I applaud Janet's admonition to frame grammar instruction within instruction about how writing is the process of creating an informational text that is cohesive. Anyone who's been reading recent postings here has seen that a lot of us believe that this has to be a -- if not _the_ -- major purpose of grammar instruction. I think clause-level grammar is more relevant to discourse than Janet says, however. Essentially, every single choice made in structuring a clause is determined by discourse concerns. While I do believe that learning about clause-level grammar is a worthy end in itself, there is much more justification for teaching it within a discourse approach. What clause-level (and below) grammar provides is the vocabulary for talking about phrases, clauses and sentences. Those are the units in which meaning is 'packaged', and how they are arranged with respect to one another is what determines topic identification, topic maintenance, topic continuity, effective transitions between topics, and coherence of ideas. If we want to be able to talk about how a particular text does or does not accomplish fluent information delivery, we'll need the vocabulary. We'll also need the analytical skills that would allow students to, say, identify adverbial phrases so that they can consider options for their placement; identify subjects and consider alternative choices of referent for the subjects of their sentences in an essay; identify antecedents of pronouns so they can test how they use them in writing for cohesion; identify what phrase modifies what head word, so that they can avoid problems with dangling modifiers and subject-verb agreement. Principles such as the given/new distinction and the theme/rheme distinction are extremely useful in relating grammar to writing. So is explicit attention to sentence types such as passive or pseudo-cleft and how they are used in particular discourse contexts to accomplish purposes of topic continuity, putting new information where it is expected by the reader, and relating upcoming content to content already introduced. I think the reason grammar is so 'hard' for most students is that they do not receive consistent, level-appropriate, interesting, challenging, and practical grammar instruction from an appropriate age onwards. They are not accustomed to stepping outside of language. They also confuse 'correctness' and 'sounding proper' with assuring effective communication. These are problems without quickie or late-introduceable solutions, however. I've weighed in before with the opinion that no explicit grammar should be taught before about 3rd or 4th grade; Janet suggests some explicit focus on language in first grade. What do other listers think on this point? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~ English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~ Tel. (805)-756-2184 Fax: (805)-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask] ~ Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm ~ Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~