After a long period of silence, I finally see a thread that strikes a chord. And I have to agree w/Phil. (Richard, notice the deliberate use of a fragment? Does that make up for the fact that I am a high school English teacher that teaches burdensome traditional grammar?).

I do not believe that we English teachers, high school or other levels. "slow down" the progress of language. We strive to preserve clear communication and enable our language learners to be heard in a variety of settings. I will never be bound by contemporary novelists--no Tom Clancy or any other popular writer will convince me of what is clear communication for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with commercialism. I've said this before on this listserve, and I will say it again after years of teaching in a remote, rural, bilingual geographical area: good writers are good grammarians. They know "the rules" and they know how to break them and when. My job is to teach students what the majority of the world uses to communciate clearly and then facilitate their "breakage" of the rules.

Quite frankly, in case you haven't noticed, I am tired of defending my teaching of grammar, traditional or otherwise, to my high school colleagues. I teach grammar and will continue to do so because I believe that language is structured and rule-bound, whether conscious or unconscious. In my experience, at the high school level, a lack of rules opens language arts to ridicule by other disciplines. I'm not suggesting that we instruct in an overly prescriptive way, as anyone who has read my posts know. But to suggest that language usage is without "rules" is ridiculous.

In a secondary world that diminishes the importance of language arts in favor of math and science, we are doing a disservice to our field when we throw out form and structure. Language users follow form and structure far more than we realize, and teachers of English or any other language need to capture that form and structure and defend it before language arts becomes relegated to the curricular dustbin.

Change is not always productive, particularly where language is involved. Perhaps I've read too much Orwell.

Phil Bralich <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Your list is not exactly what I had in mind but it does help illustrate my point. All 15 of those things are statements about problems in traditional grammar without a single example to substantiate them. What I think would be eye opening to most people is to try and create a list of things that need to be expunged from traditional grammar books. You will find there is very, very little. The only one that even comes close to being acceptablt (tho is not) is the one that dares to bolldy say that infinitives should not be split.

A short response to Phil’s request for a list of problems with traditional grammar. Here is the list I have been working on for a couple of years. I don’t intend to offend anyone. My point is that traditional grammar—the grammar of popular handbooks that I used fifty years ago and that are apparently still used by a majority of schools in the US, not accurate language analysis—is still being taught. Teachers teach what they have been taught and know. And they teach what their texts include, unless they have information with which to supplement, and many do not.

These are meant to be strident generalizations in order to get teachers to understand that there are problems with the old way.

After having said all this, I agree with one of the main principles of ATEG: accurate, descriptive grammar (and much language information) must be taught for at least two reasons: to allow a discussion of language itself and to be able to use grammar information to improve student style in writing and speaking.

It seems to me (and I may be wrong, this may be too strong and it might be counterproductive to begin with a list of negatives) that teachers have to understand the problems first and then almost start over, deciding what to teach and how about language and grammar so that the goals of student learning are met, not the goals of covering traditional grammar material.

In my book I am fleshing out these items one by one, after which I would put what the ATEG comes up in its scope and sequence project.

Dick Betting

FIFTEEN PROBLEMS WITH TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

1. TG, LIKE CATECHISM, TEACHES WELL, LEARNS POORLY

2. TG is BASED ON FALSE PROMISE: LEARN GRAMMAR FIRST, IMPROVEMENT IN WRITING AND SPEAKING WILL FOLLOW ALMOST AUTOMATICALLY.

3. TG is BASED ON a FALSE PREMISE: KNOWING GRAMMAR WILL MAKE STUDENTS BETTER WRITERS AND SPEAKERS.

4. TG claims to be everything students need to know about language;

5. TG claims there is only one right way, one form of correctness;

6. TGs contain mistaken information:

a. English in not derived from Latin

b. English does not have eight parts of speech

c. English does not have six verb tenses

7. TG uses defective methodology: top down, deductive, absolutes taught as

Gospel;

8. TG exploits the pedagogy of rote memorization, passive acceptance;

9. TG uses confusing definitions for basic concepts: language, grammar, usage, parts of speech;

10. TG wastes time and energy, too much time on minutiae

11. TG fails to put learned material to use;

12. TG fails to notice that language study is philosophy, elaborate, abstract, multi-level, open-ended;

13. TG reinforces monotheistic social values and standards at the expense of individuals, minorities and differents;

14. TG has no skeleton, no structure on which to hang language and grammar

information;

15 TG is all fasteners and no projects.

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Phil Bralich

To: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]

Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 9:45 AM

Subject: Re: The role of English teachers

The real problem is that there are few if any traditional ideas that need to go. Someone should actually sit down and make a list of ideas that need to be expunged from grammar teaching and you would see there are actually only a few if any. The real problem is that people want to wallow around in a sea of unaccountability where pontification and pretense take precedence over good sense.

We should not be talking in terms of modern versus traditional grammar as there is nearly zero difference. Instead we should speak merely of teaching grammar and put the whole false problem behind us.

If any one disagrees, please draw up a list of tradtional notions that should be abandonded.

Peter Adams raised an interesting issue with: "In fact, I am wondering why the role of English teachers seems to always be to slow down this process and defend the traditional conventions." Is this really the role of English teachers? What do others think about this?

Personally, I don't see myself as a defender of traditional conventions at all. I suspect that many of my colleagues in the high school English classroom feel the same as I do. I rather see the English teacher in me as a promoter/fascilitator of deep thinking (and critical and creative thinking) through the disciplines of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Grammar instruction is one item in the toolbox, albeit an important one (and a too often neglected one at that). However, it's not for me so much as a teaching of convention as it is a teaching of the way language works -- as a means towards better/deeper thinking in these four disciplines.

I'd add that as a drama teacher, grammar is important in a similar way. When I ask my acting students to point up the nouns or "play to (or 'with' or 'on')" the verbs, I need first to make sure they know what these words are. My goal for them, however, is not grammatical, but theatrical -- I want them to make the language meaningful and rich, and to bring the text across clearly to the audience.

Paul D.

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/