Bob Yates writes:

"To think that our
students already know a lot about language that has never been taught is
good news for them and focuses our attention on what we need to teach
and how we need to teach it."

I am keen for some clarification on this statement. It _seems_ to assume
that we don't have to teach students stuff they already know. This is true
as far as un-self-monitored language performance goes. But if we want
students to be able to _analyze_ all kinds of language performance, then
we have to help them develop _conscious_ knowledge of the things they are
not currently aware of, such as the rules for using articles in English,
or why one can say 'I have been cleaning house since 5 o'clock' but not
*'I cleaned house since 5 o'clock' (at least in standard English).

In other words, part of grammar instruction is making students consciously
aware of their language competence, without necessarily _adding to_ that
competence.

As I have been thinking about it, we also need to add to the competence of
many students. Many children today, for instance, have not developed as
wide a range of registers as kids used to (or maybe this is just my
generation misperceiving the younger ones??). Is remaining in casual
speech more acceptable in a wider range of contexts nowadays?
The reduction in the amount of time spent reading has also meant that kids
are exposed to much less formal and standard English than perhaps used to
be the case (once again I may be idealizing the past); so kids have not
had as much chance to internalize the grammar, vocabulary, and
appropriateness conventions of that variety of English.

For children who have grown up in nonstandard-dialect speaking
communities, and who have not become bi- or multidialectal on their own,
quite a bit of new competence must be mastered if they are to become
proficient and comfortable in using 'school English'.

It seems worthwhile and important to think these things through. We have
to be careful not to fault children for not knowing what they have not had
a chance to learn. And we have to recognize that, whatever background kids
are from, they have wide-ranging competence in several social varieties of
their home dialect.

These are issues, I feel, which have to inform our scope/sequence
discussion. I have not really tackled the problem of speakers of other
dialects in the teaching methods I am developing. This will be a big flaw,
if I don't find a way to fix it. In fact, a thread of the SSS discussion
should be how to best accommodate children from nonstandard-dialect
backgrounds, as well as children who come from standard-dialect speaking
homes, but have not been exposed to as many registers of English as they
will need to be successful in information-age careers, and to be
well-informed, critically-thinking citizens.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184     Fax: (805)-756-6374                   ~
E-mail: [log in to unmask]                           ~
Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm   ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba                     ~
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