Teaching aspect via english

kent lee k-lee7 at students.uiuc.edu
Tue Dec 10 13:21:40 EST 2002




   [I've split this into two mails for convenience.]

   Continuing my last mail, I agree the traditional way of teaching aspect
in Greek classes is flawed and linguistically simplistic. And i agree the
way of teaching grammar in our schools is flawed. The English grammar
taught in primary and secondary school is simplistic, superficial,
prescriptive, and useless. I learned about grammar from studying Latin,
Greek, and German in high school and college, and usually that's the best
way, tho some students find those extra study guides helpful like 'English
grammar for students of Latin/German/Klingon/etc.'
   The prescriptive approach in our public schools is useless for
students' needs, and is based on linguistic myths. For example, we were
taught there are eight parts of speech. What's a 'part of speech'? To me,
speech parts are tongues, uvulas, palates, teeth, etc. Those things are
word classes, or grammatical categories, and there are many classes and
subclasses. We were taught 'not' is an adverb, but it's actually a
negative particle. Not to mention the outright lies taught, like passives
are bad, 'ain't' is incorrect, etc.

kent lee
Univ. of Illinois




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