Re: Grammar

--- Lucy Pearson <l_r_pearson@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I don't know what the situation is in America, but I
> personally feel that one of the greatest deficiencies
> in the British education system is in the teaching of
> grammar. Due to the belief that attempting to teach
> children inhibits their natural creativity, I received
> almost no lessons in grammar.

Lucy-Ruth,

This is one of the greatest debates in all English Education discussions
lately. Over the last twenty years, the fashionable thing to do was to
let children write and then correct their grammar in context. The idea
was that grammar lessons weren't grounded in reality, and so students
never quite understood the practical applications of it. For some
students, this practice did indeed work. However, for many students
without any previous instruction in grammar, this sort of "in context"
crap was grounded in nothing at all. They left school and never learned
it.

More recently, a woman named Lisa Delpit wrote a book called 'Other
People's Children,' a book that basically sets the former pedagogy on its
ear and demands that English teachers spend time teaching children,
especially minority children, skills-based lessons. They can get to the
creativity later, after they've learned the basics.

You can find more information on this book at:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=16LD6W7XUE&isbn=1565841808

(All one line.)

>From the reaction in the world of eduction, you'd think nobody had ever
thought of this before.

I don't know how well this is going to catch on, since I suspect that most
English teachers don't know half the rules themselves, but it's at least
got people talking again.

Regards,
Cecilia.

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Received on Sun Sep 8 14:49:59 2002