Nancy, thank you for mentioning what you do on your first day. Instead of the word "fish," I use the word "light," but the message is the same. I am curious as to what others do in the first day of the term. Would others comment please? Christine Gray -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nancy Tuten Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 8:13 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Grammar instruction--how early and what kind? With college students, I start out the very first day of my "advanced" grammar class (largely English majors, but at square one in terms of grammar) by writing the word "fish" on the board and asking the students what part of speech that word represents. Once we have made the point that it can, in fact, be a noun, a verb, or an adjective, we then agree that we are more concerned with how a word functions than with labeling it one part of speech or another for all situations. The second point I make on the first day is that studying language is not like studying chemistry. Language is fluid, changing according to the needs of the speakers, etc. I pick out one or two examples of usage changes through the centuries to drive home the point that "correctness" is a societal construct. Wearing certain kinds of clothes in order to look professional is also a societal construct; that fact doesn't diminish the importance of knowing the "rules" by which one is going to be judged--fairly or not. It seems to me that both these points drive home the need to understand how language functions *in general*, acknowledging, of course, that what makes this study so fascinating is that sometimes a particular phrase, clause, or sentence simply won't play by the so-called "rules." I tell them that there will be times when we may disagree about how a word, phrase, or clause is functioning in a sentence, but that's OK as long as they can defend their view in a way that proves they understand basic patterns of thought and methods of constructing meaning. And then we're off to study Martha's sentence patterns. By the way, we always tie those insights to a discussion about writing well: which construction is more clear/less ambiguous? How could the writer's intention be skewed by choosing one construction over another? Etc. To understand basic sentence patterns is to understand basic THINKING patterns, and better thinkers are better writers. I have children ages 9 and 13, so I have thought a lot over the last decade about how early children can understand the notion that while we have categories and labels, they don't always work neatly. I am convinced that pretty young children can grasp this idea. I could go into my younger daughter's class of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade kids (a Montessori mixed-grade class, and they have already learned "parts of speech," including verbals), do the "fish" exercise mentioned above, and make the point that understanding how language works (that is, how it makes meaning) means understanding how words function *in relationship with one another in a sentence* and not in isolation. They can do this, of course, because in their early elementary class (grades 1-3), they were taught the parts of speech. We all know that the parts of speech are limited (didn't the structuralists and the deconstructionists teach us that ALL our attempts to name our experiences and our world fail miserably?), but they provide us with a common vocabulary with which to move on to the next level of the discussion: the "fish" exercise. My advanced grammar class for English majors starts in a week. Many of them are going to be language arts teachers. The ones who will struggle the most are those who do not understand the basic concepts. How can we move to the more sophisticated view (which, as I have argued above, they should also have already been exposed to) if they haven't been taught the basics? Preaching to the choir, I know--but thanks for letting me vent! Nancy Nancy L. Tuten, PhD Professor of English Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program Columbia College Columbia, South Carolina [log in to unmask] 803-786-3706 -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:14 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Notional nouns Supposedly, my list access has been restored. Another test ... Let's get crazy ... Phil defines a noun as an entity; but what is an entity? Cognitive Grammar defines a noun as "a bounded region in some domain". By this is meant something which is "marked off" from other things -- that is, differentiated from other things. Also, a noun does not track the evolution of some situation through time, which is what verbs do (hence the frequent term "process" for verb). This is, of course, a very vague definition, as it has to be if it is to cover all nouns' meanings. There is also more to the Cog. Gr. definition, defining prototypical nouns, but I won't go into that unless someone asks me. We also need to consider WHY languages have nouns. And why do we make some verbs into nouns, like "flash" and "fight"? Why do we create gerunds and noun clauses? Some linguists believe that part-of-speech categories emerge out of discourse needs. We need nouns because we want to talk ABOUT things. We need nouns (and other nominals) as "hooks" to hang predicates on. We need nouns in order to direct our listener's or reader's conscious attention to something we want to talk about (in other words, to refer). We need nouns in order to have topics to which we can add ever more information in a text. As someone else pointed out, a noun names a category, not a single, actual thing. A conceptual category, at that. This is evidenced in English by the fact that we usually cannot use a noun (especially a count noun) alone to talk about something. I can't say "cat is sick". I have to point my listener to which cat I mean -- "My mother's tabby cat is sick." Even for generic or category reference, we have to use either "a" or a plural: "A cat is a selfish animal." "Cats are millstones." (A famous linguist had a cat named Millstone; my favorite cat name -- though I do love cats!) Mass nouns can be used alone in the generic sense because they already name an unindividuated type: "Sand is gritty." "Grammar is hard." Not all languages work this way, of course. In teaching nouns, I believe children as young as six can use the "the", "a", and "my" tests. Since young children's literature and lives have a lot to do with concrete things that are prototypically named by nouns, I have no trouble with starting out with a combination of the functional "the" test and a notional definition; but the notional definition has to be extended fairly rapidly to include abstract things. Again, you start with stuff that kids are familiar: a task, an idea, a joke, a problem. 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/ 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/ 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/