First, I want to thank those of you who gave me permission to use your posts here in our newsletter, and I want to remind those of you who have not given me such permission to please do so. Since the guidelines are in draft form, I may have to simply summarize them as a preface for printing the comments, but I think that the discussion should be shared with all our members through the newsletter. Second, I want to agree, basically, with Martha, especially where she refers to "grammar" as "the structure of English." There are, however, two things which worry me. The first is that, although I recognize the importance of grammar in writing, we are overlooking the importance of comprehending sentence structure in reading -- and thinking. I devote a chapter to each of these in TGLA, and it is difficult for me to summarize here. Suffice it to say that this plea is coming from someone who teaches five writing courses per semester. We need to look at the whole picture. My other worry concerns Martha's hierarchy. I love the idea, but I would suggest that the most important things that teachers should know and "be able to do" are not on the list. To me, the first priority should be to enable teachers to talk about basic grammatical constructions -- subjects/ verbs, clauses, appositives, etc. By "talk about" I mean that they shoud be able to identify them in students' writing, such that they can use the terminology both to understand (themselves) and to communicate to students what is good and what is bad in the structure of the writing. For example, I have had teachers tell me that they would have marked the sentence The plane crashed five miles from it, its tail pointed upward. as a comma-splice. In effect, they were "correcting" errors in students' writing that were not errors. ("[i]t's tail pointed upward," a noun absolute, is perfectly acceptable, and even stylistically advanced. Without some basic terms -- and an understanding of how to use them -- teachers will not be able to use grammar to improve students' writing. I would further suggest that this knowledge of basic concepts is fundamental to many of the items on the hierarchy which Martha presents. Take, for example, language acquisition. Much of the research on this topic has little relevance to teaching in that it concerns development from birth to age 5. It may be fascinating to note that children at a specific age develop -- on their own -- the ability to distinguish the difference between "The doll is easy to see" and "The doll is eager to see." But how does this affect what we do in the classroom? Most studies of language acquisition beyond age five involve the development of clauses, appositives, etc. Can teachers understand what is going on here if they cannot identify clauses, appositives, etc? The next item on the hierarchy is "diversity, dialects, social roles, etc." Are not most of these differences in usage rather than in basic sentence structure? Here again, I would suggest that the teachers' ability to recognize clauses, etc. would give them the ability to see -- and explain -- what fundamentally unites language. Black English, creoles, etc., like all Indo-European language, are still structured around S/V/C patterns, modifiers (adjectives and adverbs), and clauses. Until teachers are able to recognize these constructions in students' sentences, most instruction in language acquisition, diversity, etc. won't be worth the time spent on it. End of sermon? P.S. I just came from a meeting with a Professor in Human Services. Basic grammatical problems in her students' writing frustrate her, and, even more frustrating, she realizes that her students don't know what "first person pronouns" are. Hence, she has to write a list: Don't use "I," "me," "my." The problem with the list is that it is incomplete. The student next will use "myself," which is not on the list. Is "first person pronouns" simply a grammatical category, or is it a concept which applies to writing done in areas other than English classes?