RE: grammar

[lisa renery <lrenery@acad.suffolk.edu>]

Hi, everyone!

I am currently teaching ESL Reading and Writing to matriculated ESL
students in a sheltered ESL program at Suffolk University, Boston.
Grammar ALWAYS comes up of course, so I have been following the grammar
flow with great gusto.  The point about being aware of "what we
actually do" in our teaching can also apply to our language use/rules --
why should we teach our (non-native and native speaker) students not to
say "I don't have no money" or "he don't know..." or "Everyone can have
their turn" when they will in fact hear such things all around them.
Don't even talk to me about "whom"!!  These occurrences deemed "bad
grammar" by the text books make up the descriptive grammar of American
English, though - they represent what really goes on.  It's the
prescriptive stuff that messes up native speakers and really many of those
are the rules that slowly but surely are being dropped from standard
American English (does anyone remember being taught that in the first
person singular and plural "shall" is used instead of "will"?!!)...  

However, there ARE descriptive grammar rules that DO matter for non-native
speakers. I always tell my students that no native speaker would ever
mis-use "a" for "the" for example, or get a verb tense wrong (like "I am
go" or "I have arrived three days ago")... these are the things that
really, really MARK non-native speakers in their writing and speech.
Impressing this upon my students seems to adds a little more gravity
(read: manipulation!) to their "mission" as language learners but does it
really, really make a big difference?  Naw, I doubt it.  The bottom line,
in my experience as a foreign language learner and English teacher of
both native and non-native speakers, is this: learning grammatical
constructions takes time to soak in and constant reinforcement from the
surrounding community.  It would be great if, as David said to start this
ball rolling, we could just plonk students down with a game plan of how to
negotiate relative clause constructions, for example, have them study it
like a math formula and then have them apply it the next time they
write... but language doesn't happen that way, unfortunately.  I have
tried an analytical linguistic approach in the past -- imagine this,
diagramming sentences to the bare bones, "look, this whole clause operates
as the direct object of this verb!" kind of thing.  To no avail, as you
could have predicted.  My middle road is trying to present the "basic
requirements of an English sentence" and go from there.  

The meta-awareness issue is a huge one, though - I know NO native speaker
students with WHOM I have worked who have really able to put their finger
on the subject and verb in a sentence... whereas the second language
learners often seem to have a more finely tuned level of meta-awareness
from having studied the grammatical concepts in their own countries and
then again in English. In my experience, Russians are the most able to
label parts of speech, etc. I wonder what it says about how they studied
their own language in primary school... all I know is, not much time is
devoted to grammar, etc. in American schools any more, at least not in
greater Boston!

Well, that's my two cents!


Lisa Renery,
ESL Coordinator
Suffolk University
Boston, MA
(617) 573-8677