Erin,
Yep, some of them want to say
those are adverbs. In their defense, I should add that many of them haven’t encountered
much in the way of discussions of grammar since 6th grade. I don’t
know how much of this is a reflex of actual limitations in their former textbooks,
and how much is from the way long-term memory erodes complications. Some of the
texts I have looked at, though, did appear set up an absolute equation between “location
or time information” and “adverb.” Part of it, I suspect, results naturally
from the fact that when authors make up examples for a textbook, they tend to
create ones that conform nicely to the definition.
As you’d expect, this causes
even more of a problem when the students are deciding whether a prepositional
phrase or an embedded clause is adjectival or adverbial (e.g. “The place *where
I parked the car* was very shady”).
Thanks,
Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the
Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Erin
Karl
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Which via when
Do you mean that in those
sentence examples your college students would say that Monday, north, etc., are
adverbs? Good grief! That's what you get when the focus of grammar
instruction is completely on the "definition" of the parts of speech
and that's it.
I have seen plenty of texts and curricula do that, but I know of at least one
(mine) that doesn't.
Erin
From: "Spruiell, William C"
<[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, November 10, 2009 5:11:03 PM
Subject: Which via when
This is just a quick informal survey-type question: For
those of you teaching K-12, how many times have you seen a textbook pointing
out that people frequently use information about time or place in order to
specify which thing they’re talking about (e.g. “The meeting *on Thursday*
was longer than the one on Monday,” or “She headed for the *north*
pasture”)? Many of my college students have quite firmly internalized the
notion that adverbs “tell you where, when, why, or how,” but don’t remember
ever seeing limitations put on that of definition. They think about it as if
it’s some kind of fundamental law of the universe, and some of the K-12
textbooks I’ve looked at seem to be presenting it that way. My institution’s
“instructional media” collection is mostly from the 80s and early 90s, though,
so I can’t tell if things have improved or not.
Thanks,
Bill Spruiell
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