Ed asks how preschool language acquisition is relevant to school-age
grammar instruction. As Connie notes, I believe it is very relevant.
(1) It tells us which structures, more or less, children can already
produce and understand at school age. This provides a benchmark for
measurement of future development, for instance in the very kind of
research Ed is interested in. It can give us a jumping-off point for
early grammar instruction. There would be little use, for example, in
teaching about a subordinate conjunction like 'unless' before kids are
developmentally ready to handle it (I understand that 'unless' comes in
rather late).
(2) I believe it is essential in evaluating language arts/grammar
materials. For example, children of school age reportedly have mastered
inflectional morphology (tenses, plurals, comparison) and some
derivational morphology. Yet early-grade grammar materials are filled
with worksheets and multi-choice tests that ask children to
supply/choose the correct verb form, plural form, etc. What are these
worksheets trying to do? Clearly, they would be repetitive busywork for
standard-speaking kids who already know this morphology. For kids from
nonstandard-dialect backgrounds, the worksheets are sending the message
that their language is wrong, since they are likely to pick a wrong
answer a lot of the time. There is no context explaining that the
(written) language of school might be different from the language they
are used to; there is no consideration of the fact that children in the
same class from different backgrounds will be challenged differently by
such materials.
In general, language arts materials** mostly ignore the vast store of
subconscious grammar knowledge children bring with them to school. This
is, I believe, because the people who write grammar materials either
don't know about this knowledge or don't
want to pay any attention to it in developing their materials.
**I am speaking of the major publishers' packages that are out there, at
least in CA: Hougton-Mifflin, Scott Foresman, McGraw-Hill, etc.
This contributes to the constant confusion in materials between knowing
how to label and analyze grammatical units (metalinguistic ability) and
the ability to produce grammatical language (linguistic ability).
I believe it is also important to research children's metalinguistic
abilities and establish benchmarks for these. The research I have read
and anecdotes from at least one teacher indicate that children aren't
ready for much metalinguistics until they are 8 or 9, that is, 3rd-4th
grade. On the other hand, a recent Syntax in the Schools had an
interesting article about starting with babies -- using metalinguistic
labels from early on. Clearly children's developmental timeline in this
area should inform grammar instruction.
All that said, I agree with Ed that a band-aid approach isn't something
I'd support. Rather than viewing grammar as a corrective, fix-it tool, I
believe we should view it as an analytical, do-anything tool --
knowledge that can help people understand how texts work or don't work
by being able to analyze any text grammatically and discuss the language
in the text with a conventional metalanguage. This is clearly a
long-term proposition -- we must start by middle school at the latest, I
feel, and have systematic grammar instruction every year right into high
school and maybe even college. For the situation we are in right now, a
corrective approach may be the best we can do in some circumstances,
when people are getting too little grammar, too late.
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Johanna Rubba Assistant 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. 756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
**
"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally" - Frank Oppenheimer
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