Dear Robert,
There's a little misunderstanding or two.
The book I was talking about is our latest English Text Book at school where I
teach English as a foreign language. It has all the regular texts and exercises
and in parts asks student to review a text and search for and list grammar
structures for closer observation. This was something I was doing years ago and
so I was pleasantly surprised. The rules at the back of the book are
unfortunately generally the old stuff again. Of course I will try and find time
to write some of my ideas and methods for rule discovery for the list.
The book the kids end up with is a file or exercise book with their own personal
tricks  for remembering a rule.It gets divided into  whatever necessary. We
begin (foreign language !) with the verb to be and develop from there into
tenses, nouns, noun phrases, pronouns etc etc A file was always good because you
could add pages and take them out when a 'rule' was revised. In the end it could
look like a plain  grammar book, except it's the tip of an iceberg with a great
deal of 'research + thought behind it' on the part of the students, who
internalized it all the better for having written it by hand themselves.
It was a little sense of achievemnet when 10 year olds approached me tentatively
with  an extra observation. They'd been dealing with the verb in the simple
present and now thought that English speakers didn't always use 'Du'  -  2nd
person singular, as all Germans assume, but 'Sie'- 2nd person singular. They had
listed it on the plural side together with 'we' and 'they' because they were
used to me addressing the class with 'you'!
So theoretically the book grows with the students. Unfortunately I only have
classes two years at a stretch now and not all teachers share my methods. We
also had some worried parents who complained their kids had too much to carry or
their file papers were flying around! I still continue wherever I can and we
just write the observations and rules in our normal exercise books which is not
quite as effective.

The second misunderstanding is that Frans is my husband! I just use his mail
address on some of my lists as it's easier for me access from home.
regards from

Patsi



Robert Einarsson wrote:

> Hi Frans,
>

Would you post a little more to the ATEG listserv about your book
on leading the students through rule discovery?