REPOR TRESUMES ED 017 995 TE 000 298 THE ENGLISh LANGUAGE, THE I.NGUISTIC APPROACH. EUCLID ENGLISH DEMONSTRATION CENTER, OHIO EDRS PRICE MF-81.00 HC$10n12 251P. DESCRIPTORS *CURRICULUM GUIDES, *ENGLISH INSTRUCTION, *JUNIOR NIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, *LANGUAGE, *LINGUISTICS, CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, DIACHRONIC LINGUISTICS, DIALECTS, ETYMOLOGY, FORM CLASSES (LANGUAGES), SECONDARY EDUCATION, SEMANTICS, SYNTAX, ENGLISH, EUCLID ENGLISH DEMONSTRATION CENTER, PROJECT ENGLISH, THIS GUIDE FOR GRADES 7, 8, AND 9 BEGINS WITH A COLLECTION OF PAPERS EXPLAINING THE LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE--(1) "THE CLASSROOM TEACHER AND LINGUISTIC ECLECTICISM" BY A. HOOD ROBERTS,(2) "SOME NOTES' ON LINGUISTICS AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH" BY JOSEPH H. FRIEND, (3)"A UNIT ON DIALECTS" BY JAMES F. MCCAMPBELL, AND (4) "TEACHING SYNTAX" BY GEORGE HILLOCKS. UNITS WHICH FOLLOW ARE--(1) DIALECTS, (2) SYNTAX,(3) CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (FOR THE GRADE 9 AVERAGE CURRICULUM) ,(4) FORM CLASSES (MORPHOLOGY) ,(5) DEFINITION AND ETYMOLOGY (FOR THE GRADE 7, AVERAGE CURRICULUM) ,AND (6) THREE UNITS ON SEMANTICS FOR GRADES 7, 8, AND 9. LESSONS IN UNITS CONTAIN OBJECTIVES, SUGGESTED TEACHING PROCEDURES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES FOR TEACHERS, EXERCISES, AND STUDY GUIDES. COPIES OF THE EIGHT UNITS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE (LIMITED SUPPLY) FROM CHARLES C. ROGERS, PROJECT UPGRADE, SCHOOL DISTRICT OF AIKEN COUNTY, P.O. BOX 771, AIKEN, SOUTt CAROLINA 29801, $0.50 PER UNIT. (DL) v.4004, - - CUMENT FILMEDIMOrd THE EUCLID ENGLISH DEMONSTRATIONCENTER PROJECT ENGLISH MATERIALS U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEWN, EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY ASRECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION DRIGINATIt* IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRERNT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: The Linguistic Approach a Distributed by The School District of Aiken County Office of the Superintendent CURRICULUM DIRECTOR Leonard V. Kosinski "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS Charles C. Rogers COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED Project Upgrade P.O. Drawer 771 TO ERIC AN ANIMATIONS OPERATING Aiken, S. C. 29801 UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U.S. efFICE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER." TABLE OF CONTENTS THE CIASSROOMTEACHER ANDLINGUISTIC ECLECTICISM by A. Hood Roberts, Ph. D. .1. SOME NOTES ONLINGUISTICSAND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH by Joseph H. Friend, Ph. D. A UNIT ON DIALECTS by Jams F. Mc Campbell TEACHING SYNTAX by George Hillocks, Jr. THE CIASSROOM TEACHER AND LINGUISTICECLECTICISM by A. Hood Roberts, Ph. D. Most of you have by this time, no doubt, begun to wearyof the subject of linguistics. It seems that every time there happens tobe an assemblage of English teachers, someone has to bring up the topic and begintalking about linguistics and structuralism and phonemes and all the restF.:the terms cur- rent in the jargon. By now you are probably seeking someone toblame for this sorry state of affairs, and I think that itmight be therapeutic to tell you who the culprits are. The American Indians are the ones who are responsible for thebeginnings-- of structural linguistics.If only they had had the courtesyto speak an Indo-European language (one derived from Latin would have beenbest), it is possible that you would not have to be learning abOut phonemes and immediate constituents today.But, alas, the poor Indian, he spoke anon-Indo-E pean tongue, and thereby caused the investigators of his language to search far new methods by which they might describe his language. If According to Harry Hoijer, it was the anthropologist Franz Boas, t/tie editor of the Handbook of American Indian Languages, who establishedaiound 1911 "the basic principle that each language is to be described, nottterms of some preconceived standard (as,e. g., Graeco-Latingrammar) buts ly in terms of its own patterns of sounds, forms, and meanings, as thescr patterns are derived induAively from native texts. "l The great linguist Edwatd Sapir studied under Boas and carried forward the Boas tradf.tion in anthroxiological linguistics. C. C, Fries states that "in 1925 Sapirls palm. on Patte rns in Language in America (and de Saussure's lectures in Switzerland o- duced the beginnings of structural linguistics."2 In 1933 was published Leonard Bloom field's Ida.s2; a book frith which we are all familiar whether at first hand or not, and what Friesas called the third period of Modern Linguistic Science was well undo. ,1-waysOne can see that structural linguistics has been around for quite a while, but :It has been only within the past few years that much information cizeerning this field of study has filtered down trim the universities to Pie schools. As teachers of English weare primarily interested in the practical rather than the theoretical, and I hope in this paper to discuss some of the appli- cations of the findings of linguistic research to the teachinh of English. For many years now linguists have held the concept or do nine of usage,,.. An understanding of this concept and ceotain findings of the dialectologLsts will help us perform eur teaching tasksmore effectively. According to the doctrine of usage, there is no universal, immutable authority or standard for what is "good" dr "bad," "correct"or "inoarract" in language behavior, be' it pronunciation` or syntax, but rather that there are Many standards. That is, the speech of the educated and cultivated speakerd in a given speech community constitutes the standard for persons within that community.Thus there are as many standards as there are speech communities (although some would have you believe that the linguists admitno standards and advocate the , 1Harry Hoijer "Aaropoloical Linguistics," Trends in European and American 1222-22_2, pw ,100. 2Charles C. Fries,"Advancesin cs," xxiii, 140. 1 (October- 1961),p. 31. 2. "anything goes" approadh). The work of the dialectologists gives usthe material necessary-to perceive what the standard within a speechcommunity really .is.One of the major contributions of the dialectologists hasbeen the recognition of the difference between regional and social dialects,and that we areail speakers. of some type of social dialect and some typeof regional dialect. We live in a mobile society, and your students are verylikely not going to be all from the same locality, andindeed, the teachers in any given school are not all going to be from the sameplace.What does the teacher do when the textbook says that words beginningwith the letters -141.-- ;met be pronounced as /hw-/3or that hoarse mustnot be homophonous with ho ? or that cot must not be homophonouswith ca ht?Obviously theintelligent teacher is going to do what intelligent teachers havealways done:Ignore it! The intelligent and informed teacher will go a stepfurther and explain that the author of the text has unfortunately confusedregional with social a rectal features. This teacher will resist the temptation(nay, the c of the authors of the textbooks) to impose certaindialectal features (2 his own speech or that of the author of the text upon thestudent's who .happen to be'speakers of different regional dialects Permit me to give a horrible example of. linguistic know- in action. Until recently I taught English at a university in theSouth, and as a few of us are aware, Southerners do not normallyspeak the saps as people from up-state New York. From New York came a roan who was tobe the speech therapist at this Southern university. The freshmen filed;alto his office, read a few well- chosen sentences or so, and then filed out. Imaipett' the consternation on campus when he reported that between one -halfand ro- thirds of the freshman class had serous speech defects whieh would immediate attention. These students he found were pronouncing ee id alike; they "dropped their final Ws," and they 4id all, the other ngs (many of which were done by Shakespeare, Pope, Washington; Jeff Iv n,etc.) that people just don't do nowadays in Syracuse, Nev York. The same principles that apply to pronunciation apply also to matters of vocabulary, morphology, and syntax.However, U the st nt is using language in a way that is typical of the uneducated s in his speech community, it would be the teacher's duty to point t s ut to him, and tell him that this type of linguistic behavior, while riot sinful or wicked, will probably put him at a disadvantage in many social situations and that it Aright be prudent for him to attempt to eliminate these characterist,cs of a lower social dialect from his speech and writing. The linking £ of the late President Kennedy (as in "The very idear of iti") his lack of postvocalic and preconsonantal r ("with great vigah") caused c nt among Wwesterners, but it did not lower him in theiLerisatelvem.Suchwo d not have been the case had he consistently or even occa.o~ used or,double negatives, for these are characteristics of a lower social , This, it seems to ne, is what is important ut knowing something of the doctrine of usage andSialectology, It can nable the teacher to avoid fruitless and frustrating effort spent in to change regional dialectal. peculiarities and thereby will enable him o have more time to spend On more important matters, such as the social dialectal features of his students. Work by the.struotnral linguists on he suprasegmentals of ArneriCan English is of some value in the teaching of punctuatien.Unfortunately there is no one-to-one correspondence between the marks of punctuation and tare suprasegmental. Junctures and intonation-contours. If there were, then the 3. teaching of punctuation would be a relativelysimple matter. Eamn though the fit is not perfect, some assistance is offeredby a knowledge of the relationship of the suprasegmentals andthe marks of punctuation.