Taking the G-r-r-r Out of Grammar

Author(s): Stephen Tchudi and Lee Thomas

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 85, No. 7, The Great Debate (Again): Teaching Grammar
and Usage (Nov., 1996), pp. 46-54
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/820506
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 Taking the G-r-r-r Out
of Grammar
Stephen Tchudi and Lee Thomas

rospective secondary English teach- Let us begin by saying that we believe in

ersinour state are required to take grammar. We even speak and write it! But
a course in "Descriptive Grammar." we've studied the research and know that
By the title of thecourse, one could presenting traditional parts of speech and
drilling away at usage items is no way to
guess
tracedthat therequirement
backto canthe
the 1960s and be teach children to read, write, listen, and
speak. We are also convinced that teachers
linguistics revolution that displaced
traditional prescriptive" with the should have a solid understanding of syn-
more modern, "descriptive" struc- tactic systems and structures-the rules,
tural and transformational-genera- laws, circumstances, and conventions that
tive grammars. The title doesn't
govern how we use language.
reveal that the course also came into the In the summer of 1995, we decided to
statutes under "back-to-basics" pressure:team teach the descriptive grammar course
legislators may have thought they were re-
and to take a whack at revising it. Specifically,
mediating a lack of knowledge of correct-we wanted to make the course a bit more
ness on the part of teachers-you know, the
user friendly from a linguistics standpoint so
The authors that our students would not be intimidated
mythical progressive teachers who don't
describe their mark errors and approve of anything that by modem grammars, and we wanted to de-
students spel or rite. Although the descrip-
velop a course that would give our students
course in
tive grammar course at our university is in-
better preparation for the demands placed on
descriptive tellectually much more respectable than a.them in real-world teaching.
grammar and mere correctness course, students don't al- With that in mind, we decided to "take
suggest ways come to it bubbling with enthusiasm the g-r-r-r out of grammar."
classroom over the prospect of learning the intricacies We found planning the course to be an
of syntax (whatever that is). Moreover, be-enormous challenge, for it asked us to re-
strategies.
cause the course has, in the past, been
consider the question, "What is grammar
taught mostly by university linguists who good for?" Thus in describing and explain-
presented a detailed and technical transfor- ing some of our course (it is not possible to
mational-generative perspective, students detail it all), we offer readers our answer to
have questioned the usefulness of the this issue's question: "What should English
course and its applications in teaching. teachers do about the teaching of grammar
Still, when our students begin their firstand usage?"
teaching assignments, they often report
DEFINITIONS AND AIMS
coming face-to-face with teachers commit-
On opening day, we announced our slo
ted to a traditional approach to grammar.
gan, "Taking the g-r-r-r out of gramma
Sometimes pressure for parts-of-speech
and described that our aims for the course
grammar comes from community demands
would be to:
for basics; sometimes it comes from teach-
ers who remain convinced that, despite re-* explore the concept of a "grammar" as a
system of rules for any language in general
search to the contrary, grammar is somehow
and for English in particular;
vital in teaching writing; too often the gram-
mar pressure comes about simply because* consider the purposes for describing
that's what's covered in the standard-issue grammars;

textbook. Whatever the causes, our stu- * present the basic concepts of English gram-
mar: the nomenclature of traditional
dents have often perceived that their de-
grammar and the philosophical/linguistic
scriptive grammar course failed to give principles of transformational-generative
them the tools they needed to cope with grammar.
student- or first-year teaching.

46 November 1996
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 * explore the applications of grammar in ever, traditional grammar doesn't have to be
real-world use, including writing, educa- used that way at all. It can offer descrip-
tion, literature, and politics. tions, too: that words function in different
We wanted our students to come to a ways and can be classified by "parts" of
full understanding of the idea of a gram- speech; that sentences include nouns and
mar-a system of rules, created by people verbs functioning as subjects and predi-
to describe the behavior they observe in cates; that determiners precede nouns; that
their language. infinitive phrases are often divided by ad-
We wrote on the board: verbs. One of our students observed that in
its way transformational grammar is pre-
specialists those bearded old
scriptive, since it "prescribes" the rules that
Lithuanian ten linguistics
native speakers must follow to generate
We then asked the students to rearrangegrammatical English sentences! Point taken.
the words into an English phrase, and to aWe explained that for the first part of the
person, they came up with: course we'd be interested in descriptive
grammars, trying to get a handle on how
those ten old bearded Lithuanian
those hairy old linguists and any other na-
linguistics specialists.
tive speakers of a language figure out and
We noted that "grammar" is what enableddescribe the conventions of that language.
them to make that decoding, and we asked As a follow-up for each class during the
them to articulate, if they could, the rulessemester, we had the students complete
that require "those" to precede "ten" or "lin- what we called X-squared activities: "Explo-
guistics" to follow "Lithuanian." Their strug-
rations and Extensions." These were hands-

gles helped us make the point that theon projects that had the students apply and
native speaker of a language knows a lot extend concepts we discussed in class, using
more grammar than he or she is necessarilytheir own resources, their own language,
and intuitive grammar. During the week that
able to describe! We also gave the students a
copy of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and we explored the idea of descriptive vs. pre-
scriptive, we invited the students to:
helped them see that their intuitive, native
grammar is what allows them to figure out * write a "grammar" for a part of your life: a
that "slithy" is a description, not an action, description of the rules, laws, or principles
that "toves" is a plural something or other, that you are following to get an education,
to raise a kid, to keep or perform well on a
not the present tense of the verb "to tive."
job.
We carefully introduced the distinction
between a descriptive and a prescriptive gram- * write a "how to" grammar of something
you do well, say the basics of playing a
mar and explained that any grammar could
musical instrument or tying your shoes or
be either. Any grammar can be used as a sci- making a quilt.
entific description of how language func-
* write the elements of your ethical gram-
tions, and any grammar can be turned into a
mar, explaining how you determine what's
set of laws or shibboleths about how people "right" or "wrong."
ought to talk or write. We learned, a bit to
* create a fairy tale with a moral or "gram-
our surprise, that some of our students had mar" of human behavior.
heard about grammars in other language arts
methods courses and had developed a sim- We broke the class up into groups and
plistic set of formulae in their heads: had them discuss two key questions for the
course: Why create grammars? Why study
traditional grammar = prescriptive grammars? Students came up with such ex-
= bad planations as:

transformational grammar = * Grammar is a way of understanding how

language and people function.
descriptive = good
* Grammar helps us understand language
Traditional grammar, we explained, has variation and change.
often been used to make prescriptions: "Use
* Grammar helps us figure out what's "basic"
shall to indicate intent"; "Never say ain't in a language and how it differs over social
north of Little Rock" (that's a joke). How- and cultural groups.

English Journal 47
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 * Grammar helps us describe developmental
stages in language acquisition.
* Grammar helps us make generalizations
about how people learn languages.
To wrap up our exploration of the na-
ture of grammar, we cautioned that the
word grammar has very different meanings
for the linguist, the teacher, the student, and
the lay person (distinctions which we think
ought to be at the core of the school lan-
guage curriculum). We urged our prospec-
tive teachers, once again, to keep clear the
distinction between prescription and de-
scription, and we gave them a few thou
shalt nots:
* Don't say grammar when you mean usage;
spelling, mechanics, vocabulary, the busi-
ness letter, and footnote etiquette togethe
We claimed that for most people, knowin
one page of traditional grammar is enough
a listing of the basic parts of speech couple
with usage items that happen to give tha
particular person a hard time. We suggeste
that students get out a sheet of paper and
over the coming weeks, write their ow
one-page grammar.
We were aided in our effort to make
grammar accessible by Karen Elizabeth Gor-
don's book, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire:
peanut

* Don't confuse "good English" (whatever

that is) with "good," "proper," or even "cor- shell kernel
rect" grammar;

* Don't use the word "grammar" when you

mean spelling or punctuation; wrapper nut
* Don't equate knowledge of grammar with
high morals or the Queen's English;
The above diagram of transformational grammar is th
* Realize that everybody already knows an
authors' adaptation of the activity learned from Elaine
enormous amount of grammar. Karls at Delta College, Michigan.

With that as preparation, we felt more or

The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the
less ready to take on what we regarded as
nocent, the Eager and the Doomed (1993, Ne
the most difficult issue in the course.
York: Pantheon). Gordon's witty and irrever
WHAT TO DO ABOUT ent tour through parts of speech and usa
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR uses sentence examples on a vampire them
andand
One hears from the general public offers clear and candid ideas and advice
media pundits that "nobody teaches about
gram- parts of speech, sentence functions,
mar anymore." Maybe our state is anusage,
excep-and the like. Hers is not a particularly
tion to that popular norm, but we found
good or accurate linguistic grammar, and it
that most of our students had, in fact, beensome of our thou shalt's. Neverthe-
violates
taught traditional grammar one if not
less,sev-
our students mostly enjoyed the book
and found
eral or many times. The trouble was, the it informative as well as fun.
teaching hadn't stuck and had mainly suc-
In class, we plunged into teaching tradi-
ceeded in making students self-conscious
tional grammar by boldly declaring that
about their "grammar" (actually, a smatter-
people seem to divide the whole world into
ing of nagging usage items). Althoughtwo
tradi-
parts: objects and actions: things and
tional grammar is flawed as a descriptive,
goings on, nounies and verbies. For several
scientific grammnar-something the days
trans-
we played with the idea of "nouns and
formationalists have observed for their
years-
groupies" and "verbs and their en-
we decided to teach it as a descriptive
tourage"-"thing" words and "action" and
grammar, because it is, in fact, the common
the words that cling to them.
system used in western education. Adapting an activity we learned from
We decided to make our foray into tra-Karls at Delta College, Michigan, we
Elaine
ditional grammar as user-friendly asbrought
possi- a bag of peanuts in the shell to
ble. We explained that our students had
class, gave each student a peanut, and asked
been done a disservice by those 600-page
the students to write detailed descriptions
school "grammar" texts, which muddle de- very special nut. Then the peanuts
of their
scriptive and prescriptive grammar and
were returned to a pile, and students had to
compound the muddle by lumpingrecognize
usage, and reclaim their own. We then

48 November 1996
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discussed the essence of peanuthood (or constitute that last word as a verb. Or to
nounhood)-what all peanuts have in com- play around with suffixes for the antidotal
mon-and the idea of modification (what verb, "kissfrog."
distinguishes one nut from another). This Some of these activities are clearly more
exercise also allowed us to introduce a sim- sophisticated than one would use in a mid-
ple tree diagram which would help prepare dle school or high school, but many of them
students for the diagrams of transforma- (e.g., 101 ways to verb a brick, figuring out
tional grammar (see p. 48). words in "Jabberwocky") have been used in
Anticipating our work in transforma- the schools for years. The point is that we
tional grammar, we had the students figure wanted to disfearize traditional grammar for
out where nouns are likely to fall in sen- our students through some serious language
tences, as well as what types of words they play, something that can be done with stu-
often hang out with. Looking at their own dents at any level.
language, they discovered the simple rule of
EXPLORING TRANSFORMATIONAL-
placing "the" in front of a word as a test of GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
nouniness-you just can't use "the" in front The expanding complexity of generative
of a verb. Or you can try the plural test to see
linguistics led to some serious soul searching
if you can make a word into more than one-
on our part as instructors. It is impossible to
one noun, two nouns-something that also teach both theory and mechanics of genera-
doesn't work with other parts of speech.
tive grammar in a single semester introduc-
We took a similar approach with other
tory class (as our past courses had miserably
parts of speech: first having the students demonstrated). So what elements of this
play around with the word in many con- model did our students need to understand?
texts, then figuring out how you can recog-
And why? We tried to answer the nagging
nize and name it in a sentence. With verbs,
questions, "What will our students ever use
for example, we had students write 101 this for?" "And their students?"
verbs that show what can you do with such
We decided that the essence of the gen-
nouns as a peanut, a brick, a candy bar, a com- erative model for our class should be, first,
puter, a brain. We got into descriptive ad- an understanding that there are different
verbs and had students translate "walk" into
units of language that can be usefully ana-
"ambled slowly," "steal" into "poached lyzed and, second, that there are different
stealthily," and "cook" into "fry oilily." Our approaches to analysis. One can focus on the
students invented new verbs, e.g., "compu-
word, the phrase, the sentence, or passages
flop" for a computer failure. They wrote of discourse through various grammatical
paragraphs using only "is/are" verbs (or
models such as traditional, structural, gener-
"verbs of being") and paragraphs of action ative, tagmemic, functional, and so on. The
verbs. (They rewrote Hamlet's soliloquy
nomenclature of traditional grammar sug-
using only action verbs to see what that does
gests a concreteness about word categories
to procrastination!) We had them invent
that is moderately useful in schools and
weird complex verb tenses (having helped
standard in the workaday world, but it is sci-
them figure out that English has only two
entifically inadequate, or at least unhelpful,
inflected verb tenses, present and past, the
in many circumstances. We felt that learning
rest being compound forms). What tense
about the transformational-generative ap-
would you call "what a person thought
proach would create a greater flexibility in
he/she might do just moments before the
our students' analysis of language as well as
decision to do that thing became neces-
develop a healthy skepticism about "right"
sary?" (Answer: "past perfect thoughtful-
and "wrong" in language. To achieve this, we
ness.") We had them do parts of speech
explored the structure of words through
cross dressing, an activity we call "Latiniza-
morphology, generative descriptions of parts
tionabilizification," where you use Latin suf-
of speech, beginning phrase structure, and
fixes to take an ordinary noun (say "frog"), just a couple of classic transformations such
turn it into a verb or action ("frogify"-
as yes/no question formation and the passive
something witches do to princes), then flip transformation.
it back into nounhood ("frogification"). We
We used Jeffrey Kaplan's book, English
invite the reader to add another suffix to re-
Grammar: Principles and Facts, Second edi-

English Journal 49
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 tion (1995, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice or frame of mind toward language. "Think-
Hall), a text which contained far more ma- ing grammatically" gives one fresh perspec-
terial than we were intent upon teaching, tives on language, and grammars themselves
and we adapted an exercise developed by offer a variety of tools to use as we examine
Bill Reynolds in Exploring English Grammar communication. Now we wanted to talk
(1974, New York: Random House). about outcomes: what knowledge of gram-
mars can do for the speaker, writer, listener,
EXPLORING LANGUAGE
thinker, reader, ... and teacher.
ACQUISITION
We turned now to children. We viewed Literature and Style. We spent some
two videos on language acquisition from time in class looking at a grammatical ap-
The Human Language Series (1995, New proach to literature. We began by (re)assur-
York: Ways of Knowing). We discussed the ing students that the first obligation of the
research on the grammaticality of "baby reader is to respond or react to a text-to
talk" and described how linguists go about laugh or cry or become angry or thoughtful.
charting an infant's grammar, looking for But then, we suggested, it's interesting to
syntactic regularities in sentences as short as
look at the language that generated a re-
two words: "Bye-bye mommie." sponse in us. Along with examining content
and rhetoric, readers can look at:
Then, in what proved to be one of the
most popular aspects of the course, we * whether the writing is nouny, verby, adjec-
brought some two- and four-year-olds to tivey, or adverby

class, children from the university pre- * whether it is Latinate or Anglo-Saxon in

school. To prepare, our students thought vocabulary.
about questions to ask the children and * sentence length and sentence patterns (we
came to class well-armed with toys and introduced the grammatical nature of the
loose, periodic, and balanced sentence).
games. The children (bless them) were not
We believe in intimidated by the college students, and * syntactic inversions, especially in poetry,
after initial shyness, both groups got on where it is also interesting to examine how
grammar. We quite verbally. The college students took
the effect of rhyme and meter causes writ-
ers to skew their syntax.
even speak it notes on the conversations, and following
and write it. the departure of the children, spent two * grammatical parallelism.
days analyzing and reporting their observa- * ambiguity (where transformational gram-
tions. The college students were, almost mar is especially useful in helping people
see alternative kernel sentences leading to
without exception, shocked and amazed to
ambiguous surface structures).
discover virtually all the adult structures we
had discussed in previous weeks revealed in * breaking a passage down into its core, ker-
nel sentences and discussing how the
"baby talk."
writer grammatically pasted these together
"They were using participles!" chortled and the effects of alternative ways of doing
one student. that cut and paste job.
"And I heard a gerund." * pushing grammar to its limits to create
At first, our students were inclined to at- sentences and phrases on the fringe of
tribute this precociousness to the fact that comprehensibility.
these children were in a university school We then turned the students loose on
setting, probably from "good" homes. We
short passages from literature. Our students
punctured their unconscious elitism and
reported that they found this approach
pointed out that all children are linguistic
genuinely helpful. They could see the un-
geniuses, able to master this system with
derlying grammatical simplicity in the
ease. Our conversations moved into matters
"complicated" writing, for instance, of Fran-
of language learning, reinforcement, gener- cis Bacon and Samuel Johnson. They could
alization, and rule-generation, and the on-
note the traits of oral grammar in the texts
going language ingenuity of all students. of Nikki Giovanni and Notozake Shange.
APPLIED GRAMMAR The students could appreciate that good old
We hope it is clear by now that ourgrammar
ap- gave them tools to understand
passages that they normally would have
proach involved not so much teaching
found intimidating, and they found this a
grammatical systems as fostering an attitude

50 November 1996
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useful alternative to the "guess what the au- ized that many "nonstandard" speakers of
thor meant" approach so common in many English are far more multilingual than we.)
of their classes. Grammar, we hypothesized, Grammar, Power, and Inclusion. We
actually empowered them to interpret liter- took up the "deficit hypothesis," that is, the
ary texts on their own. view that the "problem" of nonassimilation
We closed the grammar-and-literature or poor performance in school lies in the in-
segment with a cautionary note: "Don't take dividual child or in "deficient" family values
this approach directly into your elementary, ("They don't value education."). The topic al-
middle, or senior high school classrooms; lowed us to explore the power relationships
and don't use this approach as a back door in educational institutions. Who decides
entry to 'teaching grammar."' Rather, we what dialect or register should be appropri-
urged them to adapt the idea and to think ate in school? What does control of this di-
about the theory of the grammatical ap- alect "get" for a student or a member of U.S.
proach to literature, not the specific gram- society? How can we usefully conceptualize
matical tools. While younger learners might and work with dialects and registers? These
or might not be ready for an introduction to open questions led us to heated debate,
grammatical terminology, everybody can yielding to the conclusion that what goes on
count words in sentences, notice whether in schools is often like club membership: "If
words are long or short, break a long sen- you can't talk like me, the teacher, then you
tence down into short ones and recombine can't be in the club. And by the way it's your
it. The approach is not dependent on the fault, not mine, nor the institution's."
mastery of any particular grammar. We then turned our grammatical tools
The Nature of Standards. Language loose on the topic of gender and language.
and power relationships seemed to be a We explored sexist language at two levels:
topic that surfaced throughout the course. discrete grammatical items and the broader
We began with William Labov's classic arti- aspects of discourse. Students debated the
cle, "The Logic of Nonstandard English" use of items such as "chairperson," "he/she,"
(1969, Georgetown University Monograph Se- and "human beings" rather then "man." At
ries on Language and Linguistics, Washington, the discourse level we explored such issues
DC: Georgetown University Press). Labov as whether or not one gender "has the floor"
analyzed the dialect of Black English (BE) more often than another. Who interrupts
and demonstrated that it is both grammati- more? Who does the work of maintaining a
cal, that is, rule-governed and predictable, conversation? Who gets called on more
as well as logical, a medium for communica- often in American schools? How does men's
tion. Our students could see descriptive and women's grammar differ?
grammar at work in the habitual "be," copula Students had the opportunity to work
deletion, and other rules of BE. Judgments outside of class on all of these topics. They
that BE constructions were "wrong" or "il- could tape discourse at a formal or informal
logical" came under scrutiny One studentgathering of men and women and make an
said: "Wait, labeling items from BE 'bad analysis of gender roles in their discourse.
grammar' or 'wrong' isn't very meaningful." Students "translated" a paragraph from a
Our students began to generalize by well-known text such as the National An-
viewing BE as one dialect of many and by them, or a ritual such as a marriage into in-
formal, colloquial nonsexist language. They
recognizing that there is a prestige dialect in
the U.S. which we often call "Standard Eng- also wrote in BE, created their own defini-
lish," the so-called "educated" variety of the tions of Standard American English, and
language. It seems appropriate to assist observed teacher expectations in classrooms
young people in both understanding this concerning discourse and turn-taking.
dialect for all of its benefits while maintain- English as a Second or Additional
ing other dialects they control for other sit- Language. Our earlier work in language ac-
uations. We thought about the language quisition led smoothly into discussion of
skills of our foreign language informants the ESL student. Our students reflected crit-
and realized that to be bidialectal is like
ically on unsupported maxims such as "Use
being bilingual in many ways. (And we real-
of the first language in the classroom should
be prohibited"; "Children learn English

English Journal 51
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 faster if they are exposed only to English";
"Teaching literacy skills in the first language
is a waste of time"; and the perennial "sink
or swim" maxim, "My grandparents learned
English with no special help, so students
today should, too."
Discussion groups used what they had
learned about dialects and registers and
concluded that the acquisition dynamics as
well as classroom dynamics are indeed quite
similar for students who do not control the
prestige dialect and students who do not
speak English.
The Grammar and Usage Fair. Know-
ing political and schoolhouse realities, we
had to tackle the question of usage. Adapt-
ing a technique we learned from Celeste
Resh at Mott Community College in Michi-
gan, we had our students demonstrate in a
hands-on way that they knew the difference
between grammar and usage. We presented
a list of usage items that typically give peo-
ple problems-lay/lie, sit/set, effect/affect-
and we asked each student to adopt a usage
item that had given him or her a hard time
over the years. Students then studied usage
handbooks we had placed on reserve out-
side our offices. We asked them to study the
grammar underlying usage rules and then
to develop teaching visuals to present diffi-
cult usage items. Our students created
posters, mobiles, mock newspaper reports,
and even skits to teach about a grammatical
menagerie of troublesome items: who/whom
and whoever/whomever; subject-verb agree-
ment; sexist language; split infinitives. At
our usage fair, students milled about exam-
ining the displays, taking tear-off reminders
that some students had supplied, and writ-
ing notes for their own future use. Students
took away many ideas for teaching usage in
Knowing Grammar. So, at last we
reached what was the bottom line for many
of our students: How much "grammar" do
kids need to know?
We argued (as we had modeled in the
course) for a user-friendly introduction to
traditional grammar. We campaigned against
the six-weeks-every-year approach and
noted that a quick review of parts of speech
takes a few minutes or days, not months.
We proposed that secondary teachers might
initially introduce parts of speech grammar
in the middle school and review it occasion-
ally in the senior high years. This treatment
would be a far cry from the annual voyage
through "grammar" advocated by the typi-
cal textbook series. It would also differ in
tone. "Teach the parts of speech quickly and
playfully," we begged. "And above all," we
added, "don't immediately link grammar to
matters of correctness and usage; teach tra-
ditional grammar as a set of tools for discus-
sion and analysis." We also reminded the
prospective teachers that they should not be
perturbed about students who didn't "get it"
immediately (or late), and we urged them to
dedicate themselves to finding alternatives.
We proposed that teachers show their
kids how to use that knowledge of gram-
mar to consult a usage handbook or a com-
puter "grammar checker." There are many
ways for students to get their writing into
audience-acceptable form, including edit-
ing conferences, peer-group proofreading,
using charts and posters of usage demons,
developing a personal usage file (kept as
part of the writing portfolio), and writing
centers.
What about transformational-genera-
tive grammar?
Here we advocate a motor cruise at the

an active way. senior high level, an exploration of the b

Grammar and the Schools. We opened ideas of T-G grammar-phrase structur
this unit by alluding to Robert Frost's "road and transformation, core grammars an
not taken," suggesting that in our view, markedness, language acquisition-done
schools had missed a lot of interesting gram- an exploration of how language works, n
matical byways. We wanted our students not practical study that would somehow im
to be hypnotized by the Interstate of Cor- prove correctness and style or lead to artifi-
rectness and Propriety; we wanted them to cially combined long sentences. We don
have a look at the side roads. favor teaching the details of transforma
We described three areas of "knowl- tions, but we do see it useful to show st
edge" that we feel are important in the dents how kernel or simple sentences can
schools: knowing grammar, knowing parents be reworked and combined to generate ne
and administrators, and knowing kids. meanings and links. We reminded studen
of how easy it was for them to see this kind

52 November 1996
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of grammar at work in the language of our taking a grammatical perspective on lan-
guest preschoolers, non-native speakers, guage helps us analyze children at different
and classic writers, and we pointed out that levels and to understand why, for example,
as teachers they can do similar explorations. "invented" or "phonetic" spelling makes
Knowing Parents and Administrators. great sense in the early elementary grades
Thinking pragmatically, we urged students but is less appropriate at the high school
to get to know the school and state curricula: level or why one might want to crack the
what is truly required in grammar mastery? correctness whip with graduating seniors
We reported our experience that some while focusing language development in the
teachers seem to think that the school cur- middle school on factors such as fluency and
riculum requires a great deal of grammar, or voice. We suggested that our prospective
that nationally standardized tests are gram- teachers use their grammar, not primarily as
mar-based. Our observation is that grammar something to teach to children, but as a tool
is not overly-stressed in most school and to understand what kids are doing with lan-
state guidelines and that current standard- guage and how to determine the ways the
ized tests such as the California Test of Basicteacher can help move them to the next lev-
Skills and the Scholastic Aptitude Test, while els of understanding and performance.
including usage items, do not test students Finally, having covered those areas of
over grammatical terminology. grammar knowledge, we went back to Frost
We tried to prepare our prospective and "the road not taken." The projects
teachers for the reality that in many but by no which our students had been working on all
means all schools, they would be stereotyped semester now came center stage.
as new teachers and as members of the X-
generation who don't know nuthin' about
PRESENTATIONS AND EXTENSIONS The word
Each student had been working on what
grammar and don't care neither. We reported
we called the "G-r-r-reat G-r-r-r-ammar Pro-
grammar has
instances where the old guard (old in spirit if very different
ject." They were to think about grammar in
not in age) might well have tried to disabuse
meanings
the broadest sense, to choose an area whose for
new teachers of their "liberal" college educa-
grammar they wanted to research, the linguist,
to collect
tions. We argued that the approach to gram-
the teacher,
a "corpus" of examples of that language, to
mar we had advocated, coupled with their
new or rediscovered knowledge of grammar,
write about its grammar, and to make the student,
a pre-
sentation to the class. Here some of the roads
would get them through with an intellectu- and the lay
not taken merged. Our students wrote gram-
ally respectable teaching of grammar and person.
mars of television's McLaughlin Report,
allow them to communicate successfully with
baseball rules and lingo, American Sign Lan-
the guardians of grammar. We strongly rec-
guage, Shakespeare's plays, McDonalds' TV
ommended the idea of developing an infor-
ads, the English Only movement, the Inter-
mation sheet for parents and administrators
net, political correctness, foreign languages,
explaining what the teacher is doing, e.g.,
Gaelic (with help from texts), and bumper
* Why errors on papers are marked
stickers in the university parking lot. We had
selectively
grammars of mathematics, debate, history,
* The concept of a varieties of "good
rock-and-roll groups, romance novels, bas-
grammar.
ketball coaching, and job interviewing.
* How the teacher is helping non-native
There was a Grammar of Road Signs, a
speakers learn English.
Grammar of Music, a Grammar of Fashion,
* How "home" dialects are respected.
Gang Grammar, Football Grammar, a Grate-
* How kids can learn to help themselves ful Deadhead Grammar, an Electrician's
with usage.
Grammar, a Grammar of Fairy Tales (which
* How parents can help kids with usage mat- tracked two fairy tales through three ver-
ters and proofreading.
sions, including a politically correct one),
Knowing Young People. Most impor- Twin Language Grammars, Code Switching,
tant is that teachers need to know their stu- African Drumming Grammars, and a Gram-
dents' abilities and growth patterns. There is mar of Tarot Cards. Last, but not least, was a
no magic moment when a spoonful of gram- grammar of arm and hand gestures based on
mar will make all linguistic ailments disap- a videotape of one of the instructor's class-
pear. Most important, we stressed, is that room mannerisms.

English Journal 53
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 Those last days of the class were action-
packed and richly informative, reminding us
and our students of the amazing range of
possibilities in the study of that old devil
grammar. We had obviously packed a great
deal into the course, probably, like most am-
bitious instructors, included too much. Nev-
ertheless, we believe that packing all the
components of grammar into a single course
was important for a matter of perspective.
Our prospective teachers (like kids in the
schools, parents, and administrators) need a
broad perspective on language, a big picture
that puts some of the day-to-day items, from
spelling glitches to sexist language, into a
pattern of linguistic understanding.
We didn't imagine that we had turned
our students into linguists or grammarians,
but we did think that we had successfully
defanged the g-r-r-rowling demon that was
g-r-r-rammar.
Lee Thomas and Stephen Tchudi teach in the English
Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. Lee
teaches in the areas of sociolinguistics and English as a
second language, and she is especially interested in the
effects of the English Only movement. Stephen works
principally in composition and rhetoric and also
teaches introductory language courses.
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54 November
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CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS.
TRACKING AND GROUPING
The Committee on Tracking and Grouping
Practices invites educators at the middle and
high school levels to submit manuscripts to be
considered for-a proposed Classroom Practices
publication on the theme, "Teaching without
Tracking-Successful Strategies for the Het-
erogeneously.Grouped Classroom." We wel-
come manuscripts presenting successful
classroom practices which promote heteroge-
neous grouping of students and alternatives to
tracking. We seek classroom strategieswhich
are inclusive of mixed ability levels and which
may represent schools with diverse popula-
tions based upon geographical, ethnic, racial,
and class affiliations. We would like to hear
about how the shifts in pedagogy and curricu-
lum occurred for you at your school. Manu-
scripts can range in length from two to ten
double-spaced pages, with actual examples of
student work and teacher-created lessons,
handouts, and graphics encouraged. Please
submit two copies, with the author's name
and address appearing only on separate.title
pages..Manuscripts should be receivedhby
February.28, 1997. Please submit them to:
Cynthia.Evans, 1683 Hooker Oak Avenue,
Chico, CA 95926; phone: (916) 899-0629.
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1996