Looking at Tressler’s “Twelve Planks,” listed in the last log, we find these concepts of teaching English were generally lost from the late forties through the seventies. Instead of language practice, teachers were stressing the “forms,” rules of grammar, with a profusion of red “proofreading marks” and a dearth of practical instruction. The actual content, organization and style were not considered material one should teach. The feeling was largely that if one knew the rules, one could apply them without instruction. English instruction works like a pendulum, swinging from an analytical (rules are all that matter) mentality to a global (what the student writes is all that matters) viewpoint. (The same is true in the highly politicized global (whole approach) versus analytical (phonics approach) found in the teaching of reading.
In the sixties and followed up in the eighties and in 2007 (noted earlier), all major meta-analyses of English instruction have shown the complete incompetency of the analytical writing instructional approach. We still, however, find that it is what teachers feel more comfortable using, squawking like crows if the new materials don’t have the oh so handy grammar practice book… This is easily “taught” (and soon forgotten), easy to grade, and doesn’t require any more knowledge of the language than a cat would have. We must, however, remember, that it is just as good to have a student just sit and talk than waste time in an English drill book. At least, when a student is talking, a student is practicing the language in a way that is useful. Remember “Plank 3” from Tressler: “Practice is of little value unless or until a person sees a need of it.” A lesson purporting to teach the difference between, for instance, a noun and a pronoun, with exercises requesting the student discriminate between the two is completely useless. The student should be using the words, not picking them from a basket!
Remember also the aim of an English program. It is not to teach a student to recognize various “parts of speech” but to teach a student to use the words, in conversation and in writing. Remember that a student uses language far more when talking than writing! A perfectly quiet “language arts” class is an oxymoronic situation! “Creative expression – that is, translating experience into words in order to share what is too good to keep to oneself – is a vital and valuable part of an English program” (Tressler’s “9th Plank”). This needs to emphasize written as well as oral expression. English is the art of language, the skill of communication, not the memorization of rules with exceptions.
