Since you are preparing to present at NTCE, and your presentation includes teacher preparation, I thought I would take the time to share with you my recent experience with student-teacher grammar instruction. I currently have a student teacher from my local college here in rural south-central Colo, and I am dismayed at her lack of grammar knowledge. In Colo, a secondary language arts license allows one teach 6-12, so I would think that some grammar knowledge might be beneficial to anyone wanting to teach at least at the middle school level. My student teacher's grammar knowledge is abysmal--she can't even explain to my students the simplest of concepts such as pronoun case or pronoun-antecedent agreement. She doesn't know what a comma splice is, nor can she explain such punctuation errors to my students. I do not think the fault lies within my student teacher--the college simply does not incorporate secondary grammar instruction prepartion anywhere in the English degree. I know this is just one isolated example of teacher preparation, but if your presentation at the NCTE conference can in any way impress upon this influential organization the need for better grammar preparation amongst teachers, then I, along with many parents and students, would be most grateful. If colleges are not even providing prospective teachers with any grammar knowledge, what does that say for the future of teaching English grammar? thanks Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]> wrote: I am proud and delighted to help represent ATEG, with fellow ATEG members Barbara Stanford, Cornelia Paraskevas, and Deborah Rossen-Knill, at this week's NCTE conference in Nashville. Our panel, "Standards, Assessment, Teacher Preparation, and Curricular Practices", is scheduled for Friday (Session E04) from 4-5:15. We will talk about the Scope and Sequence project as a work in progress and discuss why and how standards, assessment, teacher training, and curriculum need to change in order to be more in harmony with each other. We look at Scope and Sequence as an ATEG project, so please feel part of it and join us on Friday. Give us your perspectives and your feedback. Perhaps more importantly, let's help NCTE understand that there is a pressing need for more thoughtful approaches to grammar, including approaches that embrace knowledge rather than shy away from it. If anyone is else is presenting, please let us know. Please introduce yourself if we haven't already met. I look forward to meeting new people and seeing old friends. Craig 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/ --------------------------------- Sponsored Link Mortgage rates as low as 4.625% - $150,000 loan for $579 a month. Intro-*Terms 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/