Craig -

I think we're on the same page.

My point, perhaps poorly put, was that NCTE by their rhetorical construction 
make it appear that they are grammar friendly even if they are, as you put 
it, "deeply biased against grammar . . . reduc(ing) it to the trivial, both 
in substance and instruction" (nicely put!).  The strength of their position 
is that they make us out to be the Gradgrinds of the world.

Indeed, even though the Post article appears to be "grammar friendly", it 
too assumes the same rhetorical stance as NCTE.  Mr. Greiner does not seem 
to recognize, as you state, that grammar is "an integral part of the 
construction of meaning."  Sure, it's important to capitalize "southwest" 
and to put an apostrophe in "its" as a contraction and to spell "grammar" 
correctly.  But I don't think that's at the heart of what we're talking 
about.

Nor do I think that "repair(ing) broken sentences, an exercise with all the 
glamor of a linguistic assembly line" (the work of Mr. Greiner's class 
according to the Post) is what we have in mind either.  This is still the  
"grammar police" metaphor ("You got caught speeding through that paragraph, 
so now you have to go to grammar school!").

And even though the "grammar in context" crowd make it appear that they 
value grammar, Weaver et. al. don't even give us the honor of being "grammar 
police" - they relegate grammar instruction to the linguistic equivalient of 
garbage pick-up where we become "trash collectors" whose job it is to clean 
up otherwise lovely little essays.

How do we retake the rhetorical high ground to win this battle?

Geoff

>From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar              
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: NCTE & Grammar
>Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:02:26 -0400
>
>Geoff,
>   The article seems to equate gramamr with "police" and "error" at pretty
>much every turn. There is lip service given to the notion that students
>have home languages that are OK in their place (very little attention to
>the value these dialects might have in school) and that there might be a
>place for "sentence variety" in writing. (Students should be able to
>write complicated sentences and avoid error, so we should attend to this
>need as they write.) There's no exploration of the possibility that
>gramamr has to do with much more than error or that choice among a range
>of senteces is linked to evolving thought or choice among nuances of
>meaning or an attempt to emphasize, unify, develop, and so on. There's
>no attention paid to the question of whether grammar at the point of
>need is or has ever been adequate for most students or for students with
>the greatest needs. Grammar in its own right is described as "direct
>instructiion and drill." There's no attention paid to the terrible
>reality that most English teachers (as Amy Benjamin says in the
>Washingtom Post article) are seriously undertrained.
>    Hillocks' research can be challenged in a number of ways. What may be
>more serious is the unquestioned position that gramamr in context is
>now some sort of proven alternative. If these people believe we should
>only use "proven" methods, then they should test their own approahces.
>    Our goal, as I see it, is to present an alternative that embraces an
>exploration of language, including gramamr. We should emphasize that
>grammar is not the neutral conveyor of meaning, but an integral part of
>the construction of meaning. It's no more neutral than words are. We
>need to make expectations explicit, not just ask students to behave in
>ways that are never adequately explained. We need to take far more
>seriously the kinds of demands placed upon language by the academic
>disciplines.
>    Any content focus, including writing and reading, can be reduced to
>drill and overly rigid notions of correctness. We should criticize
>those practices, but not assume that knowledge about language can only
>be presented in that nonsensical and demeaning way. Many of my students
>come into college thinking a good essay requires five paragraphs, but I
>don't advocate tossing out writing instruction because of that. They
>would be better off studying the nature of language, and if they did
>that they would see the weaknesses in error focused approaches to
>writing.
>    The issue as presented in >    The terrible reality is that we can't 
>have a decent debate on the
>subject with people who know next to nothing about grammar, who believe
>it isn't important enough to explore in any depth, and are simply
>trying to dismiss it.
>    We need, of course, a systematic alternative.
>
>Craig
>
>  I went back and re-read the NCTE statement, and I'm not sure that there's
> > a
> > lot I'd disagree with.  For example, wouldn't we (ATEG) agree that
> > "isolated
> > grammar drills do little to improve student writing and are a poor use 
>of
> > instructional time" and that "where much of the time is spent on grammar
> > exercises, student writing suffers . . . because, in those classes,
> > students
> > are spending more time underlining random parts of speech or diagramming
> > sentences than actually composing"?
> >
> > Don't we think, along with Kyoko Sato, NCTE President, that "Teaching 
>how
> > language works is the basis for good grammar instruction."  And wouldn't
> > we
> > agree with Randy Bomer, NCTE Past President, who adds, "Most English
> > teachers do not see themselves as grammar police, on the lookout for
> > mistakes and intolerant of diverse ways of speaking.  Rather, they want
> > students to see grammar as an important resource for writing and for
> > understanding the language around them in everyday life."
> >
> > I know I wouldn't fight this statement:  "Students need to be able to
> > compose complex, varied sentences, and they need to be able to proofread
> > their writing for mistakes that might distract their audiences or 
>distort
> > their intended meaning."
> >
> > However, I'm not on board 100%.  Here's where I get off the train:
> > "Skilled
> > teachers of writing know how to teach grammar to their students as they
> > write, when they have a particular need to know the information."  The
> > implication of this sentence is that students don't need an "a priori"
> > knowledge of grammar - this is just plain nuts.
> >
> > If students are learning grammar only "as they write" or, as this
> > statement
> > implies, after they write, my contention is that they aren't writing,
> > they're babbling.  So I guess my point is this - instead of reacting to 
>an
> > apparent "dissing" of grammar by the NCTE (it's really just the old
> > "grammar
> > in isolation" arguement), let's make ourselves useful by addressing the
> > problems in their statements.  And the problem as I see it is that the
> > non-grammarians (or, if you prefer, the anti-grammarians) have taken up
> > the
> > "grammar in context" flag as their own, using it to marginalize the
> > critical
> > role that grammar has to play in writing.  So when they lead the
> > rhetorical
> > debate, "grammar in context" becomes enmeshed in the "writing process,"
> > leaving grammarians relegated to the  linguistic equivalent of 
>garbagemen
> > (persons?).
> >
> > And isn't that ironic that the non/anti-grammarians are leading the
> > rhetorical debate?  Instead of the "grammar in the context of writing"
> > slogan, let's rewrite it as, "Writing in the context of grammar!" and 
>see
> > how far that gets us.  At least we will be stating what seems to be
> > obvious
> > - good writing occurs as a result of good grammar.  Writing starts with
> > the
> > grammar; it doesn't end with it.  So the NCTE's concluding sentence 
>should
> > read, ""Skilled teachers of writing know how to USE grammar to teach 
>their
> > students HOW TO write BECAUSE GOOD WRITING DEPENDS ON A KNOWLEDGE OF
> > GRAMMAR."
> >
> > Geoff Layton
> >
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