Miscellaneous

David Alan Pippin—Dave—died on July 6, 2024 in Boston of cancer.  He was 59. A person of wide-ranging interests, Dave was passionate about boat building and sailing, mushroom hunting and cooking, hiking and biking and skiing, books and podcasts, music and movies, letterpress printing, Polish language classes and polka dancing, radio broadcasting, the sea and the sky and the woods, and all of the arts and sciences, most especially linguistics.

Dave had a long career as a K-12 teacher in independent and in public schools, much of it devoted to bringing language science into the English language arts curriculum. More recently, he worked as an educator with Community Boat Building, as a National Park Service ranger, and as a boat rigger.

Dave was an experienced, enthusiastic middle school English teacher working at an independent school in Seattle when he came to linguistics. In October 1999, he attended a talk by Steven Pinker about his then new book Words and Rules. Afterwards, he asked Pinker whether he could direct him to any linguistics teaching resources. Pinker told him that Wayne O’Neil and Maya Honda had developed materials for schools. The next day, Dave emailed Wayne; his motivation was clear:

My goal is to bring a fresh perspective to the study of grammar in my fifth grade classrooms. Of course, I don’t want to overwhelm my students with too many x-bars… It seems to me that they would appreciate a bit of linguistics because patterns appeal to them. I taught them SVO vs. SOV languages, and that sunk in more than any subject-predicate underlining exercise ever did.

Wayne, long an advocate for bringing linguistics into the school curriculum, replied and suggested that he and Maya could pay a visit to set up a mini-course. Dave accepted the offer, which led to the first of many annual school visits and a productive, nearly two decade long collaboration designing and trying out a problem-set-based approach to deepening middle schoolers’ scientific inquiry skills through the investigation of language.

During their initial school visits, Wayne and Maya taught linguistics in Dave’s classes while he observed; they also tutored him in person and by email. In time, as he learned linguistics, Dave began to take over more of the teaching. He loved problem sets and was delighted that many of his students did too. He was particularly enamored of the New England “r-dropping” and the Armenian noun pluralization problem sets. In addition to giving them to his students, he would challenge school colleagues and parents to solve them. He wanted everyone to learn linguistics!

In 2004, the trio gave what was likely the first paper co-presented by a teacher at a Linguistic Society of America annual meeting and certainly the first with “Jell-O” in the title. During the Q&A period, someone asked Dave if he taught his fifth graders the IPA. Looking puzzled, he answered, “No. The only IPA I know is beer.” The audience laughed; Dave laughed. He was a hit! (Nigel Fabb later noted that Dave’s response was perfect, because doing linguistics does not require the IPA.)

Eventually, Dave did learn the IPA and even taught it on occasion to his students. In 2005, his education as a linguist advanced dramatically when he attended the LSA Institute at Harvard and MIT. Taking courses with Morris Halle, Norvin Richards, Lisa Green, and others was a heady experience for him. Other opportunities and partnerships in K-12 linguistics arose. 

Kristin Denham met Dave at the 2004 LSA meeting after the Jell-O talk and thus began another (overlapping) nearly two decade long collaboration with both Kristin and Anne Lobeck, this new trio’s common interests in integrating linguistics into K-12 education also benefiting from their shared location in Washington State. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Dave attended the Western Washington University Linguistics in Education Workshops, with Wayne and Maya in attendance as well. Anne and Kristin visited and worked with Dave at his various schools over the years. His multitude of interests and diverse teaching contexts motivated their partnership integrating linguistics into social studies, English language arts, and most recently—Kristin and Dave’s last project—into science classes in Boston.

Dave led the way for K-12 teachers to become full participants in the LSA. He attended and presented at annual meetings and was an avid participant in The Word of the Year voting. In 2015, he became the first teacher to serve as Chair of the LSA Committee on Linguistics in the School Curriculum, bringing his energy and enthusiasm and Portland’s famous Voodoo doughnuts to a much-too-early morning LiSC meeting!

Dave was committed to growing as a linguist and as a teacher, to reflecting on the impact of doing linguistics and of working between and across disciplines for his teaching and students’ learning, and to sharing his work with others. Evidence of this is his last talk, the invited Eduling Virtual Seminar “Encouraging spatial thinkers through linguistic inquiry and boat building”, given in 2023 at a point in his life when he was no longer active in schools.

On his own, as well as with colleagues, he wrote and presented a number of papers about linguistics in K-12 education at state, national and international conferences and published work in edited volumes (see Publications and Presentations, below).

Martin Hackl, who came to know Dave not through linguistics but at Community Boat Building, knew him to be “a kind and caring person who carried an almost child-like excitement for life”. Nothing could be truer. For those of us who worked with Dave and who called him our friend, we remember where that excitement for life took him—and us, and we deeply mourn his passing.

Maya Honda and Kristin Denham

July 11, 2024

Publications

Battistella, E., & Pippin, D. (2019). Linguistic diversity in Oregon and Washington. In K. Denham (Ed.), Northwest voices : language and culture in the Pacific Northwest, 3-22. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press.

Denham, K., & Pippin, D. (2019). Sustained linguistic inquiry as a means of confronting language ideology and prejudice. In M. Devereaux & C. Palmer (Eds.), Teachers’ and linguists’ perspectives: Practical strategies for teaching language variation and language ideologies, 147-156. Abington, U.K: Routledge.

Denham, K., & Pippin, D. (2014). Voices of the Pacific Northwest: Language and life along the Columbia and throughout Cascadia from the 18th Century to the present. A [middle school social studies] curriculum of historical and linguistic inquiry. https://www.voicesofthepnw.net/

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2010). On promoting linguistics literacy: Bringing language science to the English classroom. In K. Denham & A. Lobeck (Eds.), Linguistics at school: Language awareness in primary and secondary education, 175-188. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pippin, D. (2010). The diary of Opal Whiteley: a literary and linguistic mystery. In K. Denham & A. Lobeck (Eds.), Linguistics at school: Language awareness in primary and secondary education, 264-271. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Presentations

Pippin, D. (2023, February 24).  Encouraging spatial thinkers through linguistic inquiry and boatbuilding. Invited Eduling Virtual Seminar (EVS) for Eduling, a Special Interest Group of ARLE, the International Association for Research in L1 Education.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2014, July 2). Developing language awareness five ways. Paper presented at the 12th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness, Hamar, Norway.

Denham, K., & Pippin, D. (2011, October). A new approach to Washington State history and geography: Inquiry via language. Presentation at the Washington State Council for the Social Studies.

Denham, K., Lobeck, A., & Pippin, D. (2011, January 7). Developing a middle school linguistics curriculum: Linguistics beyond the language arts. Presentation at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pippin, D. (2008, January 5). Creating a culture of language awareness in the schools. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.

Pippin, D. (2006, October 14). Bringing language science to the language arts classroom. Workshop presented at the Washington Science Teachers Association/Washington Organization for Reading Development Joint Conference, Linking Science and Literacy, Spokane, WA.

Pippin, D. (2006, June 24). Linguistic patterning and deviation in literature. Presentation at the Linguistics and Education Workshop, Tufts University, Medford and Somerville, MA.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2006, January 5). Problem-set based linguistics for fifth-graders and beyond. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting Workshop, K-12 Linguistics Materials, Albuquerque, NM.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2004, July 16). Linguistics in the English classroom: The view from Room 202. Paper presented at the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar Conference, Seattle, WA.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2004, July 16). On promoting linguistic literacy. Paper presented at the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar Conference, Seattle, WA.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2004, May 1). Doing linguistics with fifth-graders: A novel application of linguistics. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Portland, OR.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. (2004, January 10). When Jell-O meets generative grammar: Linguistics in the fifth-grade English classroom. LSA Annual Meeting. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Boston, MA.

Pippin, D., Honda, M., & O’Neil, W. (2000, October 13). A new rationale for grammar in education. A workshop presented at the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools All Schools Conference, Charles Wright Academy, Tacoma, WA.

Obituary - September 4, 2023:

Violetta Elżbieta Borecka, language education specialist, 

by Elżbieta Awramiuk

Violetta Elżbieta Borecka, a committed English teacher and a researcher in the field of language education, passed away on September 4, 2023. Born on April 9, 1967, in Białystok, Poland, she dedicated her entire life to education – she taught others as well as herself. She worked for twenty years in Nicolaus Copernicus School of Commerce and Economics in Białystok, were she taught specialist English. As a secondary school teacher, she was passionate about building bridges between researchers, teacher trainers, and classroom practitioners. She collaborated with educators from Finland, Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. She participated in several innovative educational projects, working to increase the attractiveness and quality of vocational education in Poland. She took part in many conferences, trainings and methodological workshops in Poland and abroad. She also cooperated with Macmillan and Oxford publishing houses as a reviewer of English textbooks. For special contributions to education and upbringing, she was awarded the KEN (National Education Commission) medal by the Minister of National Education (2018).

Violetta was a member of the Polish Society of Modern Languages. Her research interests concerned contrastive linguistics (Polish-English), methodology of teaching specialist English and content-language integrated teaching (CLIL), as well as teacher development. She served as a secretary of the conference “Knowledge about language in language education”, which took place at the Faculty of Philology University of Bialystok in 2017. She also helped with the organization of SIG EduLing seminar Linguistics for language teaching and learning in June 2018, in Białystok. Her scientific work culminated with the defence of her doctoral thesis „Interlingual interference in English language acquisition – analysis of lexical and grammatical errors in written production of Polish final year secondary school students” (which was published under the same title) at the University of Bialystok in 2018. The special issue of “Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature”, dedicated to teaching English in Poland, was the last scientific undertaking she completed.

She will be remembered as a warm, kind-hearted, open-minded, uniting person, and a very good colleague to many.

Jacques Fresson to the renewal of grammatical teaching by offering students to build with their teachers not the but a grammar , the one they implement orally and which they enrich in writing. The approach has not aged a bit: observe, classify, identify regularities in a constant back and forth between what is said and written, with a progression along schooling. The master's books that accompany the collection remain rigorous and accessible training tools. Twenty years later, Roberte will return to primary school teachers this time, to accompany their reading of the programs, with Grammar for speaking, reading and writing and teacher's books providing the theoretical insights necessary for conducting lessons. For the sake of consistency, she shows in issue 140 of Français aujourd’hui how assessment and learning practices are linked and how concepts can be enriched from year to year.

At the same time, Roberte Tomassone addresses the community of linguists and didacticians with Le texte informatif (The Informative Text), co-written with Bernard Combettes, by proposing the description of a genre of text deemed perhaps less noble and yet constantly exploited in school and today ubiquitous on the internet with multiple variations. To those who would believe in the transparency of this kind of writing and in the uselessness of didactic mediations, the authors respond by putting the problems of comprehension at the heart of their description.

And it is this same approach that we find in Pour enseigner la grammaire (For teaching grammar), a global approach that starts from the configurations of signs that make sense to go towards questions of writing without ever instrumentalizing the texts, which is illustrated by the knotting linguistics in culture with volume II co-written with Geneviève Petiot. In these two works, Roberte puts her experience of training in France and in the Francophonie at the service of students intending to teach and their trainers.

But the recipients of Roberte are not limited to teachers alone, it is to any speaker of French that she addresses herself in the work that she directs Grands repères culturels pour une langue, le français (Great cultural landmarks for a tongue, French), with the ambition to propose "an ample, documented and simple synthesis of the contributions of linguistics in the 20th century” applied to French. Book found in libraries in many countries.

Finally, Roberte knew how to address politics based on her experience at the first National Curriculum Council and her expertise in educational policies, called upon in numerous missions abroad. The assessment it draws in 1998 of the impotence of the CNP is severe:

•   “French programs built on theoretical presuppositions that are not explained and sometimes incompatible;

•   official texts from various sources with insufficient consultation;

•  a decision-making power which intervenes punctually and settles disciplinary problems on criteria which have nothing to do with disciplinary matters;

•   texts that are too concise to be clear, whose vague wording does not allow the contents to be explained;

•   accompanying documents that are too succinct and too rare to be useful…;

•  initial teacher training that is often too light and poorly targeted, which does not always allow them to shed light on this darkness;

•  permanent training unequally distributed according to level and sometimes too sporadic to compensate for these deficiencies.

Remedies? They exist.

It would still be necessary to give ourselves the institutional means to administer them! »

A woman of her word, Roberte Tomassone knew how to address her multiple recipients with an intellectual audacity and a quiet constancy that remains a compass for us.

Marie-Laure Elalouf

CY Cergy Paris University; EMA, EA 4507

Selected bibliography

Combettes, B., Thoss , R., & Tomassone , R. (1976). Description of a written language corpus of elementary school pupils . Center for Research and Linguistic Applications of the University of Nancy II.

Combettes, B., Fresson , J., & Tomassone , R. (1977). Building a grammar 6 th . Delagrave.

Combettes, B., Fresson , J., & Tomassone , R. (1978). Building a grammar 5 th . Delagrave.

Combettes, B., Fresson , J., & Tomassone , R. (1979, 1999). Language teaching: I: building a grammar: (6th and 5th): teacher's book . Delagrave Library.

Combettes, B., Fresson , J., & Tomassone , R. (1979). From sentence to text 4 e . Delagrave. Student's book and teacher's book

Combettes, B., Fresson , J., & Tomassone , R. (1980). Towards language fluency: From sentence to text3rd . Delagrave. Student's book and teacher's book

Le Gall, M., & Tomassone , R. (1987). Maths in middle school and high school. Mathematics and language. p. 88-108.

APMEP newsletter. Num . 361. p. 533-547. Reading and writing in math class.

Combettes, B., & Tomassone , R. (1988). The informative text: linguistic aspects (Vol. 9). DeBoeck.

Tomassone , R., & Leu-Simon, C. (1996, 2nd edition 2002). To teach grammar (Vol. 1). Delagrave.

Tomassone , R., Boucher, J., & Leu-Simon, C. (1998). Grammar: for reading and writing: CE2 . Delagrave.

Elalouf, ML, Journot , M., Tamine , M., Tisset , C., & Tomassone , R. (1998). Future teachers and spelling: representations and training. French Today , (122), 5-14. https://halshs-00117058

Roberte Tomassone (1998). The training of French teachers, Les Carnets du

Cediscor , 5 , 63-75. https://doi.org/10.4000/cediscor.275

Tomassone , R. ( ed .)(2001). Major cultural landmarks for a language: French. Paris: Hatchet.

Tomassone , R., & Petiot, G. (2002). To teach grammar II. Texts and Practices, Paris, Delagrave .

Tomassone , R. (2003). Assess language skills. The French Today 140 , 19-28, 2003. https://doi.10.3917/lfa.140.0019

Tomassone , R. (2009). Grammar for speaking, reading, writing CE2, CM1, CM2, student manuals and teacher's books

et Jacques Fresson au renouvèlement de l’enseignement grammatical en proposant aux élèves de bâtir avec leurs enseignants non pas la mais une grammaire, celle qu’ils mettent en oeuvre à l’oral et qu’ils complexifient à l’écrit. La démarche n’a pas pris une ride : observer, classer, dégager des régularités dans un va-et-vient constant entre ce qui se dit et s’écrit, avec une progression de la 6e à la 3e. Les livres du maitre qui accompagnent la collection restent des outils de formation rigoureux et accessibles. Vingt ans plus tard, Roberte reviendra vers les enseignants du premier degré cette fois, pour accompagner leur lecture des programmes, avec la Grammaire pour parler, lire et écrire et des livres du maitre apportant les éclairages théoriques nécessaires à la conduite des leçons. Dans un souci de cohérence, elle montre dans le n°140 du Français aujourd’hui comment pratiques d’évaluation et d’apprentissage s’articulent et comment les notions peuvent s’enrichir d’année en année.

Parallèlement, Roberte Tomassone s’adresse à la communauté des linguistes et des didacticiens avec Le texte informatif, co-écrit avec Bernard Combettes, en proposant la description d’un genre de texte jugé peut-être moins noble et pourtant constamment exploité à l’école et aujourd’hui omniprésent sur l’internet avec de multiples variantes. À ceux qui croiraient à la transparence de ce genre d’écrit et à l’inutilité des médiations didactiques, les auteurs répondent en mettant au cœur de leur description les problèmes de compréhension.

Et c’est cette même démarche que l’on retrouve dans Pour enseigner la grammaire, une démarche globale qui part des configurations de signes qui font sens pour aller vers les questions d’écriture sans jamais instrumentaliser les textes, ce qu’illustre le nouage du linguistique dans le culturel avec le tome II co-écrit avec Geneviève Petiot. Dans ces deux ouvrages, Roberte met son expérience de la formation en France et dans la francophonie au service des étudiants se destinant à l’enseignement et de leurs formateurs.

Mais les destinataires de Roberte, ne se limitent pas aux seuls enseignants, c’est à tout locuteur du français qu’elle s’adresse dans l’ouvrage qu’elle dirige Grands repères culturels pour une langue, le français, avec l’ambition de proposer « une synthèse ample, documentée et simple des apports de la linguistique au XXe siècle » appliquée au français. Ouvrage qui se trouve dans les bibliothèques de nombreux pays.

Enfin, Roberte a su s’adresser au politique à partir de son expérience au premier conseil national des programmes et de son expertise des politiques éducatives, sollicitée dans de nombreuses missions à l’étranger. Le bilan qu’elle tire en 1998 de l’impuissance du CNP est sévère :

•   « des programmes de français construits sur des présupposés théoriques non explicités et parfois incompatibles ;

•   des textes officiels émanant de sources diverses avec une concertation insuffisante ;

•  un pouvoir décisionnel qui intervient ponctuellement et tranche des problèmes disciplinaires sur des critères qui n’ont rien de disciplinaire ;

•   des textes trop concis pour être clairs, dont la formulation vague ne permet pas d’expliciter les contenus ;

•   des documents d’accompagnement trop succincts et trop rares pour être utiles… ;

•   une formation initiale des enseignants souvent trop légère et mal ciblée, qui ne leur permet pas toujours de jeter une lueur sur cette obscurité ;

•   une formation permanente inégalement répartie selon les niveaux et parfois trop sporadique pour pallier ces déficiences.

Des remèdes ? Ils existent.

Encore faudrait-il se donner institutionnellement les moyens de les administrer ! »

Femme de parole, Roberte Tomassone savait s’adresser à ses multiples destinataires avec une audace intellectuelle et une constance tranquille qui reste pour nous une boussole.

Marie-Laure Elalouf

CY Cergy Paris Université ; ÉMA, ÉA 4507

Bibliographie sélective

Combettes, B., Thoss, R., & Tomassone, R. (1976). Description d'un corpus de langue écrite d'élèves de l'école élémentaire. Centre de Recherches et d'Applications linguistiques de l'Université de Nancy II.

Combettes, B., Fresson, J., & Tomassone, R. (1977). Bâtir une grammaire 6e. Delagrave.

Combettes, B., Fresson, J., & Tomassone, R. (1978). Bâtir une grammaire 5e. Delagrave.

Combettes, B., Fresson, J., & Tomassone, R. (1979, 1999). L'enseignement de la langue: I: bâtir une grammaire:(6e et 5e): livre du professeur. Librairie Delagrave.

Combettes, B., Fresson, J., & Tomassone, R. (1979). De la phrase au texte 4e. Delagrave. Livre de l'élève et Livre du professeur

Combettes, B., Fresson, J., & Tomassone, R. (1980). Vers la maîtrise de la langue: De la phrase au texte3e. Delagrave. Livre de l'élève et Livre du professeur

Le Gall, M., & Tomassone, R. (1987). Les Maths en collège et en lycée. Mathématiques et langage. p. 88-108. Bulletin de l'APMEP. Num. 361. p. 533-547. Lire et écrire en classe de mathématiques.

Combettes, B., & Tomassone, R. (1988). Le texte informatif: aspects linguistiques (Vol. 9). De Boeck.

Tomassone, R., & Leu-Simon, C. (1996, 2e édition 2002). Pour enseigner la grammaire (Vol. 1). Delagrave.

Tomassone, R., Boucher, J., & Leu-Simon, C. (1998). Grammaire: pour lire et écrire: CE2. Delagrave.

Elalouf, M. L., Journot, M., Tamine, M., Tisset, C., & Tomassone, R. (1998). Les futurs enseignants et l'orthographe: représentations et formation. Le français aujourd'hui, (122), 5-14. https://halshs-00117058

Roberte Tomassone (1998). La formation des enseignants de français, Les Carnets du

Cediscor, 5, 63-75. https://doi.org/10.4000/cediscor.275

Tomassone, R. (dir.)(2001). Grands repères culturels pour une langue: le français. Paris : Hachette.

Tomassone, R., & Petiot, G. (2002). Pour enseigner la grammaire II. Textes et pratiques, Paris, Delagrave.

Tomassone, R. (2003). Évaluer les compétences en langue. Le Français aujourd’hui 140, 19-28, 2003.   https://doi.10.3917/lfa.140.0019

Tomassone, R. (2009). Grammaire pour parler, lire, écrire CE2, CM1, CM2, manuels de l’élève et livres du maitre