Ed and others concerned about the scope/sequence project:

 I understand the concern about terminology, but I don’t share the fundamental belief that nothing about scope/sequence can be resolved until we resolve the issues with terminology.  Instead of starting from isolated examples that have not allowed us to move in our scope/sequence project, I believe it is more productive to first establish a general framework and then look at specifics. 

For the general framework, it is useful to look at state standards:  almost all states have fairly explicit guidelines regarding students’ knowledge of “grammar,” and these guidelines are fairly consistent across states.  These guidelines must be considered as we decide what to include in our project;  otherwise, each state will dismiss our project as being irrelevant to their own standards. 

In addition to state standards, information from the National Curriculum has been extremely useful;  that  document provides general guidelines regarding scope/sequence, leaving specific details to each school. 

The general framework includes what should students know generally about language, why should they know it and when should they know it.

First, the ‘what’:  they need to know basic structure and to understand how  structural choices affect meaning. Most current research dealing with the grammar/writing interface (including punctuation) considers clauses to be the fundamental unit—not sentences—and that is useful for a basic understanding of grammar, one that encourages students to see the general, underlying structure of any construction:  a clause, then, is any subject/verb pairing –finite or non finite.  A construction headed by an infinitive, then, is a clause if it has a subject—explicit or implicit.  Now, one  might argue that all non-finite constructions are phrases and not clauses.  A quick look at established reference grammars like Huddleston’s newest book should solve that problem.  Our terms will follow from our current understanding of language structure in conjunction with traditional terminology;   where the two differ, an explanation should suffice to make the differences clear.

‘Why” should they know it?  Because –using the example with infinitives—understanding about finite/non-finite constructions can be useful in their writing, as they try to move from less fluent to more fluent syntactic constructions.

“When” should they know it?  Obviously, after they have mastered basic structure in writing;  the sequence of learning is becoming clearer in recent years through the work of scholars like Katharine  Perera who has been researching the development of writing abilities in young students.

 I believe that any scope/sequence project should not be rigidly prescriptive;  rather, it should consider our current understanding about language structure, our knowledge about writing abilities and text development as well as general state requirements.   In other words, “good old grammar” is not enough to give students the kinds of knowledge we want them to have.  A final request—there’s no need to badmouth linguists.  We are professionally trained to understand the structure and functions of language—just like biologists are trained to understand living organisms. 

Cornelia Paraskevas

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