Craig,
I agree with your response.
Mary Mocsary
Southeastern Louisiana University
>===== Original Message From Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>Bill,
> With apologies if this seems like a diatribe.
> I would echo Martha's objections to your curriculum, in part because
>I find the status quo so disheartening, and you seem to be accepting a
>"grammar in context" approach against the huge sense most of us have
>that it just isn't working. It was presented as a sort of logical
>alternative to failed older approaches, but there is no sense continuing
>to believe that it has been shown to be effective. People defend it by
>saying everything else is wrong, but it has never been reasonably tested
>in its own right. (Of course, since the burden is on the student, not
>the teacher, to have the grammar rub off, no one is held accountable.)
>It was abandoned in England largely because it was a theory that proved
>so abysmal in practice, and we would do the same thing here if it were
>not a politically correct, largely unquestioned status quo.
> Part of this comes from unclear use of terminolgy, like "context",
>which can mean looking at the role of grammar in the production of
>meaning OR teaching the avoidance of error when it actually shows up.
>You can praise Geoff for addressing the first and then assume that he is
>talking about the latter. None of the studies about grammar you cite
>have ever assumed that grammar has anything to do with rhetorical
>choice. It also comes from failing to address the differences between
>unconscious grammar and conscious knowledge, from believing that all we
>care about is habitual "proper" behaviour and not any kind of deep
>understanding of how our own language works. (A curriculm that helps
>students know may not help them conform. We can't judge the first by
>testing the latter.)
> Writing has been badly taught more often than not, so we could
>easily come up with studies that show the teaching of writing does real
>harm to students and use that as a justification to stop. The reason we
>don't do this is that good writing is an agreed upon goal. If
>understanding of language is an agreed on goal, and any stdent of
>language knows that grammar is at the heart of language, how can we
>conclude that bad teaching in the past should force us to avoid it? We
>would search, and should search, far and wide for the best ways to do
>it. (And current grammar in context approaches wouldn't make my first
>cut. They avoid the issue altogether. They give up the struggle and
>abandon the field without being honest about it.)
> The truth is that when there is no scope and sequence for grammar,
>when there is nothing more than reductive, error based accountability,
>and when weakness is passed off as the poor moral fiber of the student,
>grammar simply never gets dealt with, and we get students in college who
>wouldn't know a clause from a santa. Students don't learn about grammar
>from having it brought up on occassion by teachers who know little about
>it themselves. What is our rationale for continuing with that? That
>forty year old approaches didn't work? That language itself is an arcane
>subject for specialists?
>
>
>Craig
>
>William McCleary wrote:
>
>> Geoff,
>>
>> I sure appreciate your pointing this out. It's exactly the kind of
>> idea about how grammar affects content (and logic as well) that we
>> can use to understand how texts are put together. The need to
>> understand then leads back to a need to use grammar.
>>
>> However, I'm thinking here of after-the-fact usage of grammar--that
>> is, after the text has been written. We look at a finished text to
>> see how the writer constructed it. Then we review or introduce enough
>> grammar to understand the syntax being used. Perhaps students could
>> then apply their knowledge of grammar in creation of content, but
>> perhaps not. The difficulty that students have in applying their
>> knowledge of grammar to correcting the errors in their writing
>> suggests that they could not.
>>
>> If, on the other hand, students were instructed to tell when and
>> where an event happened, wouldn't they improve their writing more
>> easily through modeling and feedback from peers and the instructor
>> than through the study of grammar? I think they would, though one
>> can't be sure without trying it. Have you tried it?
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>>
>>> In the main, though, teachers who teach writing have much larger issues
>>> than style, whether >good and bad style or correct and incorrect style.
>>> Their primary emphasis has to be on organization >and content.
>>>
>>>
>>> Have you ever thought that grammar can be used to teach organization and
>>> content? For example, if "who, what, why, where, when, and how"
>>> comprise
>>> the main content of most if not all papers, then teaching grammar is
>>> a means
>>> by which students can learn how to communicate this content. Both
>>> "when"
>>> and "where" information are communicated by using adverbs, prepositional
>>> phrases, and dependent clauses. By teaching grammar, then, you are also
>>> teaching the construction of meaning/content - and isn't this the
>>> goal of a
>>> writing teacher?
>>>
>>> Geoff Layton
>>>
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