The following is a preview of the Sixth Annual ATEG Conference and of the Workshop that I will be giving before it. Both will be held at Pennsylvania College of Technology, in Williamsport, PA. Since the deadline for proposals has been extended through the second week of June, a specific schedule has not yet been made. (The workshop is on July 27; the conference, on the 28th and 29th.) Ed Vavra [log in to unmask] A Conference PreView Although there is still room for a few presentations, the following have been accepted: Martha Kolln (State College, PA): "The President's Report" William McCleary (Livonia, NY): "(Still) trying to find an answer to the problem of 'error' in writing" Cornelia Paraskevas (Monmouth, OR): "Grammar Textbooks" and "The Reading-Grammar Connection" Jim Kenkel (Eastern Kentucky) & Robert Yates (Central Missouri): "Grammar and Literacy: Embedding Outside Sources in Text" Audrey Caldwell (Shillington, PA): "Syntax Book Reviews: What Should be Covered?" Frank Peters (Bloomsburg, PA): "Creativity in Short Phrasing" Jim Brosnan (Providence, RI): "Teaching Grammar Through Technical Documents" Carolyn G. Hartnett (Texas City, TX): "Functional Grammar for English (Not Latin)" Stephane Dunn (Granger, IN): "Using Humour and Creative Techniques to Teach Students the Common Sense of Formal English" Margaret Enright Wye (Kansas City, MO): "To Pause, To Separate, To Terminate: A Prolegomena to Understanding Punctuation" Kevin Griffith (Columbus, OH): "Surrealism and Grammar: Creatively Reinvigorating the Classroom" Heping Zhao (Fullerton, CA): "Particle, Complement, and Phrasal Verb: Rethinking 'ON'" R.A. Buck (Charleston, IL): "Simplifying Tree Structures in the Grammar Classroom" Brock Haussamen (Bridgewater, N.J.): "Between Restrictive and Nonrestrictive: Amplifying Clauses" Julia Karet, who teaches English in Miyazaki, Japan, is planning on attending the conference. In response to my request that she speak, she responded: You probably can talk me into giving a short presentation as long as you understand that it won't be in technical language. One of the reasons I want to attend is to get ideas about effective ways to teach relatively complicated English grammar structures to nonnative speakers. I am sometimes stumped on how to explain errors to students in a format that will be useful. What I would do is bring samples of Japanese students' writing which illustrate common grammar mistakes. Our students are at a 420- 450 TOEFL level. I would then discuss various approaches I've tried to address these problems. We do not teach grammar as a discrete skill at MIC. It is only taught "in context" - as part of writing assignments for content courses (social sciences and humanities) or integrated skills English courses. Friday evening, there will be a short business meeting, followed by a discussion of the editing/review policy for Syntax in the Schools. As usual, I will be at the Gennetti Hotel front lounge on Thursday evening, where we usually meet and socialize. (EV) Pre-Conference Workshop: The Kiss Approach to Grammar in the Curriculum, K - College -by Ed Vavra, editor, Syntax in the Schools Thursday, July 27, 1995 During the eleven years that I have been editing Syntax in the Schools, people have expressed an interest in what I have to say about teaching grammar. The newsletter, however, is not the place for me to develop my ideas at length. Nor can they be adequately presented in 20 minutes during an ATEG conference. Participants in this workshop will actively follow the sequence and some of the materials I have used in teaching teachers and in teaching Freshman composition. I will also suggest how this approach could be made the foundation of the K-12 curriculum. The approach does not require a textbook. Everything most students need to know can be listed on a single page, explained on four or five. Students (and thus workshop participants) work with essays and paragraphs written by their peers. In effect, students become their own grammarians. In working with high school and college students, perhaps the most difficult step in the approach is in getting them to recognize prepositional phrases. The last hour of the workshop addresses this problem with CASA, a computer program that runs under Windows. (The program will be available for the cost of a disk.) Registration Information: The registration fee for ATEG conference participants is $10; for all others, it is $20. Please make checks payable to ATEG. The registration deadline is July 20, 1995. Tentative Schedule 9:30 Coffee & doughnuts 10:00 What Do Students Need to Know about Grammar -- and Why? 11:00 Step I: Prepositional Phrases 12:00 Step 2: S/V/C and Clauses 1:00 Lunch Break 2:00 Step 3: Verbals 3:00 Step 4: Other Constructions 4:00 More on Syntax, Reading, Writing, and Thinking 5:00 CASA: Computer-Assisted Syntactic Analysis 6:00 End of workshop