I apologize for responding so late to this thread, but there was one
statement in it that requires a response. John stated:

"As to the link between grammar instruction and writing ability, one
fact
remains, irrespective of research design issues:  nobody has been able
to
demonstrate a carryover from traditional grammar instruction to
writing
ability."

That is simply not true. Unfortunately, because of the prejudice of
NCTE, one has to read between the lines, but as early as 1969 John
Mellon noted that

"the writing of the experimental group was inferior to that of the
subjects who had studied conventional grammar, but indistinguishable
from that of subjects who had studied no grammar but had received extra
instruction in composition." (69)

In that one of the objectives of sentence combining is to produce
longer main clauses, the length and convoluted (deceptive?) nature of
Mellon's statement is particularly interesting. Put more simply, it
means "The traditional grammar group wrote better than either the
experimental or the placebo groups." Mellon adds "curious results
indeed."

Mellon, however, made another extremely important observation when he
noted that "it may very well be the case that conventional grammar study
fails to promote growth of syntactic fluency not because of the usage
practice which it features, but rather because of the hundreds of simply
structured and altogether childish sentences which it employs for
parsing exercises." (63)

In addition to Mellon's results, I have already pointed to Faigley's
study, one of the stars of the Hillocks report. But if you examine what
Faigley did, the students studied very traditional grammatical concepts.
What is important is how they studied it. Then there is also Anne
Obenchain's study, again, of a very traditional grammar, simply
approached in a very different way.

Could it be that this research is being ignored because the linguists
in the group do not want to admit it?

Just wondering,
Ed

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