Herb, I wonder if they let slip by a standard like "explain phrases and clauses and their roles within sentences" precisely because many people don't know how much knowledge is involved in that. It sounds to me like a pretty good semester's work at the college level. (It's also close to what I was taught in seventh and eighth grades using the Reed/Kellog diagramming, which attempted to be comprehensive and to work with real sentences.) I agree with what you say. On the other hand, when I introduce would be teachers to a deeper knowledge about language, they uniformly want to pass that on and feel constrained by the anti-knowledge about language stance of their teacher educators. Maybe this will give some support to those teachers we do win over. Maybe someone in ATEG can work it into a curriculum. (I guess that's a half full glass.) Craig> Craig, > > I've read through some of it, and as a linguist I like much of what > they've done. To teach effectively to these standards, teachers will have > to know, understand, and teach a fair bit of English grammar. Therein > lies the problem. We don't have a core of language arts teachers with the > training or disposition to do this. Their training is still fundamentally > anti-grammar, and they get very little language content in the teacher ed. > curriculum and even less language teaching methodology, for L1 or L2 > speakers. Standards can't get set out in such a context and hope to be > adopted. School boards, teachers colleges, language arts faculties, etc. > will continue to do as they've been doing, paying lip-service to the > standards and in most cases not even being aware that they're flouting > them. > > I hate to sound so negative, but without the governors also investing in > training, curriculum revision, and monitoring, I don't see how much will > change. > > Herb > > -----Original Message----- > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock > Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 5:16 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: common core standards > > The National governor's Association's Common core Standards have been > released and can be accessed at www.corestandards.org. > Though they still don't go as far as they ought to in that direction, > they seem a radical shift in favor of knowledge about language (not > just language behavior) throughout the grade levels. This, for > example, is from grade 7: "Explain the function of phrases and clauses > in general and their function in specific sentences." This seems to me > the sort of thing that can't happen solely "within the context of > writing" or through mini-lessons. > Check it out. If I am reading this correctly, they are calling for > far more conscious attention to language from K-12. > > Craig > > 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/ > > 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/ > 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/