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Teaching and Learning Grammar: The Prototype-Construction Approach by Arthur Whimbey and Myra J. Linden. Chicago: BGF Performance Systems, 2001. 180 pp.
In Teaching and Learning Grammar: The Prototype-Construction Approach, Arthur Whimbey and Myra Linden attempt to provide insight to high school and early college English and composition teachers. Teaching and Learning Grammar describes the authors' "revolutionary" approach to grammar instruction, titled the Prototype-Construction (P-C) Approach, meant as a tool for improving student writing; in their text, Whimbey and Linden argue for a need for improved grammar pedagogy based on research studies and the experiences of students and teachers alike; in short, they believe there is significant failure in the current pedagogical methods of grammar instruction.
The P-C Approach employs distinct steps for attempting to teach grammar. It begins by introducing students to prototypes in the form of "prototype sentences." Each prototype sentence consists of three main parts: a subject that performs an action, a verb that expresses an action, and an object that receives the action. In the P-C Approach, students learn the prototypical grammar concepts prior to moving forward in their instruction. The authors' claim is that all grammatical concepts include "relatively simple, 'prototype' cases that can readily be defined and also more complicated, harder-to-find cases" (13). In theory, once students have entered the world of grammar through prototypes, they are ready to proceed to the construction aspect of the P-C Approach. Students are presented with exercises that represent the grammatical characteristics of the prototypes. They are then introduced to nonprototype cases through exercises that illustrate these more difficult cases along with their attributes that are similar to those of the prototypes. Because of this similarity, they belong in the same grammatical category. The exercises in the P-C Approach are almost strictly of the sentence-combining variety, asking students to "construct" sentences. The resulting sentences are nonprototypes that more clearly illustrate the studied grammar concept. This combining type of exercise, one that forces students to use prototype grammar concepts to forma complex, nonprototype sentence, is typical of what the P-C Approach requires of students during the construction phase.
Teaching and Learning Grammar is broken into four sections in an attempt to cover the scope of grammatical concepts. Section 1, consisting of Chapters 1 to 3,...