There is a very exciting study going on in the UK measuring the 
effectiveness of linking explicit grammar instruction (attention to 
language) to writing tasks. This is particularly related to the issues 
we have been covering because they have taken a genre approach 
(narrative, persuasion, poetry) and have been able to verify 
significantly greater growth in writing for the grammar group over a 
control group. They have a website up and running, which can be accessed 
at http://education.exeter.ac.uk/projects.php?id=419.
      As they say on the site, they were particularly sensitive to the 
training or lack of training of teachers and how that might impact this 
sort of instruction. Teachers in the treatment and control groups were 
carefully selected to include a similar range of comfort with grammar in 
each group.
     For those people who say that studies have shown the isolated study 
of grammar isn't effective in improving writing, we can now say that 
writing instruction that includes significant attention to language has 
been demonstrated to be highly effective. This changes the conversation 
rather dramatically.

Craig


On 5/12/2011 2:44 PM, Spruiell, William C wrote:
> Bob:
>
> Any theory of language that posits syntagmatic or paradigmatic choices which are conditioned by connections across sentence boundaries -- even if that's limited to pronoun reference -- is starting to address issues of text effectiveness (actually, even interclausal connections within the sentence arguably do that, but I figured you might not want to count those). Certainly, any instructors teaching a composition course and trying to assist students who are developing their ability to signal paragraph cohesion, or foregrounding and backgrounding, will find themselves discussing choice of verb tenses, pronouns, and the like. And I know that no one teaching ESL for any length of time excludes cohesion from their discussion of verb tenses.
>
> Or to put it another way: We certainly can't say that a particular text is 100% effective -- but we're on very solid ground saying that particular texts are not as effective as they could be. I doubt you'd want to say that simply because we can't say that someone's 100% fit, we can't say anything about how someone might improve health with diet or exercise. Randomizing verb tense choice in an essay will make it ineffective. Ignoring context established earlier in the text will quite likely result in bad pronoun choices, and hence an ineffective text, etc. The work on genre that Craig mentions has extensively developed descriptions of correlations between particular linguistic choices at specific points in a text and whether the text is considered a good example of science writing, or a good example of a narrative. You may or may not view that kind of correlation as being within the domain of "grammar" -- but that's a definitional issue, and one that I doubt educators are quite so invested in.
>
> --- Bill Spruiell
>
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 12:50 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Traditional vs. Transformational grammar question
>
> Bob,
>       You can make the case that classical rhetoric (and the whole 19th
> century rhetorical tradition) was essentially a study of effective
> communication, one that didn't see a separation between studying
> language and studying effective use. I'm not as well versed in it as I'd
> like to be.
>       The Australians have done a great deal with genre as intermediary
> focus.  Cognitive grammar asserts a direct connection between language
> and discourse (see Langacker, certainly, but others as well).   The
> Longman Grammar (Biber et. al.) looks at language patterns in different
> kinds of language use, notably conversation, fiction, news writing, and
> academic writing. Rhetorical grammar tries to connect grammatical choice
> to effective text.  Functional grammar sees form and function as
> seamlessly connected, and they assert a textual metafunction woven into
> the fabric of the clause.  From that perspective, language is what it is
> because of what it does, and constructing text is part of that. If
> grammar limits itself to the study of discreet sentences, it may have
> little to offer reading and writing.
>       Even if you treat language as a purely formal system, you still
> need to figure out how understanding that system might be of use in
> reading and writing.
>       I'm certainly not the only person who believes language choice is
> enormously important in the creation of an effective text.
>
> Craig
>
>
> On 5/12/2011 10:17 AM, Robert Yates wrote:
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> I have no idea where the following statement by Craig comes from.
>>
>>
>>>>> Craig Hancock<[log in to unmask]>   05/11/11 9:46 PM>>>
>>       Karl points out that we can't judge a theory of language on the basis
>> of its pedagogical utility, but pedagogical utility is very much at
>> stake here. Can a theory of language (should a theory of language) be
>> both true and useful? I think it should help us understand the nature
>> of effective text.
>>
>> I know of no theory of language which lays out the principles of an "effective text."
>>
>> Perhaps, Craig would like to share with us what those principles might be.
>>
>> For example, is Huck Finn an effective text?  Is Hamlet an effective text?  Is the Gettysburg Address an effective text?
>>
>> If these are "effective texts," what principles, especially with regard to language, do they all appear to have?
>>
>> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>
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