Craig - I want to take some time to respond to your post, but one part did 
stand out that I wanted to address before the thought escaped me.

You wrote:
<My students write run-on sentences quite readily when the independent 
clauses seem to be <saying the same thing. "My father was a generous guy, he 
always opened his pockets to the <needy."  I wouldn't tell them they are 
"wrong", but certainly need to tell them that this breaks <one of the major 
conventions of punctuation and that the semi-colon is a nice way to connect 
the <two while acknowledging the independence of the clauses.

My problem when encountering this type of run-on/comma-splice is that 
students wouldn't know what I meant by telling them to connect the two - 
"The two what?"  They really don't know what a sentence is - or perhaps more 
accurately, so as not to abandon my "native speakers know English" stance, 
they don't know how to identify a sentence in written form.  Sure, they all 
know that a sentence "ends with a period" (I rarely deal with semi-colons 
except for ACT/SAT prep classes) or "expresses a complete thought", but they 
have no idea how to apply these ideas.  Therefore, I've tried to come up 
with some objective criteria that seem to work most of the time and don't 
require a degree in ontology to understand "a complete thought" or a "state 
of being."

Again, I'm still digesting your other comments!

Geoff

PS:  Here's another thought to the run-on example you cite.  The second 
clause is actually an example of the concept developed in the first clause.  
Perhaps you can get the students to see that the clauses really aren't 
saying the same thing - that the first expresses the concept of generousity 
and the second clause cites an example - and that this difference is what 
makes them separate ideas and therefore separate clauses.  An excercise to 
reinforce this separateness might be to describe other people.  "My girl 
friend is beautiful; she has long black hair."  "My brother is kind; he 
helps old people carry their groceries."  Perhaps your example will also 
help me teach the semi-colon better!



>From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar              
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: knowledge about language
>Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:38:23 -0400
>
>Geoff,
>    You obviously have a fairly self-contained system (approach ) to the
>problem of teaching composition to college students who have had little
>exposure to grammar (more misunderstanding than understanding.) I have
>a great deal of sympathy for the difficulty of it; I'm dealt the same
>problem every year and am trying to do better at it. It's a hugely
>difficult, almost impossible task, and we are certainly bailed out by
>our students' innate ability to use language purposefully. I would like
>to venture that you don't have the complete answer yet, but have a
>handful of approaches that you find useful. My own are a bit different
>and probably start with a different assumption, that technical terms
>are useful precisely because they name sonmething worth drawing
>attention to, dependent clause among them. One problem is that soft
>understandings (avoiding the technical) are precisely what has gotten
>us to this terrbile place where I pretty much have to start from
>scratch with little or no shared metalanguage to draw on.
>    I think it's useful to seperate this discussion out from scope and
>sequence, to say that it's a different problem from the question of
>what we teach students K-12 so that they come to college with a routine
>understanding of language that we can work with.
>    One reason for coming up with three areas is that we can then highlight
>some of the differences in how people understand the nature or goals of
>grammar. People want students to acquire a Standard English. Therefore,
>we should make the nature of Standard English explicit and not simply
>expect people to behave "properly" from mere exposure. We should also
>teach the rule-governed nature of dialects and help students see the
>expressive power (and great usefulness) of non-standard forms. Luckily,
>we have a wonderful literature that does exactly that, and it's already
>in place in the curriculum.
>    Another goal seesm to be some mastery of the conventions of writing,
>which I believe are a much different kind of "correctness", perhaps
>equally difficult for everyone, regardless of exposure to more
>mainstream dialects while growing up. Speech isn't punctuated. It isn't
>paragraphed. It doesn't generally include a "review of the literature".
>And so on. I think we owe it to students to admit that the conventions
>are described in terms of syntax, judged in terms of suyntax, and
>aren't easily mastered without some attention to the nature of these
>conventions. I have no problem using a term like "restrictive and
>non-restrictive modification", however carefully I might explain it in
>terms my students can understand. I can certainly find instances in
>their writing where unfortunate ambiguity ought to be cleared up. My
>students write run-on sentences quite readily when the independent
>clauses seem to be saying the same thing. "My father was a generous
>guy, he always opened his pockets to the needy." I wouldn't tell them
>they are "wrong", but certainly need to tell them that this breaks one
>of the major conventions of punctuation and that the semi-colon is a
>nice way to connect the two while acknowledging the independence of the
>clauses. I wish I didn't have to start from scratch with college
>students, but I pretty much have to, not because "complete thought"
>isn't a useful idea, but because the conventions haven't changed to
>accomodate "complete thoughts" as OK. So that's a second area of
>concern (being able to read a handbook.) We can rewrite the handbooks,
>but no one has done that yet. We just have non-technical approaches to
>meeting technical demands, and it has been a terrible failure. If
>teachers took ten minutes to explain a clause, it would do much more
>good than ten hours of "complete thought." Complete thought is not
>direct. It's not accurate. You can't build on it. with clause, you can.
>    The third area is where you want to focus your attention, and I admit
>it's the area I am fondest of. We can and should focus attention on the
>close realtionship between the form of an expression and its meaning,
>especially if meaning is broadened out toward purpose, toward an
>audience. I like a great deal of the terminology of functional grammar,
>but the concepts are probably the key. How do we develop a topic? How
>does a writer convey perspective, and what role does perspective play
>in the construal of meaning? Is perspective presented differently in a
>narrative than it is in a news story? In an argument?  How do we
>establish relationships with readers? How does a text cohere? What is
>the role of repitition, of given and new? How does the intonation
>grammar of speech carry over into writing? How and why should we unpack
>the meaning of our sentences? How and why should we condense? What are
>the positions in a text that carry the greatest emphasis? If sentences
>can vary widely in the amount of information they contain and in the
>way that information is organized, how do those choices impact our
>contact with a reader?
>    All of those questions require a recognition of the connection between
>form and meaning, that these manipulations are not merely "correcting",
>but writing and revising in the larger sense revered by composition
>teachers (and generally thought of as at war with grammar. If you're
>correcting, as it's now understood, you're not really writing or
>revising.)
>    My fourth area (sub area of three) relates to your disagreement with
>Karl. Too long, I think, English teachers have seen narrative (and
>poetry and drama) as their prime concern, and so we haven't taken a
>good look at the language in the technical disciplines. Building a
>technical vocabulary is absolutely essential to the workings of a
>discipline, and it takes us away from the more narrative structures
>(who, what, where, when, why, how)to a much more heavily nominalized
>world where ideas are seen in relation to other ideas. There are, of
>course, ways in which this can be merely obfuscation and
>self-importance, but there are ways in which the work of the world
>cannot happen without it, including the work of understanding langauge.
>And it seems to me terrible that literature teachers don't shy away
>from "literary elements", but seem to think it's harmful or wrong to
>look at syntax in the same clear and thoughtful way. Is "metaphor" a
>technical term? How about "protagonist"? We use them because they help
>understand how language works and how stories are organized. To me,
>given and new, tonic prominence, intonation group, nominalization, and
>so on, are equally useful.
>    So, again, I propose these PURPOSES that will help us organize
>knowledge about language in purposeful ways. What knowledge will help
>us make Standard English accessible, especially to those students who
>seem most at risk from not becoming comfortable with it? What knowledge
>about language will help students understand the routine conventions
>that make written discourse possible, including discourse in whatever
>communities they want to be part of? What knowledge about language will
>help us understand the nature of effective discourse and help students
>accomplish their own purposes as writers? What knowledge about language
>will help us understand the demands of a technical field? What will
>help us understand the complex ways in which writing differs from
>speech?
>    It's an ambitious project, especially in light of the prevailing
>tendency toward reducing knowledge of grammar to the smallest possible.
>
>  Craig -
> >
> > Great points.  And thank you for recognizing the difference between
> > Weaver's
> > position ("grammar in the context of writing") and mine ("writing in the
> > context of grammar").  She relegates grammar to the role of error
> > avoidance
> > and detection (AN "UNFORTUNATE NUISANCE" - I LOVE IT!), consigning it to
> > "mini-lessons" thoroughly subjugated to, presumably, the "maxi-lessons" 
>of
> > "brainstorming," "graphic organizers," and other non-writing techniques
> > for
> > producing writing.  My point is that students can - and should - use
> > grammar
> > to create writing.  For example, how can you use a prepositional phrase 
>or
> > a
> > dependent clause to create "when" or "where" or "why" meaning?  What are
> > the
> > various ways to create "who" meaning - for example, an appositive.
> >
> > Therefore, I'm NOT suggesting that native speakers don't need to be 
>taught
> > grammar.  But it seems to me that terminology is the type of grammar 
>that
> > they don't need to be taught. In other words, taking students on the now
> > infamous Parts of Speech Hunts - find (PART OF SPEECH HERE) in the
> > following
> > paragraph - is clearly useless.  My point was simply that native 
>speakers
> > don't need to be taught what prepositions (or nouns or adjectives or
> > adverbs
> > or dependent clauses) are since they so clearly already know how to use
> > them.  They just don't know how to use them to create meaning to fullest
> > possible extent.
> >
> > What they need to be taught, then, is how to use grammar - how to use
> > grammatical tools to create meaning that would be impossible without 
>these
> > tools.  Terminology can be introduced - but it's the creation of meaning
> > that's paramount, not the terminology used to name the tools.  There 
>have
> > been some attempts at other approaches such as sentence combining.
> > However,
> > this method has severe limitations in that students are not producing
> > their
> > own meaning but guessing at how to impose meaning on writing created by
> > other authors.
> >
> > Some other observations - you don't have to teach "dependent clause"
> > terminology in order to avoid sentence fragments and run-ons.  There are
> > much more direct ways to get this job accomplished.  Terminology is also
> > unnecessary to teach the nature of complete sentences or predicates or
> > punctuation.  The old "a sentence is a complete thought" is almost
> > ludicrous
> > in its lack of usefullness. And the predicate as an "action" word or a
> > "state of being" is equally innane.  What in God's name is a "state of
> > being," and if the predicate is an "action" word, then why isn't 
>"Running"
> > in "Running is fun" or "I bought a pair of running shoes" the predicate?
> > And why is "am" in "I am running" the part of the predicate?  I get
> > frustrated just thinking about the confusion created by what you have
> > properly called "soft" definitions.
> >
> > Anyway - a great new thread - thanks!
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> >>From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
> >>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >><[log in to unmask]>
> >>To: [log in to unmask]
> >>Subject: knowledge about language
> >>Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:20:27 -0400
> >>
> >>    Our recent discussion about knowledge of language seems worth a
> >>discussion thread in its own right, one that should have major
> >>implications for scope and sequence.
> >>    Geoff's point is that native speakers already know how to use
> >>prepositions, nouns, and so on, so there is no need to teach this. It's
> >>a position pretty much taken up by Constance Weaver and other
> >>minimalists, with the difference being that Geoff sees a role for
> >>knowledge about language in rhetorical application (in the making of
> >>meaning) and Weaver seems more tuned in to the minimum we need to avoid
> >>certain kinds of error or to encourage "stylistic" flair.
> >>    I have been thinking in terms of three kinds of knowledge about
> >>language and the differing needs for teachers and students and looking
> >>for a chance to interject that into the conversation. I think there are
> >>different issues at stake, and we often disagree because we mean
> >>different things by grammar.
> >>    Area one would be issues related to Standard English, and here we
> >> have
> >>the problem of rule-driven language that is deemed inappropriate in
> >>some contexts. For many, I suppose that having "soaked up" the standard
> >>is sufficient, but we have taken the position that students have a
> >>right to explicit knowledge of what constitutes Standard English and
> >>have taken the position that a students' non-standard language
> >>shouldn't be thought of as deficient or "wrong." This means explicit
> >>teaching about the nature of dialect, observations about the effective
> >>ways that non-standard forms show up in many kinds of texts,
> >>differentiating between "Standard English" and the various kinds of
> >>"myth-rules" that show up from time to time. Depending on local need,
> >>that might mean talking about third person singular present tense, 'ed
> >>endings on past tense verbs, irregular past participles, double
> >>negatives, and so on. The idea would be that simply "correcting"
> >>doesn't eliminate error and has negative impact that goes well beyond
> >>its intentions. We need to deepen understanding about language,
> >>including its role in the shared experience of language communities,
> >>and the fact that its rules are often unconscious.
> >>    The second area would have to do with the somewhat arbitrary
> >>conventions for representing language in writing. This includes the
> >>alphabet and spelling and understanding the "meaning" of various kinds
> >>of punctuation, conventions for attribution of sources, and so on.
> >>Despite many attempts to get through this on the basis of "soft
> >>explanations" like "a sentence is a complete thought" and "put commas
> >>where you hear a pause," these "rules" are based on syntax and
> >>explained in the handbooks on the basis of syntax, so it would make
> >>sense to teach relevant terminology and concepts. For this perspective,
> >>a term like "independent clause" becomes important precisely because it
> >>is the core unit needed to avoid sentence fragments and because two of
> >>them together can be run-on sentences if not punctuated in accordance
> >>with the standards, and so on. We continue to hold students accountable
> >>to following the rules, but aren't currently giving enough background
> >>to explain what those rules are. In fact, most teachers seem to come
> >>short of a full knowledge as well. If students think a "run-on
> >>sentence" has too many ideas or just "runs on too long," then it
> >>shouldn't surprise us that this is insufficient understanding. When
> >>teachers think that way, we are in even deeper trouble.
> >>    The third area is one that I think has been woefully under examined,
> >>and that would be the connection between grammar and many different
> >>kinds of meaning, including both thought and expression. This is what
> >>Geoff is talking about with "who, what, where, when, why, and how",
> >>which are one of many, many ways of approaching this rich and complex
> >>area. We also have fine insights being developed in cognitive
> >>linguistics and in systemic functional grammar.  To me, this is
> >>especially important because it redeems grammar from those who feel
> >>it's a sort of unfortunate nuisance, a final veneer placed over writing
> >>to make it "correct," far more mundane then the rest of the English
> >>curriculum. This is what connects the study of gramamr to issues
> >>(goals) of effectiveness, not only in writing, but in critical reading.
> >>    Geoff's argument, that people know language as native speakers and
> >>don't need to have it taught, has to be respected, but I think the time
> >>in which this has been the prime rationale for NOT teaching gramamr has
> >>run its course.
> >>    Knowledge about gramamr helps recognize (make explicit) Standard
> >>English and gain access to public life while still respecting the
> >>community languages that are important to so many of us and important
> >>sources of literary expression.
> >>    Knowledge about language helps us understand the conventions that
> >> come
> >>with language as writing, including standard punctuation practices that
> >>have always been formulated and explained in terms of syntax and seem
> >>to resist explanation in softer (non-technical) ways.
> >>    Knowledge about language can help us understand the nature of
> >> effective
> >>discourse. It can lead us deeply into the heart of the meaning of a
> >>text. It can help us understand grammatical choice as deeply connected
> >>to building and establishing meaning, to winning friends and
> >>influencing people, well beyond the goals of mere "correctness."
> >>   I would add to this a fourth area, which might be best understood as
> >>division of area three. I believe there is ample evidence that writing,
> >>especially the work of the technical disciplines, puts pressure on
> >>writing that leads toward structures that are not at all common in
> >>speech. Writing is not merely putting speech into words, but doing a
> >>very different kind of work in very different kinds of communities. The
> >>more we understand the kinds of changes that need to happen, the better
> >>we will be at helping students through, especially those who have
> >>historically been under-represented in the professional and technical
> >>fields.
> >>    Whole language approaches should be commended for putting emphasis 
>on
> >>our innate abilities as language users and for putting high emphasis on
> >>engagement as being at the heart of all good teaching. If students come
> >>to care about reading and writing, much good will follow. We have much
> >>to gain from extensive reading and writing. But I think it has been a
> >>terrible mistake to put these goals at odds with a deepening
> >>understanding of language and how it works.
> >>
> >>Craig
> >>
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