Johanna Rubba wrote:

> "B  Every student will leave school with the ability to analyze the
> grammatical structure of a text in English, using grammatical
> terminology
> correctly, and showing knowledge of the relationship between grammatical
> structure and sentence- and text-level function."

I guess I am still confused by this "goal."  I remember asking about it
at the last conference.

Would someone give me an example of a text grammatical structure?

I am confused by the following: "the relationship between grammatical
structure and sentence- and text-level function."

Is this relationship(s?) a one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-one among
grammar to sentence and sentence to text and grammar to text?

> This is about as ambitious as it gets! This means a total parse of a
> text, including discourse functions of sentence constituents.

Yeap, it sure does and implies descriptive apparatus that I did not know
existed.

> Some
> people might consider this college-level material (if not grad school!),
> and perhaps it is better reserved for the advanced placement/honors
> courses.

To me, this goal presupposes a theory of discourse structure which (a)
is highly contested and (b) doesn't exist even for those who believe
that such a theoretical apparatus can be developed.


> Where dialect differences and language change are concerned, 'errors' in
> grammar are quite systematic. As to philosophy, if we all agree that
> de-motivational teaching tactics are undesirable, and if we all agree
> that we should teach linguistic fact, not social myth, then the approach
> to 'error' will need to be modified in the new program. Also, the
> current grammar curriculum, including tests, puts nonstandard dialect
> speakers at a true disadvantage; it discriminates against them. There
> are test items on which a standard speaker will intuitively choose only
> the one correct answer, while a nonstandard speaker will see more than
> one answer that 'sounds right'. Who's at a disadvantage here? Such tests
> are unfair, plain and simple.


The issue is whether knowledge of the standard is important.  If we
agree that knowledge of the standard is not important, then issues of
being disadvantaged are a relevant concern.  On the other hand, as soon
as we acknowledge knowledge of the standard must be one of the goals of
any grammar curriculum, then those whose dialect of English closer to
the standard will be advantaged. We can probably identify more
appropriate ways to text for knowledge of the standard  (to mark as
WRONG structures which a student might very well use outside the class
would be inappropriate).

If I understood Johanna correctly several weeks ago, I think she claimed
that different dialects result in people thinking differently.  I hope
that understanding is wrong.

Bob Yates