While I'm giving out interesting items, consider this item that
appeared recently on the WPA list. The group has been discussing
"rhetoric and the teaching of style," and one correspondent had
suggested that folks could check out a URL from Ed Vavra's web site
at Penn Tech, evidently the one in which Ed attacks previous research
on grammar and the teaching of writing. Here was one response:
_________
Please, let's not go all the way ATEG. Thin as the Hillocks-collected
studies may be, they are consistent and superior in weight to any
positive evidence the ATEGians have offered for their views. The
best we can say about "grammar" teaching is that it *might* not
be as bad as we think. But then again, it might be, too. I'm greatly
suspicious of entirely critical arguments against anti-grammar when
surely it would be very easy to generate contrary pro-grammar
evidence instead - if there were any value in "grammar." The lack
of such evidence speaks volumes.
Style is a different thing. There is weight, heft, sense, and
traction to sentence combining, imitation, Christensen rhetoric,
stylistics, and critical linguistics. There are ways of using all those
practices that require nary a grammar term (though teachers who
are going to use them probably should also have a grammatical
perspective on them).
As Joe Hardin points out, the trope of "Back to" grammar is more
mythic than real. As some of Bob Connors' other work makes plain,
there never was any "back" to which to get. "Grammar" always was
just a failed, ivory tower theory. The move into style may not be
an entirely new thing, but none of the really valuable threads we
are picking up were ever fully traditional or mainstream. That's a
reality yet to be constructed. And it probably requires a new theory.
________
I'd say that it makes a good case.
Bill
--
William J. McCleary
Livonia, NY
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