Grappling with Grammar: A Grammar Gallimaufry

I found this chapter highly intersting. It details four concepts to use in order to teach students how to be good writers. It is easy to see how the four concepts of unscrambling, imitating, combining, and expanding can be very effective in the classroom.

I see how this would teach students the mechanics of good writing as they need little knowledge of grammar, they just learn how to construct good sentences. I imagine teaching some aspects of grammar will need to be a focus in conjunction with this method.

Harry Noden's chapter in Teaching Grammar in Context is the most engaging chapter of a textbook I have ever experienced! Harry (I like to use his Christian name as if we are colleagues and he has shared his greatest advice with me) uses the tools he teaches to paint for us a picture of a classroom full of engaged students, expressive students, even enthused students! If not a dream for all pre-service teachers, the motivation that propels me through the insane rigors of college is the dream of being able to inspire my future students to love language. And Harry's students seem to have grasped the significance. They attend to Harry's grammar lessons because they understand that their "workshop" on appositives will assist them in creating better and better pictures with words. This approach appears to be exciting and enjoyable for the teacher as well as for the students. And as my good friend recently shared with me, "I think you learn more if you are laughing, [having fun], at the same time." Harry has proven this right in his own students! Vive la langue!

So gender assignment of words isn't as big a deal in English as in other languages, but there's one instance where gender plays a big role: in the case of pronouns. "He" is the masculine and "She" is the feminine--clear enough, right? Well, what about when we need a be less specific or more universal, as in the case of "A writer needs his/her sleep" or "Every texter loves his cellphone"--what do we do then? Traditionalists might suggest just using the masculine "he" since that's been the practice for a long time, but that seems insensitive to a lot of people.

What have you heard suggested as a way to resolve this dilemma? What alternatives are there to using the masculine pronoun in these cases? Do any of the alternatives satisfy you?

(Something I read this week prompted me to post this, but I'm going to wait to share it until I hear what some of you have to say about it first.)

Can I talk for a second about a concept in Weaver's Grammar Plan Book? This just stopped me in my tracks . . . "Visual Scaffolding" ! I liked the idea that students can visually and physically assemble a scaffold of a concept for their own use and reference in their notes/writers notebook.

Scaffolding in my mind has always been more of a teacher lesson planning thing, but I really liked the idea of having a physical manifestation of scaffolding for students to refer back to. GREAT for visual learners, and for those with sketchy memory skills. They can refer back to these examples when they write, for ideas as well as a reminder. Doing this in grammar lessons (as part of the writing process, of course) can be done in the same manner that I cut and hand out quotes for when I teach Relief Society.

Part of Shane's previous post--where he discusses words that fall into popular usage--reminded me of a phrase that I thought was recent. Reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House over the summer proved me wrong. Dickens describes his character Mr. Tulkinghorn as old school:

"He is of what is called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings."

Maybe I'm the only one that thought that "old school" was a more recent description, but it seems to me that Dickens is using it in essentially the same way a lot of us do, minus the breeches. Am I missing something here? Any thoughts? And isn't it interesting how words and phrases fade in and out of vogue?

Over the course of the first three days of class, I could not help but notice a theme or notion that seemed to seep its way into nearly every discussion that was had. This idea of "Standard English" is one that actually bothers me. What in English is actually deemed "Standard"? In this Wikipedia article about "Standard English" it acknowledges that:
"There are no official rules for "Standard English" because, unlike some other
languages, English does not have a linguistic governance body. . .".
I can attest to this standardization of languages due to my mission. The countries "Official Language" was Portuguese (however hardly any of the natives spoke it). With only 1/4 of my mission remaining, an official document was published by the Portuguese "linguistic governance body" that made several changes to Portuguese in order to unify Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese from Portugal. This document no doubt caused problems because neither country (not to mention the smaller countries that also speak Portuguese) felt it necessary to make the changes in order to be more "Standard". While I acknowledge that in the afore mentioned Wikipedia article it states that:
"In countries where English is either not a native language or is not widely spoken, a
native variant (typically English English or North American English) might be
considered "standard" for teaching purposes."
we should not be so ignorant to think that OUR (American) idea of "Standard English" is more correct than that of England's idea of "Standard English". Do not forget that our language originates from Mother England. Who are we to say that our word choice (or theirs) is more appropriate? IF there were a committee to guide us, would we be quick to heed their rules if they were not in our favor?
With all of that said, may I shed more light on the beloved Oxford English Dictionary? With the development of language, the dictionary has no choice but to change in order to suit the ever expanding English Language. A lot of these changes may be unacceptable to the person dedicated to the preservation of a "pure" "Standard English" language. Words like "hella" and "Bootylicious" (please be aware that foul language is used to define these terms or their origin) have found a home in The Oxford English Dictionary. Does The Oxford English Dictionary no longer represent "Standard English"?
I do not intend to harass or demean anyone that is set on the idea of "Standard English", especially since I am well aware of my weaknesses with English grammar. I do however wish to educate people (myself included) so that as we enter our classrooms we do not remain overly closed minded and neglect the changes that our students will undoubtedly embrace and accept as "standard".

I must admit I was dubious about the assignment for today's class. I was also curiously interested in exactly what we were going to do with the assignment of paying attention to how people use the word “like” in their speech.

Today’s lesson was highly fascinating and thoroughly engaging. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a lesson, especially grammar based, as much as I did today.

I see the value, and potential, in teaching grammar in a manner that engages the student. This teaching style is much better than the rote methodology used when I was in school during the early 80’s—and the hairstyles are better as well.

Thinking about disappearing definitions makes me think of other things that seem to be disappearing...not all that relative to grammar, but man am I sad that analog is being replaced with digital. People keep blogs instead of journals, Facebook albums instead of photo albums, they want to chirp me instead of have lunch with me. I mean, the internet is all well and good...fabulous. I love googling things. I love that "googling" is a word. Is that in the dictionary yet? Who invented google? I'll google it later...but having everything digitalized, googlized and internetalized (another one to replace a forgotten word in the dictionary) makes me nervous. "I sent you an email," but my mailbox I open with a key is still only stuffed full of newspapers.
I tell everyone who keeps a blog, be careful. The internet will explode one day and everything you write on it will be gone... They then ask me, "Well, what if your house catches on fire? Or floods? Then all your journals will be gone too." Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure it's more likely that the internet will explode than my house will catch on fire. Don't you remember Y2K?

My point being, disappearing definitions makes me sad and so does disappearing other things. I'm torn becuase I'm nostalgic for the days when encyclopedias were comprised of what one lonely explorer had seen and attempted to describe and we all had to take their word on it, yet I love bing albe to read the Wikipedia article on Scientology. I think we all like nostalgia; that's why people wear Mario Brothers t-shirts and hang up N'Sync posters. So, I guess all this change and replacing is good if only to give people something to miss.

Often feeling a "noodle of the first rank" myself, I must also confess to suffering an inordinate sense of consternation at being apprised of the revision of the greatest dictionary of the English language.

One of my own most prized possessions is a 5-and-3/4-inch-thick edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd Edition, Unabridged, published by G & C Merriam Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, in the year of my birth, which my mother-in-law acquired for me, as a gift, for the exorbitant expenditure of $.50 at the DI many years ago. It lies open, occupying a shelf in a bookcase in a darkish corner of my living room, with a small flashlight reposed in the crevice of its opened innards, awaiting the frequent hand, the searching eyes, and the thirsting mind, to which it will yield its abundant fruit.

Ah, mere words. The stuff with which all thought, all sorrow, indeed, all joy is molded and shared. May we ever luxuriate in the copious bounty of a competent and profuse dictionary!

Came across an interesting post on a NYT site the other day (you can read it here) essentially bemoaning the current revisions underway to the Oxford English Dictionary. The author, Ammon Shea, is sad that some rather creative and unique definitions will disappear since they're no longer relevant or are now considered insensitive. After looking at the examples he uses, I too am a bit sad that we won't see some of this history for these words any more.

And I have to admit to being something of an OED junkie, or (perhaps more accurately) an etymology junkie. I love finding out the history of words and how their definitions have changed over time as society has changed. This is an intriguing part of our language and reflects the general change that all language exhibits over time. Since language exists to facilitate communication between people, it makes some sense that as people's needs and attitudes change, so will their language.

So if you haven't spent time lately looking through the OED for word etymologies, you should--you'll be suprised how interesting they can be. (Oh, and if you need a place to start, just look at some of the rare or archaic meanings for the word that graces the title of this blog, gallimaufry: there's at least one definition there you might chuckle at.)