>
Johanna,
    I especially enjoyed these two paragraphs in your post:



 "We should start as early as we can in teaching the real
> subtleties of grammar. Teachers have been asking for contextualized
> grammar instruction for decades. If we keep restricting ourselves to the
> the sentence level, this will not change. We also need to be truthful
> about how language works. I start with the sentence level for finding
> subjects, but the very next step is looking at how subjects function at
> the text level. The usual reasons for finding subjects are things like
> subject-verb agreement, correct placement of modifiers, pronoun
> agreement and clarity of antecedents, etc. This is fine, but it is
> "correctness-focused" grammar instruction. It must be placed in the
> context of exploration-based grammar instruction: using student's
> existing (vast) subconscious knowledge of grammar and their developing
> knowledge of text structure to help them learn conscious sentence and
> text analysis.
>
> "We have to start challenging students in accordance with their
> cognitive abilities. Otherwise instruction remains boring and students'
> potential remains unrealized."
>
>

     I have had good success with subject functions as presented in
functional grammar. When students think subject, they think it's the
does of the deed, the first element in the sentence, and the focus of
a proposition, but all three of these elements can separate out.  A
passive, for example, allows us to predicate a message about the
receiver of the action without distorting the real world picture.
Adverbials that start a sentence often have thematic emphasis. So we
can say "During recess, Pat was harassed once again by Charlie". With
that kind of attention, it's much easier to see how these sorts of
choices would work within a text. We can make reference to what
Charlie did, to what happened to Paul, and to what went on at recess.
All are "correct", but one is likely to work better within the flow
of a particular discourse.
    It's also possible to take the whole statement and make it the subject
of another statement (an interesting challenge for students, but they
seem to enjoy being challenged.)  "Paul's harassment by charlie at
recess is something we should deal with immediately."  It's fun to try
to take it the next step.  "Dealing immediately with Charlie's
harrassment of Paul at recess turned out to be impossible." And so on.
(Complicated does not equal effective, but context might make it very
clear. Often, the given comes first and the predicate expands that
out.)
     I agree with your fine points.  We need a context based, discourse
grammar.  We need to remind students that their unconscious grammar
is highly sophisticated and can be trusted.  And we need to do so
much more to challenge and excite and interest students as they
explore the rich and interesting world of grammar. Those are three
very worthy goals.
    Without some sense of what we are trying to achieve, I think these
exercises can become trivial and unrewarding. We need these higher
goals.
Craig

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