William, I don't have your email address, but I would certainly like a copy
of the article you mention.
My address: [log in to unmask]
Thank you,
Christine Gray
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of William J. McCleary
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 2:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: An (Im)modest Proposal
Dear Colleagues:
We have often expressed the desire that something should be done
about the sad state of grammatical knowledge among students at all
levels. Yet we don't seem to know what to do about it. I wouldn't say
that nothing is being done. We do, after all, have such projects as
Ed's promising development of the KISS approach, the book published
by NCTE, and the establishment of ATEG as an assembly within NCTE.
But I think we all feel that these projects are not adequate to meet
the needs. This prompts me to make a proposal.
As preamble, I would first note that the English curriculum is often
seen as a tripod of literature, composition, and language. These
three legs of the tripod are usually taught separately, but there is
some attempt at coordination. For instance, many composition
assignments are for writing about literature, and many efforts to
teach language are done to improve the correctness of compositions
and the understanding of literary language. However, as we have often
noted, the success of such efforts is unproved and, very possibly,
would would turn out to be failures if the proper proof could be
obtained.
I would also take note of the grave doubt that grammar as usually
taught has any redeeming value. The feeling is that students don't
learn much of it, students don't retain much of the little they
learn, and students almost never learn enough to be able to apply it.
I add that there is much evidence to support this feeling.
We don't even agree what it means to teach grammar--or at least we
aren't careful to specify what we mean when we discuss issues on this
list. Some refer to traditional school grammar, some to a more modern
approach, some to rules and exercises for correctness, and some to
grammatical aspects of style.
Finally, we note the sad state of grammatical knowledge among
teachers and prospective teachers. Most English teachers receive, at
best, a single course in grammar, usually without connection to
issues involving teaching grammar. And most elementary teachers are
lucky to get even that much.
The result of these problems is that grammar as an individual subject
will be extremely hard to re-introduce to the schools. And, given the
sad history of grammar teaching, it's probably just as well that no
one is seriously trying to do so. Most teachers would take it as an
attempt to re-introduce traditional school grammar or those exercises
on correctness and would fall upon them either with joy or
disdain--neither of which is a welcome reaction.
So my proposal is that we NOT try to re-introduce grammar by itself,
even a modern, enlightened approach. I think that bringing back
grammar as a subject in itself will not happen successfully in my
lifetime. Instead, I propose that we take over the "language" leg of
the English tripod and make grammar just one strand of that. It would
be a vital strand, for one cannot discuss anything much about
language, whether it be vocabulary or dialect or style, without using
grammatical concepts. But it would not be the whole thing.
For a broader view of language, one could look to linguistics. A book
that I have used called _Linguistics for Non-Linguists_ (Frank Parker
and Kathryn Riley) shows how this could be done. It has chapters on
the following subjects:
pragmatics
semantics
syntax
morphology
phonology
language variation
first-language acquisition
second-language acquisition
written language
the neurology of language.
That shows pretty well what the dimensions of the field of language
could be, though we might have to add more about the language of
literature and other forms of writing. For instance, the book uses
theory of speech acts for its coverage of pragmatics. I could come up
with much better ideas than that.
However, I found that understanding language in the terms used by
linguistics was awfully difficult for my college students. Indeed, it
was hard for ME, and I have a lot more background than my students.
So, I would propose that we use an approach called "Language
Awareness" instead. This includes most of the same concepts as
linguistics but has cast them in terms more appropriate for the
non-linguist. As best I can tell, language awareness is a British
approach; the only American I can tie to it is Larry Andrews of the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He calls the approach "language
exploration and awareness" and has written a book by that name:
_Language Exploration and Awareness: A Resource Book for Teachers_,
2nd edition. (The first edition is much shorter; used copies of it
can be bought cheaply on Amazon.)
The general principle of language awareness is to start with genuine
texts and oral language and have students make observations about the
language, aiming to develop a metalinguistic understanding of what is
going on.*
The next part of my proposal is that we develop a textbook series,
perhaps for grades 4-9, in which the basic concepts of language
awareness are introduced in ever-more sophisticated form. We would,
of course, first need to develop a tentative curriculum, sort of like
the scope-and-sequence idea that our committee is working on. This
might best be approached by sketching out a quick-and-dirty version
and then asking linguists and language educators to help us refine
it. Perhaps we could even recruit someone like Larry Andrews to lead
this effort.
(I should interject here to say that we should first survey the field
of textbooks to see whether anything already exists to serve our
purposes. Perhaps a combination of texts might work. Probably not,
though. So to continue . . .)
After developing a plan, we would contact publishers to see if any
would be interested in the series. If so, the publisher could hire
freelance writers to do the actual work of writing the series. (I'm
assuming that none of us has the time, and I know from practical
experience that textbooks are often done this way.) An academic
person could serve as overall editor, and people from ATEG and other
groups could serve on the editorial board.
So there you have it. I don't know if we could pull it off, but I
think it's worth a try. As a former professor of mine said, The only
way to get a new idea into schools is to write a textbook that they
can use. Few have the time to write their own materials.
Bill
*If you want to read an article by Andrews laying out the theory in
more detail, I'll be happy to send you one. Just send me a private
request, and I'll send it as an attachment. The article originally
appeared in Composition Chronicle in April, 1994.
--
William J. McCleary
Livonia, NY
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