John,
I'd like to post some of these examples, but most of them come up (forgive the term) "In Context," which means that I'll have to mine my memory or my journals to get specifics. Right now, that's difficult because I am buried in rehearsals (Twelfth Night opens in a week and a half). I would suggest for a start my article in Syntax in the Schools (Vol. 20 #2: Winter 2004) called "Shakespeare Through Grammar." I'll have to mine my brain in the meantime to get some other examples.
Paul
----- Original Message ----
From: John Crow <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 2:24:20 PM
Subject: Re: Traditional Grammar
Paul,
I find your statement that you constantly come across "instances where grammatical terminology helps my student actors discover meaning in their scripts" a truly interesting angle on things. Could you post a couple of quick examples to help me see what you mean?
Thanks,
John
On 7/25/06, Paul E. Doniger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
James,
No one is suggesting that any English teacher "spend all day teaching parts of speech out of a grammar book." Such an assumption flies in the face of logic and good pedagogy -- not to mention that there are far too many poor grammar books out there. I certainly don't think that this is what Phil has in mind in his call for traditional grammar. However, we do need to teach our students about the language that, in a very large measure, defines their thought processes. Surely, being deeper critical and creative thinkers does have an impact on their skiils in writing -- and reading, speaking, and listening, too. Isn't that part of our job?
Yes, it is difficult to help students negotiate sentence structure (and paragraph structure, etc.) if they don't have the requisite metalanguage to discuss such issues. Part of our task is to ensure that they develop such a language -- that is largely what is stimulating this never ending debate on terminology.
As a teacher of English in a public high school, I am constantly trying to help my students make up for the lack of such terminology by reviewing what they should have learned whenever I discover a deficit (the basic terminology should have been ingrained earlier in their schooling than high school!), but I don't spend all day on it (I only get my kids for 40 minutes a day, anyway). As a teacher of theatre, I have constant instances where grammatical terminology helps my student actors discover meaning in their scripts. I don't know how I would solve some of their problems without these reference to grammar.
Paul D.
----- Original Message ----
From: James Bear < [log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:40:59 AM
Subject: Re: Traditional Grammar
To say the war against grammar is phenom[e]nally stupid is taking a huge
leap. Because what happens when we teach the whole of traditional
grammar? If we have an English teacher that understands it, and if he/she
can convey what he/she knows to students, what have we accomplished? Do
we make better communicators? I doubt it. Maybe. But, those are two
tremendous if's. Because as our language is, each of us comes away from
everything with a slightly different understanding than the rest of us.
What traditional grammar tries to do is defy that statement. Even if,
though, we have a super-grammarian that understands all of traditional
grammar well enough to be able to teach it, he will spend his entire
school year trying to teach it to students. Will he? Possibly. If he
does, however, what other things have been missed? I've known students
who can ace every grammar test yet cannot string a sentence together
--myself included perhaps.
Personally, I teach high school English -- for a small part of the day.
For the rest of the day I teach computer science. Life is a lot easier if
we can spend all day teaching parts of speech out of a grammar book. I
learned long ago, though, that students don't write or speak better
because of it. Computer Science, on the other hand, where we can teach
programming languages instead of spoken languages, is easy. I can go over
the text book and give students tutorials and never give anything of
myself. Those are the periods I feel like the C- student trying to avoid
work. It's a lot more work to have students write and help them sort out
where they failed to communicate. And at that time, it's true, I end up
teaching some traditional grammar. It's tough to tell a student his
sentence needs to be revised because his noun and verb do not agree when
he does not recognize a noun or verb.
To me, though, this is how we teach 'just what is necessary'. We learn to
walk by walking. We learn to speak by speaking. We learn to write by
writing. When we learn to walk, sometimes we fall down and we learn how
to avoid it. The same holds true with speaking and writing. The problem
is that with speaking and writing we sometimes don't know when we fall.
That's where the English teacher fits in.
Phil Bralich wrote:
> And this is the point that grammar advocates need to make. You cannot do
> s/v agreement without being introduced to subjects and predicates,
> internal clauses (the man from whom mary got the books is/are here),
> person, number, (throw in gender), participles, gerunds, a little on
> tenses -- Each of these beg questions in other areas. In short the whole
> of traditional grammar is required. This is also true of parallel
> structure, the correct use of passive and so on. The whole is hopelessly
> interlocked and when you are recommended to teach "just what is necessary"
> for anyone of these, that means the whole of traditional grammar. This is
> why the NCTE position and the whole of the war against grammar so
> phenominally stupid. Its as those the whole field were taken over by C-
> students looking to avoid work.
>
> Phil Bralich
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Fay Sweney < [log in to unmask]>
>>Sent: Jul 24, 2006 8:22 PM
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Traditional Grammar
>>
>>The SAT always includes subject-verb agreement problems, just as Nancy
>>Tuten's posting illustrates. One type is like Nancy's example, with
>>prepositional phrases between the subject and verb which have have
>> objects
>>that are different in number than the subject. In another type there is
>> a
>>delayed subject, as in this practice question from "The Official SAT, a
>>Teacher's Guide" published by College Board: "At the heart of the
>> program,
>>enthusiastically endorsed by the city's business association, is plans
>> for
>>refurbishing neighborhoods . . . ."
>>
>>
>>
>>Fay Sweney
>>701 Foster Ave.
>>Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
>>208-664-2274
>>[log in to unmask]
>>
>>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
>> interface at:
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>>and select "Join or leave the list"
>>
>>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
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> --
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>
James Bear
Destination: Quietude
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