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 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/