Despite my occasional pessimism, Bob, I agree that teachers need to know a lot
about the resources of the English language and related matters, espeicallly
things like dialect differences, stylistic options, conventions for editing.
Actually, I agree with most of what you've said.  Perhaps I'm just all too aware
of the difficulty many preservice teachers have in applying what they're learning
to strengthening and editing their own writing and that of their classmates.  Even
witih guidance, not many seem to be really adept at it.  Maybe I just hope for too
much too soon.

Connie

Bob Yates wrote:

> I am very worried that the following suggests that there is no hope for
> the teaching of grammar anywhere in the curriculum.
>
> Connie Weaver wrote:
>
> > I'm sure you know
> > that decades of research suggest (1)  that the grammar isn't learned very
> > well by a majority of students'; (2) that what's "learned" isn't well
> > retained by a majority of students; and (3) that grammar knowledge seems to
> > be even less often applied to actual writing.  . . .
>
> And then she added the following.
>
> > Students seem even less motivated to learn grammar than they were when I
> > started teaching, quite a while back.  Oh, sure, we can get them through our
> > college courses in grammar for teachers, but do we really know whether they
> > understand the grammar well enough to teach it, except by following a
> > teacher's manual?  I worry about this.  Students who understand the concept
> > of "sentence," for example, usually don't have the faintest idea why someone
> > else would have trouble grasping what is and isn't a sentence, grammatically
> > speaking.  Of course I try to help them understand such things, but I always
> > wonder how many of my students will be/become good at teaching the concept to
> > others.  Guess I'm the listserv pessimist--perhaps in part because I listen
> > to and talk with my students as equals about learning and teaching grammar.
> > What I learn from most of them isn't especially encouraging.
>
> There are two separate issues about teaching grammar here. 1) what
> should be taught in
> schools; 2) what should be taught to teachers.
>
> I am concerned about (2).  Even if the overt teaching of grammar in the
> primary schools has no value, I suggest that ALL language arts teachers
> need to know as much as possible about English grammar for several
> reasons:
>
>         1) Assessment of their students writing.  What are more complex
> structures?  What aren't? Why is X considered more complex than Y?
>
>         2) Recognizing possible language variation and with true language
> deficits and understanding why language might vary.
>
>         3) Assessing appropriate and inappropriate texts for the teaching of
> writing.  For example, I would want my pre-service teachers to
> understand that texts which state without any qualification "the passive
> voice should be avoided" is wrong and a joke.
>
> I think the poor quality of texts for the teaching of grammar is
> directly related to the fact that people who actually know something
> about language have never been part of the debate.  In the 1950s and
> early 1960s a major debate took place on the pages of the College
> English about the utility of using linguistic insights in teaching
> writing.  The linguists lost because the theory that motivated their
> suggestions was not very helpful for the kinds of problems English
> teachers faced, and that theory was being successfully challenged.
>
> A good example of this issue is teaching about the concept of a
> "sentence" as discussed in handbooks which prescribe that only "complete
> sentences" are acceptable in academic writing.  The standard definition
> is that a "complete sentence" is a "complete thought."  or a "complete
> sentence" is claimed to have a subject and a verb that agrees with that
> subject.  Both DeBeaugrande and Noguchi have pointed out how difficult
> those concepts are to apply.  The "complete sentence" has a formal
> property that is revealed by making a yes/no question or a tag
> question.  This formal property of independent sentences is something
> that ALL native speakers know by the time they get to first grade.
>
> Although this kind of thinking underlies how science is done in the
> West, it is not taught very well in the schools.  And, a lot of English
> teachers are not taught how to figure out what they already know about
> language.  Almost ALL texts assume that native speakers don't know much
> about the structure of language.  Of course, as native speakers, they
> know a whole lot.  We must figure out ways of making that clear to
> teachers so that they can use that knowledge in their teaching.
>
> One of the common observations I get in my grammar class is that I make
> the description of language like mathematics.  I have to agree.  There
> are formal properties of language which are like the formal properties
> of math.  I am convinced there are students at the college level who
> have great resistance to formal abstractions and the kind of reasoning
> which goes with them.
>
> Although students might be less motivated to learn grammar, there are
> all kinds of ways in their professional lives in which knowledge of
> grammar is presumed.  I would observe that the grammar checkers on their
> computers presume they know something about grammar.  I am seriously
> thinking about having my students look at Bushisms of the Week kept by
> Jacob Weisberg on slate.com this fall.  The question would be for
> classify what the "non-standard" aspects of the utterances are or are
> the utterances standard English but just nonsense.  Are such utterances
> acceptable for teachers?
>
> Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University