Why all the questions about prescriptive grammar?

Scott.Sommers · Post by **Scott.Sommers** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 3:42 pm

It struck me today that almost all the questions posted here are related to the teaching or correct usage of prescriptive grammar. This is ironic. While a detailed knowledge of prescriptive grammar is always useful, as well as fun, the detail of many of the questions here seems more similar to that needed for passing local proficiency exams in Asian countries than it does for the natural communication skills most foreign teachers are hired to teach. I've always thought of applied linguistics as much more thanpresciptive grammar. Am I missing something because I'm new to this board?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 5:43 pm

Well, I'm not sure if 'almost all' the questions posted are relating to prescriptive grammar, but let's assume that the majority are...I think if you look more closely you will find that many of the questions aren't so much about clear right vs. wrong answers, or choosing between two equally valid alternatives, but are more asking (often indirectly, or in so many words) any possible respondant to state a (necessarily "regional") preference, or to express intuitions or facts regarding frequency, than "grammaticality" per se (well, that's how most people tend to respond to whatever question, however inane); and even when the answers seem "obvious", who's to say what's easy or should be the priority for the person asking the question? Generally the questions get as much thread time, cyberspace, as they (or their ramifications) are actually in fact worth, no more and no less, and if prescriptivism is an issue, it is addressed and, more often than not, laid to rest (or at least a rest of sorts!).

Where's the prescription in all of that? Wouldn't you say it's all in fact pretty descriptive, ultimately? Quite a few of the posters (well, the non-an*l non-asian non-perpetual learners among us, anyway!) do try to stimulate descriptive "debate", awareness-raising etc, and sometimes even get into discussions regarding the possible applications and ramifications of the linguistic insights!

P.S. I like your blog, I came across it in a Teacher Training forum, I seem to recall...and then later noticed that it gets a mention on the Language Log! Hats off!

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:07 am

Not me mate! I'm always banging on about methodology and method schools.......join in!

Someone else once pointed out that Applied Linguistics was not only related to teaching, and they are right. Trouble is though, I'm not sure many of us are qualified to discuss other aspects.

Scott.Sommers · Post by **Scott.Sommers** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:40 am

I appreciate the kind words Fluffy. It's true that some of my feelings may be due to lack of familiarity with the forum. I just tuned in recently, and it could be that I don't have a clear enough picture yet. I don't mean to sound like I don't think that questions about grammar aren't interesting or important, it just struck going through the board that a great deal of attention was being paid to this.

But I don't want a big deal about this. As both and WoodCutter point out, this is a democratic forum, and I am perfectly capable of contributing whatever topics I feel like. I look forward to doing so.

Thanks for the input.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:09 am

Speaking for myself, but also to broaden out the topic, there's a lot to be said for having the prescriptive point-of-view precisely in order to ignore it, sometimes. For any one language F AQ, or even IAQ and NAQ (Frequently/Infrequently/Never Asked Question), I like to have a clear idea of what is prescribed, thrash out what I really think myself (a la Chomsky), establish if possible what is in fact most used (and where) and finally discover, if I don't know already, what the orthodox teaching approach is. Then I can decide if and how I'm going to deal with the discrepancies among the above in class.

It's also worth remembering that we spend far too much of our time watching our meta-language and choosing our words in class as well as biting our tongues and having to get on with our bosses and colleagues. Some of us are hundreds of miles from the nearest other weirdo with the same interests in these matters. Maybe the apparent interest in prescription is from those who have spent all day being by far the least prescriptive person they know. This is how they relax.

So there's a lot of letting off steam. In fact I often wonder what the local time is when I read some of the posts. "It's late" may be a code for "I can't focus on the screen any more". Or is that just me?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:52 am

What screen? I can't even see the screen anymore...my fingers just reach up from my beer can-strewn mattress and type whatever they damn well want! Sometimes it's even relevant stuff!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:05 am

Hmm, you make Chomsky sound as rational as yourself, JTT, but hey, is the way he's going about everything actually a "rational" approach? (Our reasoning may have been all we had in Descartes's time, right on through to the 1980s, but things have changed a little since). What do you reckon? Brewing a possible thread on "grammaticality"...

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:15 am

Mattress? You big softy. I sleep on the beer cans.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 1:14 pm

I also sleep on beercans when I'm too exhausted to clear them off the mattress...which happens often after a hard night at Dave's.

Hmm I noticed that your first post's 'prescriptive grammar' became just 'grammar' in your second one there, Scott.

I have to admit that grammar (especially the verb phrase) gets the lion's share of the space and attention on the AL Forum, but if you take the "wide" (wide "enough") view of the term, that's what language and language teaching's all about, isn't it?

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 4:11 am

Anyway, I suspect that Scott mainly wishes to rubbish prescriptive grammar, and he's in good company. The 60s are not dead round 'ere.

I'm sure I've read loads of stuff about Taiwanese Universities from Mr.Sommers, so it's an honour to cyber-meet him though.

Scott.Sommers · Post by **Scott.Sommers** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 5:32 am

I don't have a problem with prescribing grammar per say. My problem has more to do with the way that it gets prescribed. Out where I teach, one of the difficulties faced by foreign teachers is that teaching communication skills is often less prestigious than teaching literature or grammar. It's not uncommon to see foreign teachers, without extensive knowledge of language acquisition, dragged into teaching in a way that's much more suitable for teacher with the kind of preparation that local teachers have. I don't know if this is related to the emphasise of this forum on such issues, but it's what struck me when I first had a look at it.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 2:34 am

JuanTwoThree wrote:Speaking for myself, but also to broaden out the topic, there's a lot to be said for having the prescriptive point-of-view precisely in order to ignore it, sometimes. For any one language F AQ, or even IAQ and NAQ (Frequently/Infrequently/Never Asked Question), I like to have a clear idea of what is prescribed, thrash out what I really think myself (a la Chomsky), establish if possible what is in fact most used (and where) and finally discover, if I don't know already, what the orthodox teaching approach is. Then I can decide if and how I'm going to deal with the discrepancies among the above in class.

Sorry to drag this thread back up, and I hope I'm not disturbing you and/or looking like I want to invoke and thereby summon you yourself, JTT, but I was re-reading what you wrote and have just realized that I wanted to say, that's a pretty good "research methodology" you've got there, presuming that you start with the "deskwhoppers" among the grammars (that is, reasonably insightful - fairly complete, based upon a thorough and wide-ranging set of language data and assumptions about language; I'm presuming you don't start off with e.g. Strunk and White, who are far too limited and fail to address half the stuff e.g. Biber et al do. Biber et al, on the other hand, do address silly rules and lots more, and explain why the silly rules are not often followed).

Unfortunately, a lot of teachers seem to start with your fourth step and never look back.

It's also worth remembering that we spend far too much of our time watching our meta-language and choosing our words in class as well as biting our tongues and having to get on with our bosses and colleagues. Some of us are hundreds of miles from the nearest other weirdo with the same interests in these matters. Maybe the apparent interest in prescription is from those who have spent all day being by far the least prescriptive person they know. This is how they relax.

So there's a lot of letting off steam. In fact I often wonder what the local time is when I read some of the posts. "It's late" may be a code for "I can't focus on the screen any more". Or is that just me?

Interesting theory. I reckon people are just trying to be as helpful, helpfully descriptive as they can be, and in the process forget that they may in fact be being unhelpfully prescriptive (taking too limited a view of the language and the resulting pedagogy); then again, every teacher has to make what is ultimately going to be a personal decision about what exactly they can and will teach in the limited time they have available to 'do research as only one stage of preperation', and the statements they make on Dave's are probably only meant to show and be a reflection of their current understanding (hopefully they themselves will realize where they might have got something wrong, or been too limited, and work to improve upon whatever points in the future. Of course, any teacher who doesn't do this is going to tire of teaching in the long-term, finding it ultimately "unfulfilling", even if they are saving themselves work in the short-term. Hmm, it's the mid-term that's tough in teaching, isn't it! the mid-teaching life crisises...gone is the pleasant ignorance of, well, ignorance, and yet to come are the pleasant certainties of sure knowledge and with it, expertise...).

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 2:43 am

Something that scott said on the other PG thread he began (after this one "ended") seems to me to kind of link to what I was trying to say immediately above:

Scott wrote:I ask this because I believe there are alternatives. There is a large and growing body of research on conversation analysis. I also work with people who believe that exercises derived from the concepts of learner autonomy offer interesting possibilities. I mention these not as my own prescriptions but as evidence that available alternatives are ignored.

To be honest, I often fall back on 'teaching grammar', particularly in conversation classes because I don't know any other way to think about some of things I believe students should learn. I also teach composition, where, ironically, I prescribe almost no grammar. I think that's the case because I have a much clearer idea of what students should be doing in a composition class without traditional exposure to grammar.

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 4210#14210

Heh, ignore me, these threads have probably run their course. I just thought it would be interesting to tie a few together.

Scott.Sommers · Post by **Scott.Sommers** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:13 pm

Actually, Fluffy, that was supposed to be my main point, so thank you for bringing us back to it. My concern is that teaching lessons where prescribed language is either the focus of the lesson or one of the key ways in which the lesson is conveyed is so well developed that it’s easy to fall back. We all know how to do it because despite our current selective memories, we were all exposed to them. And if there's someone for whom this is not true, then all they have to do is open one of the zillion and one mass consumption textbooks available because they're all full of exercises and activities for which this is true.

Alternatives to this method are complex, poorly understood, and hence, difficult to use in one's class. One of the major complaints of teachers concerning Communicative Teaching is that activities take so long to prepare that it's easier not to do them. And this is one of the more approachable alternatives to prescriptive language teaching! Colleagues who develop their own alternatives are all deeply educated in alternative theories and their classroom implications.

Is it really, as some of us have stated, that prescription makes so much more sense? Or is that the alternatives are so hard to find?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 1:20 am

Then, there is a "middle way" between grammar exercises/lectures and communicative lessons: so-called communicative lessons, that are easier than both the aforementioned approaches for everyone concerned, and which can often involve little more than a bingo sheet or some kind of "information gap" activity that took about five minutes to "develop" (=often, photocopy. The selection of any "functional" exponents often seems to have taken about one minute of those five, and little consideration is given to potential difficulties, likelihood of compensating strategies/L1 being used instead because of lack or inflexibility of English exponents/bad activity design or unclear and way too general aims and broad expectations etc). But that is what happens when the "ambassadors" of CLT are e.g. mainly untrained JET participants. (That's not to say that JET doesn't have other purposes or little successes, but I think it's rather missing the point - and wasting a lot of taxpayer money - when they say "downplaying" things like "Teaching English is only one of the aims of the JET Programme" in their promotional leaflets).