of language I think it is impossible to show that no dialect is superior to another. Second, if there has been any advance in how to teach certain grammatical structures, it has been by work of DeBeaugrande and Noguichi. In noting that a yes-no question provides a way of determining whether a string of works is an independent clause, both are using a FORMAL property of English to identify an important structure for students to understand what a "complete" sentence is. Now, perhaps, there is a "functional" explanation for this fact about English, but I don't know what it is. The following statement is absolutely right. > But formal theories of language are about >language and formal theory, not about pedagogy and praxis. > One of the jobs of applied linguists is to figure out how such formal theories applicable to pedagogy. > >I think the contemporary model theoretic concept that most influences >the non-linguistic world is modularity, the idea that different areas of >syntax, as well as phonology and different areas of semantics, represent >separate mental modules that communicate with each other rather like >functions in a computer program. Some persuasive popular writing has >been done on this subject, Pinker's books especially. But this is >simply another case of seeking psychological reality for a theoretical >construct, and that path doesn't help pedagogy. > Let me suggest there is value to these theoretical constructs. If all dialects of English share a lot of fundamental principles in common and the differences we notice are based on how some of these fundamental principles are realized, it is pedagogically useful for teachers to know how they can describe those differences to instruct their students. A theory which argues the differences we perceive are related to input and are truly different structures leads to a completely different pedagogy. Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University 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/