Craig,

Whether taken in the vernacular or in its former, more rarified usage, your
response was "awesome."

One point of clarification:  when I said that "our native speaker students,
in contrast, are (or soon will be) masters of informal, spoken language, . .
." I meant it in the sense that they define the language for us descriptive
linguists.  I certainly didn't mean that they were masters of all
communicative situations.  Some of the areas that you brought up involve
emotional, psychological, and social aspects that are well beyond the reach
of any language component, it seems to me.

That said, let's happily agree to agree.  My primary concern all along has
been that this group would want to perpetuate the same tiresome, ineffective
approaches to grammar instruction in K-12 that caused the rebellion in the
first place.  Many of the discussions that I saw, while interesting, created
that impression:  "I call it this, and I teach it like that."  My very first
post, for which I got considerable heat, involved not teaching whatever it
was at all except in classes designed specifically for in-depth analyses of
grammar.  Your posts, and Bill McCleary's Immodest Proposal, have allayed my
fears.

I thank you, and many others, for taking the time to bring me (and others,
undoubtedly) into the fold.

John

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