Last fall I had the chance to take a close look at grammar materials in
books for K-8, of about a 1997-1998 vintage. Major publishers such as
Houghton-Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, etc. The material is
quite generous in most cases, but it is also quite traditional. I can't
be satisfied with these materials as long as they continue to use
definitions that are inaccurate ('pronouns take the place of nouns' --
they take the place of noun phrases) or not particularly useful ('the
subject is what the sentence is about'; 'a sentence expresses a complete
thought'). They confuse form with function: anything that modifies a
noun must be an adjective (but nouns can modify nouns in English). Also,
I have found no book that tells the truth about dialect variation:
double negatives aren't wrong, they follow the rules of a different
dialect of English.

Also, none of the materials related sentence grammar to text functions
such as maintaining topic thread, achieving coherence, or distinguishing
given from new information. This connection is what makes grammar
relevant to writing. I just demonstrated this for an hour to my
students, and several of them left remarking on how interesting and
useful this material is; one wants me to help her with her writing
because she has coherence problems.

Simply resurrecting traditional grammar is no guarantee that students
will be able to take advantage of knowledge of grammar in their writing.
It's not even a guarantee that they will be able to pass the
standardized tests that a lot of the curriculum is teaching to.

I also find most of these materials discriminatory. A lot of exercises
and tests target nonstandard dialect grammar, such as 'he don't' and
double negation. A lot of these materials ask students to either supply
the 'correct' form or choose between a 'correct' and 'incorrect' form.
Some of these are multiple-choice items. Looking at such items from the
point of view of children, some will intuitively know the 'right' answer
simply because they grew up in a home in which the standard dialect is
spoken. Others will have trouble choosing because both standard and
nonstandard forms will sound right. For yet others, the nonstandard
forms will sound most natural, and they will pick the wrong answer.
Isn't it obvious that such materials disadvantage children from
nonstandard-dialect backgrounds? Won't it be these children that score
low on the standardized tests (not to mention their school tests)?

The instruction itself sends these children the message that there is
something wrong with _their_ English, while the children in their school
from middle-class homes, and their teachers, already speak 'correct'
English. What are the children supposed to conclude from this? That they
grew up in defective homes/communities? That they aren't smart enough to
have learned 'correct' English, like their classmates?

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Johanna Rubba   Assistant 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.  756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
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