[This message was originally submitted by [log in to unmask] to the ATEG list ] Hello! It's nice to get an answer to my questions. You're asking for the same things--understanding homonyms, understanding punctuation--that our English dept. grapples with on a daily basis and with which I struggle in my business writing course. But is this really grammar? Of course, punctuation becomes clearer when students understand the ways sentences hang together and what joins them, and in fact next quarter, as I teach my grammar course again, I am going to work punctuation into the syntax we study. Recently our local high schools asked our dept. for a college teachers' "wish list": What do we want h.s. students coming to college knowing? Right up there with understanding what a thesis is, what paragraphs look like, and what a library is, we listed PUNCTUATION. But surely high school must be doing something about punctuation? And I know we do. Somehow it just doesn't sink in. It needs a context. Students' writing seems to be the obvious choice, but I think that until they understand what constitutes a sentence, they won't understand how and why we join clauses and phrases with punctuation; those rules will remain mystifying and decontextualized. I'll let you know how it goes! Kathryn Gunderson Department of English California State University, Hayward Hayward, CA 94542 Office Phone: 510-885-3245 EMail: [log in to unmask] > [This message was originally submitted by [log in to unmask] to the ATEG > list] > > Future teachers of English need to know some basic elements that, I'm sorry > to > say, many of them do not know. For example, please make sure they have the > homonyms straightened out --their, there, they're; its, i'ts; your, you're, > etc. > They also should have some idea about correct punctuation, particularly > commas > and the poor misunderstood apostrophe. Undrstanding agreement > (verb/subject > and pronoun/antecedent) and correct pronoun use would be helpful. Truly > many > of the usage problems we see everyday we see in new teachers. I sometimes > wonder if we're beating a dead horse here. After all, these new teachers > are > college graduates; maybe their misuse and lack of understanding of the > language is not such a big issue in the "real" world. Don' t you wonder? I > do > feel like a dinosaur sometimes. > Mary Ann Black >