Scott asks if anyone disagrees with his latest assertion.
 
What I disagree with is his misrepresentation of what is entailed in grammar teaching.  I have already disagreed with his other offering on grammar teaching.  The one entailing problem solving. based on exemplars. (what he called the 'inductive' approach) I provided a detailed response thereto but apparently he chose not to respond to it.  
 
 Now, he offers it in a different guise but he is still proposing that students learn grammar by reaching generalisations based on few or many exemplars, completely ignoring  the approach to grammar teaching used by most teachers and learners.  That is the one which he termed 'deductive'.
 
May I suggest that he first respond to my previous post and then provide us with reliable empirical evidence from the literature demonstrating which grammar learners have learned based solely on exemplars - few or many.  Failing this, perhaps he could provide anecdotal evidence derived from his own teaching.   However, if he chooses to do so, may I suggest that he will need to provide a detailed account including:
 
 a) what the grammatical problem is;
 
b) which examplars he gave and how he presented them;
 
c) how many of the students reached the correct generalisation without direct help.
 
d)  how many failed to do so.
 
 
Ron Sheen.
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Scott Woods
To: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 10:28 AM
Subject: New discussion intelligence and grammar learning

Intelligence matters, yet it is difficult to measure, and such measures we have are difficult to apply and controversial in meaning and effectiveness.  Possibly, instead of arguing about intelligence, applied grammarians could acknowledge that some people seem to need more example sets to generalize and more repetitions to remember, and that others seem to need fewer.  This is not a claim about what we should do with the various sets of students, but a claim about what we ordinarily observe in the classroom regarding the teaching of language. Is this controversial?  Does anyone disagree with this? 
 
I have some ideas about what we teachers can do about this, but before any proposals are discussed, I would like to find out what people on the list think.
 
Scott Woods

 

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