The Teachers Grammar Book - James Williams

The Teacher’s Grammar Book

Second Edition

The Teacher’s Grammar Book

Second Edition

James D. Williams

Soka University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue

Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 www.erlbaum.com

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, James D. (James Dale), 1949–

The teacher's grammar book / James D. Williams.—2nd ed. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-5221-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. English language—Grammar. 2. English language—Grammar— Study and teaching. I. Title.

PE1112.W46 2005

428.2—dc22 2004056421 CIP

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.

Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

actually fun. The Teacher’s Grammar Book aims to take readers on a similar voyage of discovery.

What’s New in the Second Edition

The many teachers and students who used the first edition of The Teacher’s Grammar Book provided various suggestions over the years intended to make the text better. I’ve tried to incorporate their suggestions into the second edition as much as possible, and I hope they are happy with the result of this indirect collaboration. In many respects, the finished product is significantly different from the original. The more important changes are:

•A new chapter providing a short history of grammar and its role in education.

•A new chapter on teaching grammar that examines not only the challenges teachers face but also what research, theory, and classroom experience tell us constitutes “best practices.”

•A significant reduction in the formalism associated with phrase structure grammar so as to focus more on the descriptive goals of this approach to language analysis.

•A complete revision of the chapter on transformational–generative grammar that significantly reduces the discussion of transformation rules and tree diagrams so as to focus more on other features of this approach, such as its influence on teaching and psychology; also new is a summary of the model—the minimalist program—that Noam Chomsky developed to replace trans- formational–generative grammar.

•A complete revision of the chapter on cognitive grammar that not only makes the discussion more current but also more detailed, addressing how cognitive grammar provides insight into common problems associated with teaching writing, such as creating meaning and errors in language.

•A thorough revision of the chapter on dialects to make it both more current and more detailed; the discussion of Chicano English is significantly expanded, and new in this edition is a brief analysis of Spanglish and an exploration of code switching.

•Also new is the focus on teaching grammar and language as a thread that winds through each chapter, making the text more thoroughly a tool to help teachers meet the challenge of grammar instruction.

Chapter One. The first chapter offers a brief history of grammar in the Western tradition. Although there are some interesting stories to tell about the study of grammar in places like India, China, and the Middle East, they are not very relevant to American public education, based as it is on Greek and Roman models. The goal of this chapter, therefore, is to give readers a sense of the place

grammar has held in Western education since the days of Plato and Aristotle so that they can better understand and appreciate why we expect students to learn something about the English language.

Chapter Two. Chapter 2 explores various approaches to teaching grammar, and in many respects it is central to developing an effective classroom methodology. There are many different ways to teach grammar, and this chapter examines the most common, assessing their strengths and weaknesses with the aim of identifying best practices.

Central to this chapter is the section on grammar and writing. Most teachers and many textbooks, such as Weaver’s (1996) Teaching Grammar in Context and Noden’s (1999) Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing, advocate teaching grammar in the context of writing. However, few recognize the difficulties and faulty assumptions inherent in this approach as it usually is applied. Emphasizing the linguistic perspective that informs the entire book, this section makes an important distinction between grammar and usage, explaining why most of the sentence errors we see in student writing are not problems of grammar but rather problems of usage. An important feature of The Teacher’s Grammar Book are the Usage Notes that appear at key points to explain a wide range of common usage problems. Finally, the chapter examines existing research and explores the most pedagogically sound ways to link grammar and writing.

Chapter Three. Although chapter 2 is important for every English/language arts teacher, chapter 3, “Traditional Grammar,” may be even more important because it provides the foundation for actually teaching grammar. The subsequent chapters are built on this foundation, and together they will eliminate any lack of confidence readers may have about their knowledge of grammar. The chapter begins by introducing basic grammatical terms and explaining their role in language study. It does not assume that readers have any significant knowledge of grammar at all so as to create a comfortable space for learning. Taking a standard approach, grammar is divided into two categories of analysis, form and function.

Chapter 3 also builds on the grammar/usage distinction by introducing a fundamental feature of modern language study—appropriateness conditions. Based in part on Hymes’ (1971) principles of communicative competence, appropriateness conditions contextualize language use and allow students to understand more thoroughly the factors that make writing different from speech and that enable us to recognize that the language we use when talking with friends over pizza and beer will be different from the language we use during a