In our most recent thread about sentence structure, variation in style, and
composition, the fundamental intersection of grammar and instructional goals
was mentioned. I want to take just a moment to post the "Three Goals for
Grammar Teaching" contained in one of my favorite texts, *Grammar Alive! A
Guide for Teachers*, written by members of ATEG. This is just a very basic
overview; the actual text elaborates on these goals quite elegantly. From
page 4 of the text:

"Goal A:
Every student, from every background, will complete school with the ability
to communicate comfortably and effectively in both spoken and written
Standard English, with awareness of when use of Standard English is
appropriate.

Goal B:
Every student will complete school with the ability to analyze the
grammatical structure of sentences within English texts, using grammatical
terminology correctly and demonstrating knowledge of how sentence-level
grammatical structure contributes to the coherence of paragraphs and texts.

Goal C:
Every student will complete school with an understand of, and appreciation
for, the natural variation that occurs in language across time, social
situation, and social group. While recognizing the need for mastering
Standard English, students will also demonstrate the understanding of the
equality in the expressive capacity and linguistic structure among a range
of language varieties both vernacular and standard, as well as an
understanding of language-based prejudice."

These goals won't make everyone happy, but I find them to be succinct,
cogent, and extremely effective when implemented. I believe that, when used
together, these goals provide the context (the "why are we learning this?"
solution) and the mechanics of grammar instruction.

I hope someone on the list who is not familiar with them finds them useful!

John Alexander
Austin, Texas

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