Thanks to Johanna for her helpful posting about the divisions she sees among
us.  It's nicely articulated, I think.  For me personally, I find it ironic
to be among those who are focusing on superficial aspects of grammar.  It's
ironic because I started my career with exactly the opposite focus.  I was a
dyed-in-the-wool Chomskyite, having started by reading--and I think quite
thoroughly understanding--his Syntactic Structures, in a sophomore course on
teaching grammar.  So every time someone mentions these deeper
understandings, they strike a responsive chord.

I'm sure it's my personal experiences over the decades that have refocused my
attention.  First, we weren't successful at all with our attempts to promote
a deeper understanding of language and our innate language abilities through
textbooks of the 70s:  I think, for example, of the Oregon Curriculum for
secondary students, Morton Botel's Communicating series for elementary, and
Owen Thomas's The Arts and Skills of English series, also for elementary.  We
were too esoteric, and even the teachers didn't buy into what we were trying
to teach.  Do others remember it the same way?

Second, Warriners and its ilk continued to hold sway, virtually crowding
writing out of the curriculum.  I think this happened for various reasons,
including, of course, supply and demand.  Many teachers, not to mention
administrators, wanted materials that gave explanations in the text and
answers in the teacher's manual.  Teachers could claim they "covered the
curriculum" in grammar and everybody could blame the students for not
learning it.  Meanwhile, only a minority (a small one?) learned and applied
grammar in the ways everybody wanted them to.  Thus it's been part of my
professional mission to try to help teachers learn to accomplish more, while
using up less of the time for langage arts.

BUT, as I was reminding myself yesterday, this mission has to some extent
backfired, too (as I think Ed would be among the first to say).  I am keenly
aware that my 1979 Grammar for Teachers has had consequences I neither wanted
nor anticipated.  In part, then, it's been this personal experience, too,
that has led me to plead with all of you not to feed into the current mania
for "basics" and standardized testing of grammar minutiae.   I, and several
of my friends who are much more prominent nationally and internationally than
I, have learned the hard way that bad things seem inevitably to accompany the
good that our work may do.

Thank goodness Johanna and others on the ATEG listserv are aware of the
problems with defining grammar too narrowly and of promoting grammar in the
curriculum rather than language study.  In our state of Michigan, language
arts and English teachers developed ten broadly based curriculum standards a
few years ago.  At that time, the State Board of Education was dominated by
the extreme right.  We language arts folks were told by the SBOE that they
would approve our revised version, so the day that the standards were to be
approved, no one came to support them.  Well, the morning of that Board
meeting, the president of the board added another standard focusing
specifically on transactional kinds of reading and replaced our content
standard on language with the standard "Students will write in grammatical
sentences."  Our standard had focused on starting where children are with
their language/dialect and leading them to add English as another language,
and a mainstream dialect as an important tool.  But with the SBOE president
had reduced all of this to "Students will write in grammatical sentences"
(nearly verbatim, but probably not quite).  I happened to be attending that
meeting to speak out on another issue, so I took my allotted 3 minutes to
point out that such a narrow focus--mine you, this was one of the twelve most
important things students were to learn in K-12--encouraged teachers to focus
on teaching correctness at the sentence level rather than teaching students
to plan, organize, draft, revise, and edit real pieces of writing, for
genuine purposes.  The result?  The standard was revised to read something
like "Students will write grammatical sentences, paragraphs, and
compositions."  No other language standard remained in the list of twelve.

Of course, those of you who point out that publishers are only responding to
demand in producing traditional grammar books and strands are quite right.
And maybe we can infuse a more broadly based concept of language into the
curriculum.  But how?  I'm pessimistic, because of all our failed efforts in
the 70s; that's why I've turned my attention to the issues that seem to
concern the public.  On the other hand, I would be delighted to see language
study, more broadly conceived, become more widely a part of the curriculum
again--as long as it doesn't take over the curriculum as the study of grammar
once did and threatens to do again.

So yes, Johanna, despite my pessimism and doubt, my trepidation and just
plain fear of the possible consequences, I am one person who would be
interested in what you term a compromise, at least if I'm understanding you
correctly.

Is anyone on this listserv a member of the NCTE's Commission on Language?  I
should hope so.  If we focus on language rather than grammar per se, we may
make headway with the Commission and the NCTE.

And yes, I'm well aware that I am considered part of the NCTE establishment
with regard to teaching grammar.  In fact, I have recently been asked to
update the SLATE starter sheet on grammar that I wrote a few years ago.  I
still intend to cite the research summaries about teaching grammar in
isolation, because I--and other NCTE leaders--so greatly fear the political
and curricular consequences of not continuing to emphasize that body of
research.  Nevertheless, our recent conversations  on this listserv have
given me several ideas for making other aspects of the document much more
reflective of the thinking and work that many of the rest of you currently
engage in. For example, Martha's alchemy article, which simply angered me
upon a first reading years ago, has been a landmark critique and redirection
of our efforts.  The discussions about language in the curriculum have been
extremely productive in nudging me to broaden what I thought I might write.
Doubtless I will seek the help of some of you in writing parts of the
document, too, so that it couches the discussion of grammar within a larger
context that promotes language study.

So, I hope we can keep the conversations going, try to broaden our individual
perspectives, and work together on those things that we might agree upon.
This may not necessarily involve compromise, either, but simply refocusing on
what we DO agree upon, instead of merely continuing to articulate our
differences.  Is it worth another try?  I think so.

Johanna's posting brings up other important points and questions, too--issues
that I hope to see others address, since I've gone on far too long already.
I think we're doing some important thinking and rethinking, while we try also
to address the practical questions from the middle school and secondary
teachers who've recently spoken on the listserv and (at least as important)
to LEARN from them.

Connie

Johanna Rubba wrote:

> Thoughts on another point I see cutting across postings: There seems to
> be a divide among listers (at least the ones who post) on what purpose
> grammar teaching should serve. One group seems to advocate that it be
> _relatively_ narrowly focused on consistent and persistent problems
> students have with their writing: achieving effective style; using
> standard grammar, punctuation, etc.; and catching errors in
> editing/revising. Bob Yates and Connie Weaver jump to mind. There are
> probably others who just have slipped my mind right now.
>
> The other group seems to advocate teaching grammar as a way of bringing
> students to a deeper understanding of the structure of English --
> focusing not just on what is problematic for students in their writing,
> but on understanding how grammar (syntax) functions in language in
> putting meanings together and in creating textual coherence and style.
> Thus Judy Diamondstone sees value in having students understand
> meaning-based categories of verbs, while Bob Yates does not -- not only
> because he doesn't seem to like meaning-based categories much, but
> because he doesn't see how knowing these categories is going to help
> students be good writers (this is a recent example that jumps to mind).
> It seems to be the 'deeper understanding' group that aspires to a
> systematic, long-term grammar program that starts relatively early --
> 3rd, 4th grade or earlier. I have in mind Ed Vavra, Martha Kolln, Judy
> D., Dick Veit, Bill McCleary?, myself ... I'm sure I've left people out.
>
> I think it's important that we recognize this difference, because we
> talk at cross purposes if we don't. I can certainly respect both groups
> -- perhaps the first group has more realistic aspirations. (What I say
> below may seem to contradict this.) That's one point I want to make.
>
> The other point I want to make is to advocate for the second position --
> 'deeper understanding'. My reasoning is: I don't think you can achieve
> the first without the second; leastways, I don't think you can ever get
> beyond a relatively mechanical application of formulas, possibly needing
> to be reviewed and relearned at each editing session. I think it will
> keep the students' 'feel for language' pretty superficial; I don't know
> that they will ever really be at ease with grammatical terminology or
> able to analyze sentences and texts. It will also hamper them when it
> comes time to learn a second language, study linguistics, teach English
> or writing to others. I know that only a small proportion of students
> will do the latter two things, and ever fewer learn a second language
> (but that will, I hope, change in the future).
>
> Perhaps this very paragraph points up a second divide: Do we feel that
> students need a 'feel for language', or will a relatively superficial
> understanding, for use in editing, suffice?
>
> This seems like a pretty deep divide, and will cause very different
> desires for what appears in a grammar curriculum. So the two groups will
> likely have endless disagreement. Is there a compromise position? Is
> anybody interested in a compromise?
>
> There is an external factor. The running subject line for this thread
> has been 'putting grammar back in the curriculum'. I have to emphasize,
> again, that it IS back, at least in those things that are being forced
> upon several large states: academic standards and standardized tests.
> These may not be around forever. But if they endure, I don't think
> children will do very well with them under the narrower perspective.
>
> Maybe it is not in the cards for most kids to be able to master
> extensive English grammar at all. Maybe this is only going to happen
> with a minority of kids of above-average ability. We won't know unless
> an _effective_ approach to teaching grammar is tried. There is too much
> wrong with the traditional curriculum to go by the past, and anyway,
> what do we really know about the past? It gets idealized a lot. My
> suspicion is that, of all the kids who went through traditional grammar
> training in the past, only a minority retained extensive knowledge. I
> don't know how possible it would be to tease out the various factors
> that led to success/failure -- socioeconomic status? School environment?
> Family situation? Ability/creativity of teachers? Nature of testing?
>
> Am I totally off base with all of this?
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 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
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~