Bruce,
Thank you for illustrating my point. Bring that into a primary school classroom, a room in which most students (and perhaps the teacher) have little if any ability to identify subjects and verbs in the first place, and you will confuse the heck out of all of them. I would suggest that because the members of ATEG LOVE to deal with questions such as this, the group is incapable on developing a viable pedagogical strategy. Might I suggest that your question is one of physics, whereas the students do not yet have a basic sense of geometry? In essence, I would suggest that you are doing what many graduate students do in their TA-Ship * bringing graduate level problems and questions into basic Freshman level courses. Thus, the difficulty to which you refer is definitely not a difficulty if definitions and concepts are kept clear in the K-12 curriculum.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/01/05 1:57 PM >>>
Ed,
A noble goal! Please continue. But be aware that your readiness to find
problems needs to be balanced by a willingness to strike at their roots. Take
your sentence:
"They saw the town that was destroyed in the war."
There is definitely a sense in which the town is the subject of the adjective
clause. Of course, you are right is claiming that it cannot be "town," since
that word is already the essential complement of the verb "saw" (direct object).
Herb will claim that there is no subject of the clause expressed in the clause!
There is a gap there where the word might appear. "That" is simply a
connective to the adjective clause, like it is to a certain kind of noun clause.
Are you willing to accept this possibility? Should the term "subject" always be
understood to refer to that one word which expresses the essential part of the
subject? Can't it also mean that concept which the predicate must refer to as
its primary argument? I think that the fact that terms like "subject" can be
applied at different levels (syntax, semantics, etc.) can be a major difficulty.
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 4/1/2005 11:30:11 AM >>>
John,
Personally, I have little faith in the linguists-- they are too concerned
with teaching linguistics and, for example, refuse to consider a basic uniform
set of terminology for pedagogy in K-12. I'll say again that the research that
supposedly shows that teaching grammar is harmful actually shows that the
confusing terminology is the cause of the harm. To see the reaction of ATEG
members to that, all you have to do is review some of the threads on this list.
I agree with both Ed Schuster and Herb that the problem is, in part,
political, but I disagree in how to resolve it. It seems to me that rather than
just complain about the politics, etc., we need to develop one or more
consistent, clearly useful pedagogical grammars. Apparently, some of the
linguists are working on that, and I wish them well, even thought I doubt their
pedagogical success.
My own approach has basically been to more or less to retire from this
group and devote my time to developing the KISS Approach, the approach I had
started before I even began the newsletter that resulted in the formation of
ATEG. Again I'll point to the basic guide to the approach at:
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Guide_Book1.htm
This is a major project, but if you spend some time on the site you will see
that it is sequential, it is simple but powerful, and it moves through the
grammatical constructions always focusing on the analysis of real texts. See,
for example, the analysis of sixth graders' writing from the Pennsylvania State
standards:
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G06/Nov/index.htm
It also includes exercises on style, logic, and the analysis of literature.
No members of ATEG have shown any real interest in the KISS Approach, so
it is taking some time to develop it. I do have, however, a separate KISS List,
with members from this country and around the world (from China to Poland). The
members of that list have been a tremendous help in making me see what needs to
be presented in which sequence, and in how much detail.
Once I get the site basically complete, i.e., at least one printable
workbook for each of the five KISS Levels, my intention is to address the
public. Addressing the educational community is useless, as Rebecca, Ed, and
Herb noted. My argument will be very simple * teaching grammar is meaningless
unless we teach students how to identify subjects, verbs, complements, and
clauses. Year after year, students are told that subjects must agree with verbs
in number, but if you ask students to identify the subjects and verbs in their
own writing, most students cannot do so. Thus, current instruction is
meaningless. This is, however, just one simple example. I was recently talking
to a publisher's rep who thought she was good in grammar. I asked her to
identify the subject of "was" in "They saw the town that was destroyed in the
war." She thought it was "town." She was amazed when I pointed out that the
complement of one verb can never be the subject of another verb. It is, I would
suggest, this lack of practical instruction that causes much of the problem in
teaching grammar. And, from what I have seen, most members of ATEG are simply
not interested in teaching the simple and the practical.
Ed V.
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