Ed,
I'll speak for this linguist, rather than for us as a class. I have a
pretty good idea of what I'd like students to know when they come into
my junior-level English grammar class, and rarely find that they know
it. But I don't teach K-12 and can't imagine doing so. I have respect
verging on awe for those who do, especially for those brilliantly
creative teachers who responded to the history of English thread. I
know that they are subject to state standards, school board attitudes,
parental expectations, and frequently the linguistic ignorance and
cultural presuppositions of their principals. I don't have the
knowledge or experience to tell them what to teach or what approach to
take to it.
But here's some of what I'd like their graduates to know by the time I
get them, and they might get some of this in college.
Phonology:
Some sense of letter to sound rules, be it merely phonics.
Some idea of alternation, that the same letter, to the extent that they
correspond to phonemes, is regularly pronounced one way in one set of
cases and another way in another.
Some sense of syllable, stress, and intonation.
Morphology:
Awareness of prefixes, suffixes, and roots. (I'll fill them in on
stems, bound roots and other such niceties.)
Some understand of compound formation.
An etymological sense of word family.
Syntax: (the etc. don't have to extended very far)
The ability to identify major kinds of clause: main, subordinate,
adverbial, etc.
The ability to identify major kinds of phrase: prepositional,
adverbial, nominal, adjectival, etc.
The ability to recognize major grammatical relationships: subject,
predicate, direct object, indirect object, etc.
The ability to recognize modification.
An awareness of the tense system, which I know is going to be
rudimentary and probably wrong, but at least knowing the terminology is
a start.
Recognition of active vs. passive voice.
Social:
Rudimentary understanding of register, that there are legitimately
different levels of formality with different linguistic behaviors
acceptable at different levels.
Some understanding of what dialects are and that dialect doesn't mean
"somebody else's bad grammar".
I could go on, but that's off the top of my head, the sort of wish list
I come out of my grammar classes lamenting the absence of. I strongly
suspect other linguists will give somewhat different lists. But if I
had a class of juniors who knew most of this, I could really do
interesting things with them and make grammar a much more productive
part of their intellectual preparation.
Herb
Subject: Re: Washington
Herb,
About linguistics, I think we are in agreement. But ATEG was
founded with the express purpose of improving the teaching of grammar in
K-12. That is why I named the newsletter "Syntax in the Schools" rather
than "Syntax in the Universities." I'm continually frustated with the
KISS Approach at the college level, and I completely understand why you
would not want to use it at that level. Most of the incoming students
cannot identify subjects and verbs, and it takes a lot of practice for
them to get to the point where they can. (And many of the students don't
want to do that practice, especially because they have been frustrated
by the grammar that they have been "taught" in K-12.)
My problem with the linguists is that, in the decade and a half
that ATEG has existed, they do not want to address the question of what
should be taught in K-12, when, how, and why. This group, and I think it
is primarily because of the linguists, cannot even agree that high
school graduates should be able to identify almost all of the subjects
and verbs in their own sentences.
I'll stop complaining about the linguists when I see some of them
attempting to address the K-12 curriculum and sequence questions.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/08/05 4:19 PM >>>
Ed,
You have a limited view of linguistic training and of linguists.
Certainly theory is an important part of that training, as it is in
literature and in English Education. But linguists are trained first
and foremost to analyze and describe languages, and applied linguists
are trained to apply the theories, methods, and findings of
linguistics
to language as it relates to other areas of human behavior. Even at
the
theory-rich schools like MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Ohio State, Texas,
etc., heavy emphasis is laid on accurate description of linguistic
phenomena as a basis for any theoretical work. The heyday of
off-the-top-of-the-head theorizing is long past, if, in fact, it ever
existed. It's otherwise known as bad linguistics. We can disagree as
to how much and which theory to bring into the classroom at which
level,
but you can't teach any respectable amount of grammar without some
fairly well thought out theory that the students must also confront at
some point. I think KISS reflects this. As a linguist and college
grammar teacher, there are things I don't like about KISS, and I don't
use it, but I can see its usefulness in elementary and secondary
school.
But get off this thing about linguists and theory. It ain't so.
Herb
Subject: Re: Washington
Herb,
I'll agree with that. But within the medical profession, not
everyone studies the theory of pathology. In fact, most health
professionals probably do not. There is a difference between learning
what one needs to know and learning more than what one needs to know.
I
have no problem with the latter, if the former is met. Teachers need
to
know how to analyze the structure of sentences. Otherwise, they mark
correct sentences as incorrect, and they push their prejudices (Don't
begin a sentence with "But.") onto their students. Linguists are
trained
primarily as theoreticians, and from what I have seen, they want to
bring their theory into instruction at the very basic of levels. In
essence, this is harmful because it takes time away from what future
teachers really need to be learning.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/08/05 2:40 PM >>>
I doubt if I'll sway Ed on this, but when we talk about the teaching
of
grammar before linguistics came along we have to recognize that
foreign
language instruction was a larger part of education as was etymology.
Phonological and morphological concepts were learned as parts of those
disciplines. Grammar was thought of as covering much more than
sentence
structure and correctness. Of course, there was also a time, not all
that long ago, when medicine was taught without microscopes or a germ
theory of disease.
Herb
Subject: Re: Washington
I would agree with Bill's idea of two courses, but when push
comes to shove, the phonology, morphology, etc. should go. Grammar was
actually taught very well before linguistics came along. Winston
Churchill, whose writing style was widely praised, noted how important
it was for him to learn how to diagram sentences. In fact, he noted
that
he learned that because he was considered slow, and thus not competent
to study Latin and Greek as did some of his schoolmates. He did not
study morphemes or phonemes.
I think I also agree with Bill, however, on the importance of
early study of Latin. One can teach prefixes, suffixes, word roots,
etc.
without any theoretical understanding of morphology.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/08/05 12:08 PM >>>
When I began teaching a course called Grammar for Teachers, I could
immediately see its limitations when grammar was narrowly defined. So
I added a brief section on phonemics/phonics so that the prospective
teachers could teach phonics well and not have to learn everything on
the job. (I discovered that no one had ever taught the elem ed
students the principles of phonics even though they would be expected
to teach phonics.)
I also added a brief section on morphemics, though we could only do
enough to demonstrate the practical uses of morphemics. There was no
time to go into any depth. (I was shocked to discover that none of
the students had taken Latin in high school and that they had never
been taught anything about word analysis, or so they said.)
I eventually proposed dividing Grammar for Teachers into two 3-credit
courses, with one on syntax and another on morphemics/semantics and
phonemics/phonics/spelling. The department approved it, but we didn't
have enough staff to teach two courses. And the dean wouldn't approve
additional courses.
Bill
>Sorry, Ed, you can't teach someone how language works without
>discussing things like features and phonemes and phonological
>processes. These are important in early language development and
>they influence things like whether children master literacy or not;
>they allow teachers to understand why children perform as they do in
>school. They also give future teachers a clear understanding of how
>English spelling works and why it is the way it is; they also learn
>to what degree phonics instruciton is scientifically accurate. You
>also have to teach about language acquisition, because popular myth
>is so wrong about that. You can teach this stuff by giving students
>examples of child language, but if they don't know
>linguistic/grammatical terminology, they can't talk about what the
>kids are doing, and the specifically linguistic concepts are
>necessary to understand what is going on.
>And again, the teaching credential standards refer to the exact
>linguistic terminology.
>
>What I said they couldn't do was parse fluently after ten weeks of
>instruction. Most of them learn to parse well enough to perform on a
>test. Whether they retain that knowledge and expand on it or not is
>up to them. Few of them come in with enough grammatical analysis
>skills to independently describe the various sentence and phrase
>structures they would find in schoolchildren's writing, as a course
>term project. They would need a course that focuses fully on grammar
>for that, and they haven't had one when they come into my classroom.
>And they don't get in my classroom, as I pointed out in previous
>posts.
>
>A linguistics course for teachers is intended, in part, to change
>the student's mindset about language in significant ways so that
>they have an accurate understanding of language instead of the
>virtual nonsense that most people believe about language. It's more
>global than helping them improve their writing. There's nothing
>wrong with helping students improve their writing, but that is not
>the goal of the courses I teach.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University
>One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
>* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page:
>http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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