Craig, There is no need to get defensive here. Constructive criticism is the need of all academic endeavors, and should be invited and appreciated in this forum. There are some problems which need to be addressed in order for things to move forward, because: 1.Some members of the ATEG forum have trashed traditional grammar in books and articles repeatind the idea propagated by NCTE that the "good, old grammar" is just a bunch of absurd prescriptions. 2.Some have advocated the mixing of contemporary linguistics with traditional grammar to make it "better," ignoring the fact that even Chomsky defended the teaching of traditional grammar. Here is how David Mulroy quotes him: "I don't see how any person can truly be called "educated' who doesn't know the elements of sentence structure, or who doesn't understand the nature of a relative clause, a passive construction, and so on.Furthermore, if one is going to discuss literature, including here what students write themselves, and to come to understanding, and to come to understand how it is written and why, there conceptual tools are indispensable. For these purposes, I think traditional grammar so-called ( say, the grammar of Jespersen) remains today a very impressive and useful basis for such teaching. I can't see any reason for teaching structural grammars of English, or for teaching transformational grammar in the manner of some instructional books that I have seen." 3. Some people are very opposed to the traditional nomenclature and defition of parts of speech and parts of sentence, and believe that it should be totally and completely discarded, but cannot offer anything better because no contemporary grammar has been able to offer a better grammatical taxonomy and better definitions for the parts of speech and sentence of the traditional grammar. Again, David Mulroy, explains that though the nomenclature and definitions of the traditional grammar are not perfect, they are "prototypical" and more than sufficient for most public school and college students: "Fries was right that traditional grammarians have not been entirely consistent in their definitions of the parts of speech. The parts of speech are traditionally taught to young students, and the ways in which they have been taught reproduce the way in which classificatory schemes are usually internalized. One starts with the prototypes: the clearest, most familiar examples of a category...As people grow, they refine their criteria and in the end are capable of making more or less scientific distinctions..." At this time ATEG struggles with nomenclature and definitions because there is confusion about them. Ed Vavra states: "As long as this group refuses to make such distinctions, it will fail. In effect, it is speaking and writing nonsense (as I understand Hobbes to call it), since different members use the same terms to refer to different constructions, and different terms to refer to the same constructions. Clear definitions are first principles of philosophy and of the natural sciences. It amazes me that this group cannot understand that." 4. Some members have repeated again and again the myth of the "native speaker" which is contained even in "Some Questions and Answers about Grammar" listed by ATEG: "All native speakers of a language have more grammar in their heads than any grammar book will ever contain. Part of our goal as teachers is to help students discover that knowledge." People who still treat Pinker's theories as scientific facts need to read Sampson's "The 'Language Instinct' Debate" and see for themselves how much evidence there is against the notion of "language innateness" or "Universal Grammar." They also need to read Davies' "The Native Speaker Myth and Reality," and realize that a lot of the students who participate in English classes are not "native speakers" who "have more grammar in their heads that any grammar book will ever contain," but *semilingual* individuals, that is, people who "never achieve[d] native speaker status in any language." Davies explains: "What semilingualism argues (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981) is that in certain situations, either of a multilingual character or an impoverished one, which creates a climate of disadvantage, children may be brought up with no fully developed linguistic systems and what they have will be either (a)a set (two or more)of partial systems or (b) one inadequate system." Such discovery would help teachers and instructors to understand that their responsibility is not to bring to the surface the innner grammarians inside their students, but to TEACH the *semilingual* students English as "another language" so that such students could use their mother tongue adequately at home, in school, and at work. Eduard On Wed, 19 Jul 2006, Craig Hancock wrote... >Ed, > It was AFTER he wrote those words that David Milroy was invited to be >our keynote speaker. I was delighted to meet him then and delighted >that he was with us at our recent conference. I certainly don't want to >speak for David, who is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, but >he seems to think we are at least capable of redemeption. I am >delighted to have among us strong voices for the value of traditional >grammar. > >Craig> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/