Structural Grammar and the Sixth Grade

Abstract

ROBERT C. POOLEY concludes his review of Charles Carpenter Fries's Structure of English2 with the statement that, despite Fries, 'for a long time to come the grammar of the schools will plod the traditional path.'3 One is forced to admit the probable truth of this dictum. Based on what Pooley himself calls 'the inconsistencies and false orientation of traditional grammar,' our dictionaries, foreign language texts, handbooks, and reference grammars will certainly keep traditional concepts of grammar alive for a long time to come. Perhaps more important than books, the varying present grammatical knowledge of students, teachers, editors, and the general populace (from eight to eighty) will retard any rapid change to a new system. Yet surely a start, however humble and perhaps misguided, ought to be made in getting rid of admitted inconsistencies and false orientation-and the earlier in the school program the better. Pooley's statement, it seems to me, overlooks the very real help that 'structure' can provide at an elementary level-a conviction I was led to as much by a fifth-grader as by Fries's book. From her teacher's dictation the fifth-grader had copied down definitions of some of the parts of speech--among others, 'The verb is a word of action.' When I saw the definitions, I wondered how tenand eleven-year-olds could possibly apply these definitions to finding the parts of speech in sentences; and my wonder grew when the fifth-grader wanted to know if football and baseball were not words of action. I suggested that she could forget about action and spot verbs in anything she said by looking for the word that changed form for time,' that would be 'different' when she used right now, yesterday, or tomorrow with the word. Being asked to say something, anything, she offered utterances like Mother does the dishes; I help; Rodney is five years old; Gee whiz. In all the sentences she or I offered, she located the verb without difficulty.