Martha,
Thanks so much for your note. Yes, Frogner's article is a summary of her 1939 dissertation. I have a copy of Harris's dissertation, so I'll check to see if he uses this term. I have seen this term "the thought approach" used so often, from the 1930s through at least the 1950s, but without any explanation, as if it was obvious to everyone what was meant. I thought it must have been a well known term or pedagogy at the time--but it doesn't seem to have been. Ed Schuster emailed me and said he had never heard of it. It seems to have been just a loose term that signified more or less the opposite of structured grammar drill.
Thanks for taking the time to reply,
Tim
Tim Hadley
Graduate Assistant, Graduate School Fellowships and Scholarships
Ph.D. candidate, Technical Communication and Rhetoric
Texas Tech University
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Martha Kolln
Sent: Sun 5/1/2005 1:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: help with "the thought approach"
Hi Tim,
The "thought approach" sounded familiar to me--and I finally remember
why. It came up 25 years ago when I was doing research for my CCC
article "Closing the Books on Alchemy" (May 1981). One of the
studies I looked at was Ellen Frogner's "Grammar Approach Versus
Thought Approach in Teaching Sentence Structure," published in the
English Journal, Vol 28 (September 1939), pp. 518-526. I think her
"thought approach" had a lot of the features of sentence combining.
It's also possible that Harris used the term in his study, the one
that gave us "harmful effect of teaching formal grammar," as
summarized in Braddock, "Research in Written Composition," (NCTE
1963). I haven't read the original report--only the Braddock
summary. Both of Harris's groups studied grammar, and I suspect his
"functional grammar" group was similar to Frogner's.
Good luck with your quest.
Martha
>ATEGers,
>
>In my research I am reading a lot about an approach to teaching
>college composition that was popular back in the 1950s, and maybe
>earlier, called the "thought approach." I am assuming that this is
>referring to something sort of like the "figure it out" approach, as
>opposed to the "drill grammar" approach--but I'm not sure about
>this, so I'm asking for help. In the sources I'm seeing, this
>"thought approach" is referred to as if everyone knows what is being
>talked about without it being defined or explained, so it must have
>been a well-known thing at the time.
>
>Would anyone have any information about what this approach to
>teaching composition involved, or if there is anything published
>about it? I promise not to date you to the 1950s, though I myself go
>back that far (only as a mere child, however). Reply offlist if you
>like.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tim
>
>Tim Hadley
>[log in to unmask]
>Graduate Assistant, Graduate School Fellowships and Scholarships
>Ph.D. candidate, Technical Communication and Rhetoric
>Texas Tech University
>
>
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