Had it with MCT. Is there a structural grammar curriculum?

[angela in ohio]

But wouldn't a child who has been taught traditional grammar immediately realize that "grixblum" has to be a noun because it is being modified by the adjective "ugly"? :confused:

 

You could also know it was a noun, just as in the Jabberwocky example, if you know the traditional definition of an article ('the.') :D

Edited December 12, 2010 by angela in ohio

[Violet Crown]

In a traditional grammar program, an adjective is defined as a word that modifies a noun (or sometimes a pronoun). I had gotten the impression from this thread that was the type of definition that you wanted to avoid. Now I'm really confused...:confused:

Structural grammar looks at the forms and the distributions of words. Insofar as adjectives are described as modifying nouns, that's a start at describing their distribution, and so a structural statement.*

 

But in traditional grammar, meaning always ends up taking precedence over stucture. MCT, for example, starts with "[N]ouns and pronouns sometimes have adjectives to adjust them." But then immediately it defines "modify" as adjusting or changing the meaning. "See how blue modifies your idea of the tree?" This is not a structural definition, but a semantic (meaning-based) one.

 

Further, traditional programs tend to make a very basic point about distribution ("modifies a noun"; "modifies a verb") and then treat that as if that were all there is to say. So it ends up treating anything that modifies a noun as an adjective, no matter how hard it is to shoehorn other words into the "adjective" definition. Structural grammar also looks at forms of words: for instance, adjectives have comparative forms.** These forms often use the signals -er and -est. Right away we can rule out articles as being adjectives, and also nouns being used to modify nouns.

 

Note that I'm not attempting to give an exhaustive definition of adjective. I would be trying (again, in my dream curriculum) to help the student recognize what his brain already knows to be an adjective. That he already knows it is apparent from his using it only one way in distribution: a child never says "I saw big black a dog outside!" because he knows that adjectives don't go in that place in a sentence. And he never says "I wantish a small piece" because he knows that -ish is a form for adjectives only; he will say "I want a smallish piece," not because he's studied a grammar curriculum and learned the rules for derivations of different kinds of words, but because he already recognizes adjectives readily and uses them correctly.

 

But what he doesn't know is that "an adjective adjusts the meaning of a noun." And if he learns that, he's going to make continual wrong guesses about what an adjective is (including some wrong guesses explicitly taught to him by his grammar program, against what his brain already knows).

 

Does that help any?

 

 

*I'm pretty sure I never objected to saying that adjectives modify nouns, but I'm open to being corrected on that.

**Obviously, you would say these things in a more child-friendly way in an elementary grammar program; I've noticed one objection to the idea of a structural grammar curriculum for children seems to be that it's too difficult or technical.

Edited December 12, 2010 by Sharon in Austin

[Irishmommy]

Sharon, if that is what works for you, for goodness sakes, write the book, lady, and make some money on it! You obviously have followers here that love your ideas. That is how some of the best ideas come to fruition, when you are tired of the status quo. I say go for it!

[Violet Crown]

One further point: even on its own terms, the meaning-based definition of an adjective given in MCT (I can't speak to other grammar curriculums) seems very unsatisfactory as a way to introduce the idea of "adjective" to a child. So an adjective, when first taught, is a word in a sentence that modifies/changes/adjusts our idea of a noun. But take the sentence

 

The green tree marched angrily over the field.

 

From the point of view of a child, a meaning-based description seems devilishly hard to apply. "Tree" is our noun. What words adjust my idea of a tree? "Green" really doesn't; I already think of trees as green. "The" definitly doesn't change my idea of a tree. But "marched" and "angrily" sure change my idea of that tree.

 

But traditional grammar then goes on to identify "green" (correctly) and "the" (incorrectly) as adjectives. Those were the words that were supposed to modify my idea of "tree."

 

And some grammar programs don't even get that close to a structural approach. Oldest dd picked up somewhere that "an adjective is a word that describes something." She was convinced for ages that "apple" must be an adjective, because it described that thing in the fruit bowl. Maybe my children are particularly dense, but it seems to me that this is exactly the kind of problem that meaning-based definitions invite.

[Violet Crown]

 

You could also know it was a noun, just as in the Jabberwocky example, if you know the traditional definition of an article ('the.') :D

Are there really traditional grammar programs that teach nouns in terms of determiners? Everything I've seen teaches nouns well before determiners.

[Mommyfaithe]

You deserve to have someone tell you that you are a sick person :tongue_smilie:

 

 

Rosie

 

:lol::lol::lol:

 

I love you too!!!

 

~~Faithe

[Mommyfaithe]

Are there really traditional grammar programs that teach nouns in terms of determiners? Everything I've seen teaches nouns well before determiners.

 

Yes, I believe Jensen's Grammar does this. Calls them "noun markers".

[Violet Crown]

Yes, I believe Jensen's Grammar does this. Calls them "noun markers".

Well that's a start.:) Sounds like, at least that far, it's teaching structural grammar. I'll have to take a look at Jensen's. Thanks for the tip!

[Matryoshka]

Originally Posted by Mommyfaithe

Yes, I believe Jensen's Grammar does this. Calls them "noun markers".

 

 

Well that's a start.:) Sounds like, at least that far, it's teaching structural grammar. I'll have to take a look at Jensen's. Thanks for the tip!

 

That reminded me that although I did teach my kids that a noun was a "person, place, or thing" (think we added idea or some such when we did EG), I've also told them almost as long that a noun was a word that makes sense when you can put "the" before it... sounds like I've been teaching a little of both? :tongue_smilie:

 

I still think that structural grammar and traditional grammar are different ways of looking at grammar and each have their merits, and are in no way mutually exclusive, with one being the "right' way and the other "wrong".

[Crimson Wife]

That reminded me that although I did teach my kids that a noun was a "person, place, or thing" (think we added idea or some such when we did EG), I've also told them almost as long that a noun was a word that makes sense when you can put "the" before it... sounds like I've been teaching a little of both? :tongue_smilie:

 

I've always done this too. Also, regarding the sentence about the green tree angrily marching, if my student misidentifies "angrily" as an adjective rather than an adverb, I would ask which noun it modifies. If the child answered "tree", I'd then ask if "the angrily tree" makes sense. I never heard of structural grammar until this week, but I guess I've been using parts of it all along.

[KarenNC]

I still think that structural grammar and traditional grammar are different ways of looking at grammar and each have their merits, and are in no way mutually exclusive, with one being the "right' way and the other "wrong".

 

That seems to be the way things usually turn out, in my experience. Similar to the heated black/white arguments over phonics only /sight words only. I have yet to see a person who truly uses a pure version of either and have found that they worked best in tandem for us.

 

Gotta love the middle path.......:001_smile:

[scrappyhappymama]

This thread makes me feel dumb. :D

 

Every day or so I see how large it's grown and then I read the last page or two and it generates lots of questions for me and few answers. :001_huh: I guess I'm just going to have to bookmark the thread and save it for a very rainy day.

 

I'll just say that there's a lot more to grammar than I ever realized. In fact, I'm not convinced I really want to know that much about it! That's how I end up mulling over new ideas and making radical changes in philosophy and educational approach. Lalalalalalalalalalala....:lol:

[johnandtinagilbert]

That reminded me that although I did teach my kids that a noun was a "person, place, or thing" (think we added idea or some such when we did EG), I've also told them almost as long that a noun was a word that makes sense when you can put "the" before it... sounds like I've been teaching a little of both? :tongue_smilie:

 

I still think that structural grammar and traditional grammar are different ways of looking at grammar and each have their merits, and are in no way mutually exclusive, with one being the "right' way and the other "wrong".

This thread has shown me how easy it is for me to point out the structure even though much of our approach is traditional via definitions. I will say, when reviewing nouns on Friday, I did add to the "person, place, thing or idea" definition b/c of this thread. I see them as "reminders" for the boys "idea; may be described by adjectives; may have an article (noun marker); may be plural." My boys kinda rolled their eyes at me for making them write it out b/c "Mom, we already know about adjectives and articles." I define an article as both a noun marker and a special adjective...what does that say about me?

 

That seems to be the way things usually turn out, in my experience. Similar to the heated black/white arguments over phonics only /sight words only. I have yet to see a person who truly uses a pure version of either and have found that they worked best in tandem for us.

 

Gotta love the middle path.......:001_smile:

Pure phonics over here ;) (insert evil laughing smiley)

[KarenNC]

Pure phonics over here ;) (insert evil laughing smiley)

 

Including not even teaching them to recognize something like their own names or the word "the" until their spelling would fit in the progression of your phonics program? That's what I mean by "pure" phonics--zero words by sight, only when they fall within the phonics progression. By "pure" sight words, I mean someone who never sounds out a word for their child.

[Storm Bay]

The essential difference is that structural grammar doesn't say that "person, place, thing, or idea" is the wrong definition of a noun; it doesn't approach grammar by looking at the meaning of a word at all.

 

If you read the sentence "The ugly grixblums sit in the tree," you would know immediately that "grixblum" was a noun. You wouldn't know because you know that "grixblum" is a person, place, thing, or idea; you would know because only nouns behave that way in sentences in English. Structural grammar is about recognizing nouns (and other things) in the way the brain of a native English speaker already recognizes them: structurally, and not by meaning.

 

Does that help?

 

Yes!!! Thanks. If there were a structural grammar book for dc, I'd be sure to take a look at it because it's intriguing. At our house, I think we'd know it was a noun because of where it was used anyway, but not the same way as what I think you're saying.

[Storm Bay]

The green tree marched angrily over the field.

 

 

 

This post made a great deal of sense to me.

 

Well that's a start.:) Sounds like, at least that far, it's teaching structural grammar. I'll have to take a look at Jensen's. Thanks for the tip!

 

 

If it's like Jensen's Format Writing, it may be dry, but now I'm going to put that back on my list of books to look at again.

[johnandtinagilbert]

 

Including not even teaching them to recognize something like their own names or the word "the" until their spelling would fit in the progression of your phonics program? That's what I mean by "pure" phonics--zero words by sight, only when they fall within the phonics progression. By "pure" sight words, I mean someone who never sounds out a word for their child.

Taught their names phonetically and taught "the" via the history of the word and explained the change over time. When we come to sight words, I explain word origin if applicable (something like...words sometimes are carried over from other languages, so they keep their "other" pronunciation, which is really like teaching the phonics of that language in our house), but there are so few true sight words, we are pure phonics and it is a beautiful thing! Using the program we use, a spell to read O/G method, phonics comes first, then readers that include applicable vocabulary. Edited December 14, 2010 by johnandtinagilbert

[Matryoshka]

Including not even teaching them to recognize something like their own names or the word "the" until their spelling would fit in the progression of your phonics program? That's what I mean by "pure" phonics--zero words by sight, only when they fall within the phonics progression. By "pure" sight words, I mean someone who never sounds out a word for their child.

 

I had them sounding out every word they asked to spell, including their names even before they learned to read, and as they learned I always had them sound out new words - I'd just tell them the new phonemes. The only word I can think of that I had to teach as being completely nuts was "one" (and "once"). As someone else said, I often used etymology to explain the spelling of some apparently "non-phonetic" words.

[Crimson Wife]

I'm not sure if this particular curriculum has been mentioned in this thread yet (didn't come up in a search & I'm too lazy to click back through 22 pages' worth ;)) but I just ordered Message and Meaning: An Introduction to Linguistics by Dr. Judith Schwartz. It's aimed at a jr. high audience and the description says that it covers syntax, form classes, and "deep structure". Looks interesting!

[johnandtinagilbert]

I'm not sure if this particular curriculum has been mentioned in this thread yet (didn't come up in a search & I'm too lazy to click back through 22 pages' worth ;)) but I just ordered Message and Meaning: An Introduction to Linguistics by Dr. Judith Schwartz. It's aimed at a jr. high audience and the description says that it covers syntax, form classes, and "deep structure". Looks interesting!

why oh why have you tempted me so?:D

[Jumping In Puddles]

I'm not sure if this particular curriculum has been mentioned in this thread yet (didn't come up in a search & I'm too lazy to click back through 22 pages' worth ;)) but I just ordered Message and Meaning: An Introduction to Linguistics by Dr. Judith Schwartz. It's aimed at a jr. high audience and the description says that it covers syntax, form classes, and "deep structure". Looks interesting!

 

Have you had a chance to look this over yet? :lurk5:

[Crimson Wife]

I did receive it and it's a nice but brief overview of linguistics written about a middle school level. There are 6 lessons: Redundancy, Symbol System, Syntax, Form Classes, Semantics, Synthesis.

 

The TM is basically just a glorified answer key and I'd say not worth the money. It has a listing of objectives for each section, a list of procedures that goes along the lines of:

1. Have students read section 1 on pg. 2 of the student handbook.

2. After they've completed reading section 1, engage the class in a discussion of the question posed in section 2.

3. Ask students to read section 3, pp. 3 to 5.

4. After the students complete section 3, review section 4 and answer any questions.

5. Have students complete the activity in section 4 and compare their results.

 

I haven't figured out how I'm going to use Message & Meaning yet. I'm toying with the idea of using it with Ellen McHenry's Excavating English as they seem like they might be complementary.

[Violet Crown]

Just chiming in to mention that I'm having good success adapting Ronald Wardhaugh's Understanding English Grammar: A Linguistic Approach to the level of dd8. I'm reading ahead of time, making sure I understand thoroughly myself, deciding what level of detail to go to with dd, and then making it a discussion lesson with her. There are end-of-chapter exercises that are usable but also in need of pretty severe adaptation.

 

It's very exciting to hear dd8 announce chirpily, "I know three reasons why that's a noun!":)

[Just Robyn]

Home Grammar

[Momling]

Home Grammar

 

You're just going to tease us like that? :tongue_smilie:

What is it? Who wrote it? Can we what's inside?

[angela in ohio]

You're just going to tease us like that? :tongue_smilie:

What is it? Who wrote it? Can we what's inside?

 

Here is the "About" page

 

You can see the entire thing at the site, as it is a pdf file.

[ElizabethB]

Pure phonics over here ;) (insert evil laughing smiley)

:iagree:

 

Here, too!

 

 

I had them sounding out every word they asked to spell, including their names even before they learned to read, and as they learned I always had them sound out new words - I'd just tell them the new phonemes. The only word I can think of that I had to teach as being completely nuts was "one" (and "once"). As someone else said, I often used etymology to explain the spelling of some apparently "non-phonetic" words.

 

:iagree:

 

And, I teach one and once together, as a set of crazy words.

 

If you look on my sight word page, there are simple explanations that allow you to teach anything else phonetically. After the hours and hours and hours of extra work my remedial students have needed, I am more than willing to spend a few minutes here and there up front. It probably takes 20 minutes total to teach everything needed to sound out all the Dolch words.

[JadeOrchidSong]

Hrm. My younger children are learning better with R&S Grade 5 than with the levels written for their grades. I am convinced the success comes from the fact that R&S Grade 5 explains things thoroughly instead of saving trickier layers for later.

 

I think when they see all the layers, it makes more sense. At least for my kids.

 

"A word that can have a plural form" isn't all that sophisticated, is it? If they know even the 8 parts of speech taught in Schoolhouse Rock, they can easily grasp the fact that an adjective doesn't have a plural form, and a verb is a single action or state of being, and a conjunction is not more than one...

 

edited to add: I'm not sure I should be in this conversation. I don't have experience teaching English to any children other than my own, and my 6yo and 10yo are very happily studying R&S Grade 5 along with my 12yo. The younger two might be atypical.

I really like what you said about R&S 5. I started my older boy at 5.5 with R&S 2, and now at 8.5, he is doing R&S 4. I am a little afraid that it is too much for him and have decided to slow down or put it away for a while. Now I am really glad that I can go on with it for him. I am looking forward to R&S 5 now that I know what you say about it. I also considered MCT, but now I am not tempted anymore. I might get Caesar's English for the vocab in a few months for older ds or both dss to try.

Thanks!

[usetoschool]

Home Grammar

 

Thank you.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I do not know what MCT grammar is like because I have never used it, and I am NOT about to read 20 pages of replies- so forgive me if either

 

1) this has been mentioned

 

or

 

2) You have stated this is not what you are looking for

 

 

 

That being said, have you looked at Bob Jones English/Writing books? I LOVE their english books!

[Mom2Es]

Example: Instead of "a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea" (traditional grammar, based on meaning), something like "a noun is a word that can have a plural form, usually by the signal -s." In this example, you would want to go on later to talk about mass nouns; but there's a difference between starting simplistically in discussing grammar and just flatly asserting false/misleading things.

 

I realize this is a very old thread, but how does that work with noncount nouns in a way that is not just as potentially "misleading" to a child's mind? Nouns like advice, courage, intelligence, music... They might be used in conjunction with another word that has a plural form, but they are not plural themselves.

[Violet Crown]

I realize this is a very old thread, but how does that work with noncount nouns in a way that is not just as potentially "misleading" to a child's mind? Nouns like advice, courage, intelligence, music... They might be used in conjunction with another word that has a plural form, but they are not plural themselves.

 

<Lurches from the grave, brushing phonemes from shroud>

 

Mom2Es,

 

All I can proffer is that my children weren't confused by starting out with "nouns are the kinds of words where you can show there's more than one by adding -s." Of course they were quick to think of exceptions (men, children, sheep), but that they could come up with counterexamples showed that they had correctly grasped what a noun was.

 

The next step was to explain that a noun is the kind of word that you can put "the" or "some" in front of to make a complete phrase (I don't actually say "phrase" at first, but something like "a little saying that doesn't sound like something's missing.") That takes care of mass nouns, though my girls had already figured out, and informed me, that some nouns don't have plurals.

 

You see that between -s plural form and preceding article, you have a way of looking at nouns that looks primarily at form and distribution rather than primarily category or meaning. This is how a linguistic (what I've been loosely calling "structural") approach differs from the traditional approach to grammar. And it's why, for instance, when Lewis Carroll tells me that "all mimsy were the borogoves," I know that borogove is a noun, despite having no clue what the word means. (Similarly, I know that mimsy is an adjective, though it creates no descriptive idea in my mind at all.)

 

<shambles back into grave>

[stripe]

What I want is a grammar curriculum that isn't based on an explanation of grammar based on facts about meaning, but based on facts about grammatical structure. Example: Instead of "a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea" (traditional grammar, based on meaning), something like "a noun is a word that can have a plural form, usually by the signal -s." In this example, you would want to go on later to talk about mass nouns; but there's a difference between starting simplistically in discussing grammar and just flatly asserting false/misleading things.

 

<shining light at gravestone>

 

The trouble with this is, it only works in Englsh. French pluralizes adjectives, and Japanese hardly pluralizes anything. My kids are bilingual so I can't make statements that would be utterly confusing in their other language. Plus, I think it's a bit confusing when you have "-s" added to verbs (make/makes, go/goes), which suggests a plural through its appearance at least. Also some proper nouns don't really have plurals. I mean, "Nancy Smith" is a proper noun but "Nancy Smiths"? What does that even mean? I am not much of a grammar curriculum/methodology expert, being far too entrenched in the traditional ways, I am sure, but I just...don't get it.

 

Eta: oops. I see I blathered on about this in 2010. Sorry. Go back to sleep in there.

[Storm Bay]

ignore this--made a mistake

[stripe]

I am horrified to see I was quoting Killgallon's TM in 2010. Time flies.

[Emerald Stoker]

nm

[Violet Crown]

<shining light at gravestone>

 

The trouble with this is, it only works in Englsh. French pluralizes adjectives, and Japanese hardly pluralizes anything. My kids are bilingual so I can't make statements that would be utterly confusing in their other language. Plus, I think it's a bit confusing when you have "-s" added to verbs (make/makes, go/goes), which suggests a plural through its appearance at least. Also some proper nouns don't really have plurals. I mean, "Nancy Smith" is a proper noun but "Nancy Smiths"? What does that even mean? I am not much of a grammar curriculum/methodology expert, being far too entrenched in the traditional ways, I am sure, but I just...don't get it.

 

Eta: oops. I see I blathered on about this in 2010. Sorry. Go back to sleep in there.

 

During the first life of the thread, I'd noticed that several people objected to a structural approach on the grounds that it only applied to English. My two thoughts on that: (1) I'm teaching English grammar, so it doesn't strike me as a drawback that this approach teaches English grammar. (2) And I'm not convinced that such an approach is necessarily limited to a single language anyway. We use Artes Latinae for Latin, which uses an explicitly structural approach to teach Latin, in the course of which it teaches a great deal of English grammar via comparison and contrast. If you have a good grasp on the grammatical structure of two languages, why not teach both using an inflection/distribution method? (Then write it up as a curriculum and rake in the cash.)

 

As far as the specific objection that third person singular verbs in English have the -s marker, all I can say is that that's never caused any confusion - I assume because it's obvious that it's not showing 'more than one.'

 

Proper nouns are an interesting exception. But it's not a confusing exception, because of course it's not ungrammatical in English to say "three Queen Elizabeths" or "several Arthur Dents" in the way that it would be ungrammatical to say "*three withouts" or "*several hopefuls." They're clearly nouns, and make valid plural forms; they're just silly. (Of course, there are interesting cases where they do occur as plurals: "He's a better speaker than ten Bill Clintons," and the like. But I digress, and am hungry for brains. Probably because the children did away with them today, together with the last of my nerves.)

Edited October 8, 2012 by Sharon in Austin