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

2005 Mahwah, New Jersey

London

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

Contents

Preface				ix
Acknowledgments				xiii
1 A Short History of Grammar				1
Agreeing on a Definition			1
Greek Beginnings	2
Grammar in Rome	5
Grammar in the Middle Ages				7
The Age of Enlightenment			9
The Age of Reason	12
Modern Grammars	15
2 Teaching Grammar				17
Recognizing the Challenges				17
Learning Outcomes	19
Grammar and Writing		23
Why Teach Grammar?		40
Best Practices 41
Suggested Activities	47

v

vi							CONTENTS
3	Traditional Grammar						50
	Prescriptive Grammar in Our Schools						50
	Form and Function in Grammar 53
	Subjects and Predicates					54
	Nouns	59
	Pronouns		60
	Verbs	70
	Modifiers		77
	Function Words			82
4	Phrase Structure Grammar						97
	From the Universal to the Particular						97
	Phrase–Structure Rules					101
	Tree Diagrams			107
	Coordination 114
	Progressive Verb Forms					130
	Perfect Verb Forms 133
	Possessives		133
	Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Modification 134
	Subordinate Clauses				136
	Complement Clauses				139
	Relative Clauses			142
	Negatives		152
	Nonfinite Verb Forms				154
	Summary of Phrase–Structure Rules						156
5 Noam Chomsky and Grammar							161
	The Chomsky Revolution					161
	Deep Structure and Surface Structure						166
	The Basics of Transformation Rules						169
	Relative Clause Formation 174
	The Minimalist Program					162
	A Critique of the Minimalist Program						191
6	Cognitive Grammar						197
	What Is Cognitive Grammar? 197
	Modularity		198
	Determining Meaning				199
	Cognitive Grammar and Language Acquisition 206

CONTENTS				vii
7	Dialects			220
	What Is a Dialect? 220
	How Do Dialects Develop? 221
	Students and Dialects		224
	Slang 228
	Development of a Prestige Dialect			230
	Nonstandard Dialects		230
	Dialects and Education		233
	Black English	236
	Chicano English	245
	Chicano English Grammar 246
	Chicano English in the Classroom			248
	Spanglish 250
	Code Switching	250
	References			254
	Index			265

Preface

The Teacher’s Grammar Book is designed for students who are preparing to become English or language arts teachers, as well as for credentialed teachers who want to know more about grammar. Most grammar books focus on terminology. Some add a discussion of the connection between grammar and writing. The Teacher’s Grammar Book, however, is different. Certainly, it treats terminology thoroughly, but it is far more than just a list of grammar terms. It is not a handbook and was never intended to be one. The Teacher’s Grammar Book was designed to offer an easy-to-use guide to teaching methods and grammar and usage questions, a combination that has not been readily available before. In addition, it provides an overview of English grammar that is informed not only by historical developments in the field but also by a variety of pedagogical, research, and philosophical issues that underlie grammar and our efforts to understand grammar, language, writing, and teaching. Out of this wide-ranging exploration emerges the view that a teacher’s choice of grammar reflects philosophical and pedagogical orientations that influence both the content and the methods of language arts instruction.

The Teacher’s Grammar Book grew out of my experience teaching grammar and composition methods courses to education students since 1981. What I discovered early in my career is that large numbers of prospective teachers do not feel confident about their knowledge of English grammar. They experience a certain degree of anxiety as a result. Most have recognized that they will be required to teach grammar—and they aren’t happy about it. Many have had bad experiences with grammar in the past. They “didn’t get it,” or, sadder still, they “just didn’t like it.” Nearly all are surprised when, a few weeks into my grammar courses, they discover not only that they are “getting it” but that grammar is

ix

x

PREFACE

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

PREFACE

xi

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