Ed keeps talking about teaching grammar as though grammar were separate from linguistics or sociolinguistics. It isn't. Any reason for teaching grammar at all is a sociolinguistic reason. And describing grammar -- the way a language works -- is the task of linguistics. And linguistics does it better than the pedagogical tradition. I found Amanda Godley's remarks very interesting and helpful. The focus on standardized tests is a problem. I don't know what other states' tests look like. The test practice exercises I've looked at for CA generally do not include testing knowledge of terminology. Several options for structuring a sentence -- usually provided in a _little bit_ of context -- are offered, and the students must choose one. Apparently, they are expected to use what they learn in grammar class to make the choice. Of course, these choices will come naturally to some students while others will have to decide between items that sound right in their nonstandard home dialect and the "correct" standard forms. My own students worked some practice problems, and there was a clear difference in their performance depending on how much their home speech conformed to the standard. Most of my students speak standard English, but a version which has abandoned some of the older distinctions, like who/whom. On items which required choosing an irregular past tense or past participle, for example, the scores were near 100% for the class, but on who/whom questions, most had no clue how to figure out which answer was correct. So a major problem is helping students understand how to attack those questions whose answers vary from their home English. For pronoun case in conjuncts, for example ("Mary and me went to the store"), take away the name and "and". "Me went to the store" will be rejected. Same for "The teacher invited my sister and I to her house" -- "The teacher invited I to her house" will not fly with most, if not all, students. They then just keep the solo pronoun when they restore the rest of the conjunct. Linguistics has produced these techniques for helping students become aware of their intuitive knowledge of grammar. These have been discussed on this list several times. I believe a number of them can be incorporated into grammar teaching as an aid to completing lesson exercises and practice tests. It wouldn't be necessary to bring in outside materials beyond, perhaps, a xeroxed handout or a transparency. Teachers can even simply write test frames on the board. Students can then work with the sentences in their books or in their own writing. These can then supplement or replace the vague, confusing, or inaccurate material in the schoolbooks. "Complete thought" can be redefined as "complete sentence", which in turn is shown to be a string which can go into the frame "I am convinced that ___". The difference between count and mass nouns can be tested by having students try to put "much" vs. "many" in front of the noun. Transitive verbs can be discovered by attempting to put a noun phrase after the verb: "I slept the pillow" doesn't work, but "I fluffed the pillow" does. Sociolinguistics has given us a method for teaching grammar successfully to students whose home dialect is not standard English: comparative grammar (presented, for example, in work by Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords). This method simultaneously teaches children a number of things: (i) it shows the immediate usefulness of grammatical terminology and analysis as a way of comparing kinds of English to one another as well as just for talking about one's writing; (ii) it shows the students that nonstandard varieties of English follow just as many rules as standard varieties; (iii) it shows students how much language varies according to the context of use and the audience. Also, at least in the one test case that Wheeler and Swords report, it is successful -- students enjoy grammar lessons, master standard English, and succeed on standardized tests. Basic sociolinguistics information is essential for teachers. Part of their job is helping to produce informed citizens. Teachers who continue to teach dialect-based prejudice and myths like "bad English" will perpetuate our discriminatory school system and society. They will also never rid themselves of the (often subconscious) lowered expectations they form for students who speak nonstandard English. Children perform largely in accordance with teacher expectation. Since grammar teaching has long been the very vehicle by which language-based prejudices are expressed, it is especially important for grammar teachers to have sociolinguistics education. What's silly is that current teachers and schoolbooks still teach that double negatives are illogical or that "they" can't be used as a singular indefinite because it is grammatically plural (so is "you"!) ... So I guess Ed dives into grammatical analysis with his students beginning with whatever sentences naturally emerge in their writing, whether simple or complex. It's true that this is what happens when you have students work on their own product. I don't see why one has to proceed thus, however. You have to start with simpler examples and work towards more-complex ones. I see nothing wrong with the teacher adapting some student sentences to simpler forms, working with those, then building them back up to their original forms. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba 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/