Ed Vavra wrote:
>1. Should students be able to identify the subjects and verbs in
>what they read and write?
>    1.a all of them? why?

>     2. just some of them? why?
>2. Should they be able to identify the clauses?
>3. Are infinitive phrases to be counted as clauses?

>The preceding questions come, I suggest, from a different "vision"
>than Johanna's.  In my work with students, and in my discussions
>with teachers, the primary grammatical problem is that students (and
>many teachers) cannot control clauses --subordinate or main, nor can
>they identify them (which would enable them to study them to come to
>understand how they work). To resolve this, and many related
>problems, twelve parts of speech are not necessary, nor is
>morphology, nor is a distinction between nouns and n

With all due respect to the sincerity with which you hold your
beliefs, Ed, and to the earnest efforts you are making to help
teachers and students, I feel that your vision is narrowly
utilitarian.  Having been thoroughly schooled in a liberal arts way
of viewing the world, and believing that we will ultimately serve
our society better by giving  children a genuine liberal arts
education, I would urge the 3S Committee to continue working on a
program that transcends this kind of utilitarianism.  Just as I want
children to marvel at how caterpillars become butterflies, to wonder
at the structure of a brain cell, to delight in music and art
produced by the human family in earlier centuries, take joy in
reading the adventures of Tom Sawyer or Don Quixote, so I want them
to appreciate and understand some of the fantastic intricacies of the
languages they speak--yes speak--and write.  Let us not surrender
language study to a lowest common denominator of "study clauses so
that you know how to manipulate them in ways that will please certain
authorities on what are acceptable configurations for clauses."         If
I have misrepresented your position, Ed, I am open to being
corrected.  I think you have raised a valuable question about
"visions."  We ought to clarify our assumptions and visions for each
other and you have begun that process.  In the end, 3S will have to
decide how or whether to accomodate visions such as the one you
bring to the table.


R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Director, Intensive English Program
Eastern Mennonite University
Harrisonburg, VA 22802
Office: (540) 432-4051
Home: (540) 574-4277