Grammar Text Table of Contents
Text Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
I wrote this text out of desperation. For years, I searched for a book that would serve as a text for my Park University Grammar for Teachers course. I had the following problems (or at least some of them) with every book I chose.
1) The students couldn't read it.
2) I couldn't read it.
3) The theory behind the book did not fit with my own.
4) The theory behind the book did not fit with anyone more recent than Alonzo Reed.
5) The book was written as a complaint against traditional grammar.
6) The book was written as a complaint against modern grammar.
7) The book was an apology for having to teach grammar.
8) The book was so rife with errors and confusion that I spent most of my time apologizing
for it.
I set out to write a text, more of a study guide for my course than anything else, that would provide the following:
1) The simplest coherent and logically complete systematic
grammar of the English language I could devise using the fewest possible terms and
referents. I found it centered loosely around Noam Chomsky's kernel sentences and
transformations--a phrase structure grammar.
2) A grammar which would require the fewest grammatical terms possible while still
providing students with a metalanguage for the system of English grammar. The terms
I found were mostly traditional. A couple of exceptions: the word constituent
emerges from structural linguistics, and the word fuzzy, one of my favorites,
emerges from linguistic pragmatics.
3) A grammar which would incorporate the latest scholarship about grammatical structure,
pedagogical technique, and learning theory. I rebelled, however, against the
contemporary idea that grammar could not or should not be taught. That is complete
balderdash. It is worth learning about, even if said learning doesn't improve
writing--which it does if one considers editing part of writing. The vast majority
of educated English speakers insist that, indeed, certain grammatical and
punctuation rules need following.
4) A grammar that would incorporate what is best about contemporary pedagogical theory
(especially to use what students already know as a starting point and to approach teaching
as much as possible the way nature approaches it). This, I accomplished by turning
the usual system on its head. I start out with whole sentences and gradually move
from there in the first chapter to parts of speech in the last chapter. (This book
does not talk much about teaching grammar. You have to attend my classes to
hear about that. Also, some of the books listed in the annotated bibliography are
insightful.)
5) A grammar that could be adapted for use from preschool to graduate study. I want
my students to take what they have learned in my class to their own teaching
context. It should not be hard to do. I teach my students to invest in the
concept of minilessons, and I insist that grammar should not be taught in long, tedious
lectures or through endless drill. I differ from some other advocates of teaching
grammar in two significant ways. 1) I believe in the teaching of grammatical terminology
from the very beginning though I have a much-abbreviated list of terms. Teach
terminology in context. Especially, never teach anything that has to be untaught
(e.g., a list of words that are nouns that must be retaught later as verbs or adjectives
depending upon context). 2) I believe that the teaching of systematic grammar is
necessary before minimalist grammars can be effective. Finally, grammar should be
incorporated with other disciplines (Rule #1: never teach grammar without a
disciplinary context beyond grammar) and served up on china saucers with wine. No
more than 10 minutes at a time is my absolute rule. (Of course, I break this rule
with impunity in my college classroom because we only have one semester to learn what
needed 15 years.) What can be taught when? That's up for discussion. But
I know from experience that even preschoolers can benefit from hearing terms that they
will use later in their schoolwork. There is no harm and significant good in using
the terms noun and verb in preschool to describe words the students are
using. A first grader can internalize the terms and the concepts of subject
and predicate at a simple level. And that is the early stuff of
phrase-structure grammar. At the other end of the spectrum, it is obvious to me
after several years of teaching it that the material in this book is plenty challenging
for college students.
6) It had to be a short book. And cheap! (Free, in fact!) I'm nothing if
not cheap.
This is it.
Note on the 2nd Edition:
In December of 2002, it was time to put Modern Grammar online. The face-to-face students will now have peers in the online sections. The textbook has to serve both constituencies.
This is it, all over again.