Re: Grammar

Alberto Moreira wrote:
> 
> Said  "Bill Bonde ( the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack
> )"  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> :
> 
> >This is the original quote from me: "An educational system which ignores
> >the native grammar of a group of people is going to produce less than
> >excellent results."
> 
> This is the very reason we have languages: to avoid fragmentation into
> a myriad of native grammars of small groups of people
>
We have people who have native dialects. All I'm saying is that it helps
the learning process for the instructor to know where the student is
coming from. Just calling the student a moron over and over while
walloping him on the knuckles with a ruler isn't going to change
anything except where he keeps his hands.


> So, it's the
> other way around: an educational system which panders for little
> regionalisms - specially because of some social or political agenda -
> is going to produce less than excellent results.
>
Who said *anything* about 'pandering' to anything? You invented that.


> Culture, as it should be taught at school, must be a unifying factor,
> not a fragmenting one. It should emphasize commonality, not
> differences. It should aim at helping to create an identity.
> 
You are diverging into other topics here. My original point stands, that
the teacher should have a clue *why* the student is making an error so
that the teacher can more easily apply the right corrective measures.
Imagine walking into class with an idiolect which had tense as optional
and aspect as mandatory, the opposite of the situation in Standard
American English. Imagine not having understood that some of your
dialect's constructions are camouflaged in  meaning compared to near or
even identical constructions that the teacher knows in Standard American
English. Would you be surprised that you might have trouble? That the
teacher might become frustrated?



-- 
"Throw me that lipstick, darling, I wanna redo my stigmata."
+-Jennifer Saunders, "Absolutely Fabulous"