I missed most of this discussion while out of town for a week and away from the Internet (yes, that can be achieved). So I'm probably repeating things already said, with regret.
I think there's a consensus that we need better ways to teach grammar and better grammar to teach. Some of the discussion is going in the direction of which theory of grammar to use, and I think this is a rabbit hole. I finally gave up on formal approaches to grammar, that is, approaches requiring a great deal of task-specific overhead, whether in the form of trees or formalized rules. For the last couple of years I've been using a general reference grammar as my text, specifically Greenbaum's Oxford English Grammar. It's fairly thorough, affordable, well written, and entirely instantiated from corpus data, so all of the examples are real. I encourage my students to keep the book by getting them to see that it's not a text but a reference work that can be useful to them for a long time, and they tend to accept that idea. Much of class time and much of assignment time is spent in examining how grammatical structures and categories are used in discourse. That is, and I'm very explicit about this, the content has to be useful and be seen to be useful. If it isn't, or if is more than one stage removed from discourse application, then I either have to give a very good reason for it or we don't cover it. This is a useful pedagogical discipline for me as well as empowerment for the students. By "one stage removed", I'm referring, for example, to principle parts of verbs as terminology they need if they are to understand the use of verb forms in discourse. I'm not referring to something like the formal morphological analysis of these forms.
At the level of grammar instruction that we are discussing, we're not looking at a theory of grammar but rather a natural history of grammar. That is, we want our students to understand what the grammatical phenomena are that they use in communication, what their roles are in communicating, and how to manipulate these things. This can be done with good, sound grammatical terminology and some fairly primitive notions like constituency (I know--that's ultimately not a primitive) and dependency. This approach builds the knowledge students need if they are going to study a more formal approach to grammar, but they don't need the theory to have a useful and teachable command of the subject.
In preparing and retooling teachers, we need to present them with this sense of natural history of language rather than with formal theory, which tends to turn them off, and, I think, with good reason. Now, with that said, I must acknowledge that for my next grammar class, starting Monday, I'm swinging back a bit towards the middle on the question of formal representation. I'll be experimenting with an adaptation of RK diagramming as a way of representing functional information. I'll let you know how it works.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of William J. McCleary
Sent: Wed 5/12/2004 7:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Competence, performance & grammaticality
I'm certainly hoping that my statement is a "complaint about things
as they are now." I'm hoping that a good, sustained curriculum
lasting throughout one's schooling will make a difference.
However, I see two problems to begin with. One is that grammar may
turn out to be more like math than any content-type subject. Math,
especially beginning with algebra, is much taught and little learned.
Those who are researching this problem have had to come up with
special teaching techniques. If this possible similarity turns out to
be true, then we, too, will need special techniques. Without them, my
statement that "students can't seem to learn enough grammar to be
able to apply it" will seem more and more like "a statement of
general truth" in Johanna's words.
The second problem is coming up with a more teachable version of
grammar. We know that we don't want to continue with common school
grammar (Grammar 4). We need a more scientific grammar (Grammar 2),
but there are many scientific grammars, to my knowledge of all them
too complicated for our purposes. I don't know how much we are
relying on Ed's KISS approach to fill this gap, but I wish more
people were working on it.
Bill
>Bill McCleary writes "students can't seem
>to learn enough grammar to be able to apply it".
>
>I'm wondering why people believe this ... is it a complaint about
>things as they are now, or a statement of general truth? I suspect
>the former ... several of us on the list have stated a few times
>that one of our reasons for supporting a grammar curriculum that is
>good, thorough and lasts through all or most years of schooling is
>that such a curriculum is the most likely kind to make grammar so
>familiar to students that they _can_ apply it.
>
>It's unrealistic to expect students to become fluent with grammar
>through training only in a year or two of high school and/or a
>semester or two in college--especially if they are learning grammar
>through the traditional method, which has a lot of flaws.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University
>One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
>* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page:
>http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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--
William J. McCleary
Livonia, NY
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