From: =?windows-1252?Q?Elizabeth__Ward?= [mailto: [log in to unmask]]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:12:58 -0400
Subject: Scope and Sequence

Dear ATEG:

You know so much about language that you seem to stand in the midst of a
forest of theories, each of you defending a particular tree, each
determined to prove that chosen tree is the right or the best one. Proving
the right or best of anything is hopeless; but you must know that already.
So why have you let yourselves get so stuck on basic terminology? Please
take time to walk beyond the trees out into the sunshine, turn around, and
look at the whole forest.

For whom are you writing your Scope and Sequence? Experts like yourselves
or teachers, especially in the upper grades, who need a set of terms–-a
metalanguage, if you will-- to use in their classrooms? Terms they can be
sure will be recognized as acceptable. Terms that won’t get them into
altercations with their supervisors or principals. Terms their students can
carry from one classroom or one school building to another and still find
themselves in familiar territory.

What is needed is for you to do for linguistics what arithmetic does for
higher math. Don’t write one “definitive” S&S; write several, beginning
with Level One–what students must learn to produce correct standard written
English. Once they understan! d something structure and usage, they can go on
to your more advanced S&S’s in which you may describe the uncertainties and
ambiguities of language.

Sometimes this group puts down correctness as an unimportant goal. Itis
only unimportant when one can already write flawless standard English.
Correctness must be a primary concern for teachers who don’t want their
students handicapped in the Information Age. The rest of the world is busy
mastering standard English. It would be sad if our students would someday
have to keep their jobs by outsourcing their own language. Should
tomorrow’s leaders have to send their paperwork to somewhere like India to
be “translated” into acceptable copy, that would be sad.

Of course the basic S&S wouldn’t have to be just boring rules and
exercises. There are so many wonderful and exciting things about language
that most kids are totally unaware of. Besides some of the suggestions i! n
Grammar Alive, Martha Kolln’s chapter on intonation might be a great place
to start. Show kids how music and writing are connected, and you will grab
a lot of them for life. Or show them how to write so they can slow down or
speed up their readers. Fun stuff like that.

Dear ATEG, please stop arguing and start teaching.

Thank you.
Elizabeth Ward

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/