Sorry, Ed, you can't teach someone how language works without discussing 
things like features and phonemes and phonological processes. These are 
important in early language development and they influence things like 
whether children master literacy or not; they allow teachers to 
understand why children perform as they do in school. They also give 
future teachers a clear understanding of how English spelling works and 
why it is the way it is; they also learn to what degree phonics 
instruciton is scientifically accurate. You also have to teach about 
language acquisition, because popular myth is so wrong about that. You 
can teach this stuff by giving students examples of child language, but 
if they don't know linguistic/grammatical terminology, they can't talk 
about what the kids are doing, and the specifically linguistic concepts 
are necessary to understand what is going on.
And again, the teaching credential standards refer to the exact 
linguistic terminology.

What I said they couldn't do was parse fluently after ten weeks of 
instruction. Most of them learn to parse well enough to perform on a 
test. Whether they retain that knowledge and expand on it or not is up 
to them. Few of them come in with enough grammatical analysis skills to 
independently describe the various sentence and phrase structures they 
would find in schoolchildren's writing, as a course term project. They 
would need a course that focuses fully on grammar for that, and they 
haven't had one when they come into my classroom. And they don't get in 
my classroom, as I pointed out in previous posts.

A linguistics course for teachers is intended, in part, to change the 
student's mindset about language in significant ways so that they have 
an accurate understanding of language instead of the virtual nonsense 
that most people believe about language. It's more global than helping 
them improve their writing. There's nothing wrong with helping students 
improve their writing, but that is not the goal of the courses I teach.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate 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.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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