Re: Grammar in HS (Was: Re: Argument Structures)

From: "nicole perrin"

> Here for me is southwestern Connecticut.  It's not that I miss having
> been taught prescriptivism, per se, but that in French class when my
> teacher tries to explain direct object pronouns no one gets it because
> no one knows what a direct object *is*.  Or an indirect object.  Forget
> trying to learn cases in German or Latin, it's almost impossible.  The
> foreign language teachers expect you to know the difference between
> subject and object, so they can say "with the subject use nominative,
> with the direct object use accusative" but that's just not enough
> explanation for someone who not only has no idea what subject and object
> are
This was a common complaint among my lang teachers back in high school as
well (late 70's in central-west New Hampshire - French, Spanish, and Latin
were offered). Before one could teach direct object pronouns, students
needed a crash course in what a direct object was - something they should've
nailed down over in English class. Lang teachers were exasperated.
Meanwhile, though, back in freshman English, students were identifying "log"
in the sentence, "The fox jumped over the log.", as the verb. Grim. Very
grim.

Kou