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 this article is deeply biased against
grammar. It reduces gramamr to the trivial, both in substance and
instruction and then advocates an alternative pedagogy that most of us
now believe is a terrible failure.
   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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