Christine and others, I love the idea of a grassroots movement, but I fear that in the case of teaching grammar, a movement like the one you describe will face many obstacles. I have been doing research on grammar instruction with public high school teachers for the past three years and we've experienced a number of roadblocks as we've tried to implement grammar/language instruction that is based on linguistic research, that is drawn from students' linguistic resources, and that is clearly connected to particular uses of written and oral language. Here are a few obstacles we've faced: 1. Standardized test preparation - Most state and national standardized tests now include multiple choice grammar/conventions tasks that ask students to edit decontextualized sentences. To prepare students for these tasks on high stakes tests, teachers are pressured to teach grammar primarily through practicing such tasks. 2. Standardized curricula - Most districts have adopted standardized curricula that give teachers little room to choose what to teach in a given school year. From what I've seen, most of the high school curricula frame grammar in very traditional and often unclear terms and goals (such as "9th grade: review parts of speech, kinds of clauses, use of quotations.") 3. Available (and mandated) curricular materials - From textbooks to computerized test preparation programs to videos (such as "Grammar Pitfalls"), grammar is still presented in most widely-available curricular materials in ways that are confusing and not particularly helpful to students. I can't tell you how often I run across the explanation that "a sentence is a complete thought" (to refer to another recent thread on this listserv) in the textbooks adopted by the school districts in which I work. I've found no widespread curricular materials that offer the kinds of nuanced and scaffolded explanations of grammar that people on this listserv do. And teachers are often mandated to use the curriculum that their districts have adopted and often are not allowed to bring in outside resources. Thus, even if we convinced teachers to teach grammar in a new way, their districts and mandated curricula might prohibit it. 4. Content knowledge - From my own work, I've found that it takes a tremendous amount of time to teach even very strong and committed teachers how to approach grammar in the ways we advocate. Currently, we spend our first 15 hours together just discussing sociolinguistic research on language/dialect variation and ways (and reasons) to teach subject/predicate/verb. As many of you have pointed out, grammar has been either ignored in K-12 education in recent years or downplayed (i.e., relegated to the editing phase of process approaches to writing). The result is that many teacher still need a lot more professional development to gain the linguistic content knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge to teach grammar in the way that many people on this listserv advocate. Given the growing standardization of education and the current administration's emphasis on "research-based instruction," I think that it's imperative that we systematically study and publish research on successful approaches to grammar instruction and, as you suggest, teachers' needs and the obstacles surrounding such instruction. I fully admit that I am biased because much of my job involves educational research, but I don't think we can convince the public, the feds, the states, the curriculum developers, school principals, or teachers to change their approach to grammar instruction until we have research that shows the effectiveness of what we propose. My sense from looking at how the National Writing Project and other groups have shaped their message in response to the current educational climate is that we have to base our claims on sound research in order to be heard at all at the national (or district) level. I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this. Amanda On Oct 14, 2005, at 9:25 AM, Christine Reintjes wrote: > Ed, > > Thanks for your comments. You know the saying.."Think globally, act > locally"? > > What if this group came up with a priority list and our members worked > on introducing it in our local schools? I'm a great believer in > grassroots movements. Maybe someone on this list could write a paper > on the results. > > I've been thinking about interviewing public school English teachers > to get to know where they are coming from and what they need. My > community college students really like my descriptive perspective on > dialects. They have so many stories of painful experiences around > their native dialects being labeled bad, wrong, stupid and defective. > > Let me know your thoughts. > > -- > > Christine Reintjes Martin > [log in to unmask] > > > > > ----Original Message Follows---- > From: Edward Vavra <[log in to unmask]> > Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar > 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/ > ***** Amanda Godley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, English Education University of Pittsburgh 5A18 WWPH (412) 648-7313 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/ ***** Amanda J. Godley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor English Education University of Pittsburgh 412-648-7313 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/