Bethanne, Ivette, Emme, Paola, and Nate Discussion Questions for 10/16

While reading Schleppegrell's At Last: The Meaning in Grammar, I couldn't help but think about the idea of teaching understanding before procedures or vise versa in math. Schleppegrell speaks about functional grammar, which I took to mean that instead of teaching and thinking about grammar as a set of rules, one should teach and think about grammar as a way to make meaning of language. However, I wondered while reading about Schleppegrell deciphering a college freshman's writing on registering for classes, would this work? Would a student write more clearly if grammar were explained to them in the context of functional grammar and making meaning of language instead of rules? This relates to mathematical procures because many people have told me that they like and are good at math because they just have to follow rules or procedures/algorithms. In school, I agreed with this school of thought and was happy learning algorithms without understanding them. It wasn't until later in my math career that I was able to understand these procedures/algorithms. I wonder, would I have been able to understand the meaning behind the algorithms if I hadn't already understood how to do the algorithms first? So, with respect to functional grammar, do you think students will be able to write conventionally using a functional grammar approach without already knowing the grammatical rules and conventions?  From your pre practicum experiences, do you see evidence in your classroom that functional grammar would be helpful? Also, Schleppegrell says "We face major challenges in this endeavor, as teacher education has typically not developed teachers' understanding of grammatical systems or provided them with meaningful ways of talking about language." Do you think BC does this? If so, how? If not, how could BC do this (better)?

Also, I found Halliday's Some Grammatical Problems in Scientific English quite interesting because it spoke about reasons why people have trouble reading and understanding scientific texts. In a sense, scientific language has become it's own language. So, thinking about functional grammar and David Treuer on Ojibwe, do you think that we should teach students how to decipher and read scientific language or should we change scientific language itself to make it "easier" (or both). If we change it, which Halliday mentions scientists are considering, are we getting rid of a language and thus its traditions and a certain way of conveying information that can possibly only be said in that language?

~Bethanne