Nancy,

 

A book that comes to mind immediately are David Mulroy’s The War against Grammar (Boynton/Cook 2003), a book I’ve used successfully with undergraduates.  A curious and somewhat more obscure reference is Dwight Bolinger’s Language:  The Loaded Weapon (Longman 1980), which deals with a lot of misconceptions about language.  Bolinger is not as widely known and read now as he was thirty years ago, but among grammarians he’s regarded as one of the most thoughtful and perceptive of our ilk in the 20^th c.  Tony Bex’s Standard English:  The Widening Debate (Routledge 1999) provides some historical information but looks more into current arguments.  David Crystal’s The Stories of English has a very thoughtful account of the development of Standard English (Overlook TP 2005) and is very readable.  And, of course, Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Cambridge University Press 2003) is a fascinating, marvelously illustrated source for this as well as many other topics on the English language. 

 

Best wishes to your student.  This is an important and promising project.

 

Herb

 

 

Three questions:

 

(1) What essays, books, or articles would you recommend to an undergraduate English major who is writing a senior honors project on the history of the grammar wars? She wants to put together a notebook of information that will be helpful to her and other future secondary English teachers. It will include an introductory essay tracing the history of grammar instruction—from “drill and kill” through “teach no grammar” to the present-day acknowledgment that there is, indeed, a connection between an understanding of syntax and better writing. It will also include an annotated bibliography of 8-10 works “for further reading.” Finally, she is going to describe our state’s grade-level standards for teaching grammar and mention those forces (SAT essay, etc.) that are currently driving an increase in grammar instruction—despite the lack of training that most English teachers now have.

 

I thought I remembered reading an essay by Rebecca Wheeler called “Exploring the Grammar Wars,” but all I can find now is a link to a slide show presentation—not an essay.

 

(2) In what year did ATEG publish “On the Value of Systematic Grammar Study”?

 

(3) Who is working on the “scope and sequence” project, and when might it be published?

 

Thanks for your help,

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

 

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/