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Odyssey
of a teacher-educator
The context
of language education
-- United States
In the 1990s, if you were an English teacher or a teacher educator wondering what you should know about language to help your students use language more effectively, you would have run smack into the grammar question. What IS an English teacher to do about grammar in a meaning-based, student-centered, writing intensive English/Language Arts class? You would have found:
· a lot of advice against teaching grammar -- according to several influential studies, traditional grammar instruction has no effect on students' writing development and detracts from classroom time devoted to writing (Braddock, R., Lloyedl-Jones, R., & Schoer, L., 1963; Elley, W.B., Barham, I.H., Lamb, H., & Wyllie, M., 1976; Hartwell, P., 1985; Hillocks, G., Jr., & Smith, M.J.,1986);
· some recommendations for what to teach, if grammar instruction were cut to the bare essentials (for instance: Noguchi, Rei R., 1991);
· quite a lot of heated criticism of "traditional grammar", which describes the structure of English as if it were Latin (a pervasive critique in virtually every grammar text published over the last a decade, with the exception of some style manuals);
· arguments for using knowledge from 20th century linguistics to describe the structure of English in more accurate and more useful ways (more on this later), BUT
· no consensus on what the more accurate and useful view of language should be in English Language Arts instruction.
You would have found many conflicting recommendations, reflecting different linguistic theories (transformational grammar; structural linguistics; cognitive linguistics; functional linguistics….) and different views about how language should be taught.
That was my position when I was assigned to teach a language class for prospective English teachers. Since I had become fascinated with language by looking at transcripts of talk, I wanted my language class to be about using language as a medium of communication and thought. I did not want it to be about grammar ONLY. Understandably, I was attracted to a theory of grammar that was also a theory about how language, in all its complexity and variations, works in the world -- specifically, Systemic Functional Linguistics, a description of langauge that is not widely known in the United States. What is important to note here is that SFL is an elaborate description that requires terminology not shared by other linguistic theories, which makes it unfeasible as a theory of language for teachers in the United States. Nevertheless, it has informed curriculum and pedagogy in other English speaking countries, where the theory is more commonly known and accepted.
Certainly, SFL is not the only theory about how language works in the world. During this century, when many disciplines in the human sciences turned to "the social" to advance general understanding about the world, many linguists began to look at language in new ways, not as a formal system, but as the medium of social life, the means that people use to conduct business, plan their affairs, keep track of events, teach the young, and entertain themselves. During this century, audio-recorders made it possible to look at patterns in the ways that language is used to accomplish different kinds of tasks. By describing how language is used, we learn much about the nature of our world. Conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, the ethnography of speaking, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and to some extent speech act theory tell us about social reality. By paying attention to the way language works, we can begin to identify our own culturally specific patterns of experience (Lee, 1997, p. 44).
I start with the assumption that this sort of knowledge is relevant to the English classroom. For much of the history of English education, language has competed with literature as the priority concern, but today, many states have begun testing students for grammar knowledge and writing ability as well as critical understanding of literature. In fact, these are all language arts, which could be integrated and should be mutually enhancing. The trick for English teachers is to make the study of language integral to writing development and to the study of literature. The trick is to show the connection between grammar and the broader social and cultural meanings it makes possible. The most comprehensive efforts to make such connections visible in English education have taken place outside the United States, drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics as an integrative tool. These projects have not been without controversy, and their success has yet to be convincingly demonstrated, but as extended collaborations between linguists and educators, they are richly instructive.