Ed,
    I think you are making very thoughftul and consistent choices. In my
case, I have to decide what to cover in a single college semester to
fit a one-semester overview (which I'm now teaching). Like you, I have
students tell me right away that they find it useful. Some have come
back years later to make the point again.
   I think what Debra Myhill was saying in the article I quoted earlier is
that we can't expect to "show" that grammar improves writing until we
can theorize a connection between them. Being able to identify
constructions is a wonderful step. To the extent that we can theorize
how that knowledge can be put to work in making decisions as a writer,
we can maybe design a way to measure the effect. If you are teaching a
basically formal grammar, that means adding additional steps putting
that knowledge to work.
   I had wonderful Junior High teachers (both male, by the way) who taught
grammar through Reed-Kellog diagrams. That base of undersgtanding has
been priceless to me over the years in ways they never would have
predicted. I'm very happy the anti-grammar revolution hadn't hit yet.
Now that it's here, we may need to make the payoff connections much
more explicit.
   In the meantime, KISS is available. I will continue to support your
project.

Craig

> Craig,
>      First, the "debate" that has been going on troubles me in that
> everyone seems to consider "grammar" as "grammar" but most of the
> people on this list realize that each of us has his or her own idea
> of what grammatical terms and concepts should be taught. KISS, for
> example, makes no mention of count/noncount nouns because it is
> intended for native speakers, and, as I believe Bob stated, native
> speakers pick this up without instruction. On the other hand,
> however, I easily see why ESL instructors would need to include many
> concepts in their grammars for teaching ESL students.
>      Ultimately, I'd say that all this debate is a waste of time until
> more people begin developing scope and sequence plans. If KISS
> succeeds, it will be because people find it meaningful and helpful.
> The debate about grammar being beneficial for students who already
> have excellent writing abilities was resolved for me years ago. I had
> an excellent writer want to take my grammar course--because it was on
> a Saturday morning, his girl-friend had a class, and he needed an
> elective. I told him it would waste his time. Near the end of the
> course he told me that I was wrong. He claimed that learning to
> identify clauses, gerunds, gerudives, noun absolutes, etc. gave him a
> much better conscious  control of his writing. He could see what he
> was doing (grammatically) and he could see his options for changing
> structures much more clearly. I'm beginning to wonder if the ability
> to identify, in itself, may not be a major tool for improving
> writing. (But then, I'm not talking simply about identifying
> constructions, but about being able to identify "every word in any
> sentence.")
>      I do, however, wonder why you seem to suggest that KISS ends with
> identification. The ability to identify constructions is the absolute
> necessary first step for students. (Just as the definition of terms
> is the first step of all the hard sciences. If terms are not
> specificially defined, no one knows who means what.) But
> identification, in KISS, is just the first step. See, for example,
> http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G04_WB1.htm#Practice_L3_1_2
>      By the way, I too have troubles with your "cognitive"
> anti-transformational position. If you study KISS theory for a while,
> you'd see that KISS embodies ideas from both.
>      I do appreciate your basic position (if I understand it correctly)
> and I appreciate your general support of KISS.
> Thanks,
> Ed
>
> P.S. I wasn't going to respond, especially in such length, but I'm in
> class and my students are writing an in-class essay. I do want to note
> that the discussion of passive voice was more interesting and probably
> more important than the larger discussion. I apologize to the person who
> noted that many teachers cannot themselves recognize passives. (The
> apology is for forgetting your name.) However, I love the point made -- if
> teachers cannot recognize passive voice, correctly, then what is the
> purpose of any discussion of how is should or should not be used?
> Obviously, the latter is important (because of much of the stupidity that
> has been written about it), but it makes no sense to teachers or students
> who cannot first recognize what passive voice is. Indeed, I would suggest
> that much of the nonsense written about it has been done simply because
> those who write it have never tried to examine passive voice in real
> texts. In some cases, teachers pass on misinformation because their
> college instructors never taught them to identify subjects and verbs in
> the first place. (Ooops! bad topic.) ;)
>
> ________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 8:58 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Recognition of passives
>
> Ed,
>    Absolutely. It's interesting that I had a student ask in class
> Wednesday why "into" isn't a verb (because it expresses motion.) They
> also have trouble with words like "claim" when they move into noun
> slots. They were told that a verb is "an action word", which sufficed
> precisely because they were never asked to apply it.
>    I don't think we should limit our teaching to "identifying" processes.
> As I said not too long ago, I think we run into trouble by limiting our
> questions to "How do you classify that" or "Is this correct?" But if we
> focus on how wonderful verbs are and how central to the way our
> language works, identifying will come along for the ride.
>
> Craig
>
> Edward Vavra wrote:
> Craig,
> Aren’t you, below, making an argument that students should have been
> taught (AND LEARNED) some things (like the ability to identify verbs)
> before they got to your course?
> Ed V.
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 12:37 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Recognition of passives
>
> Ed, Ed, Karl,
>    My approach to teaching passives is a little different in my grammar
> class than it is in my writing classes. In both, I usually start with
> the idea of "subject function" from functional grammar. There are three
> subject functions to correspond with the three major
> metafunctions--grammatical subject (the usual idea of subject), actor
> (doer of the deed or whatever is verb appropriate), and theme
> (stepping-off point for the message structure of the clause). I often
> use the sentence in my book: "A drunk driver killed my dog just before
> Christmas." In this version, all three functions are conflated. We play
> around with versions that split the functions.  "My dog was killed by a
> drunk driver just before Christmas." "Just before Christmas, my dog was
> killed by a drunk driver."  Each of these represents the same happening
> in the world, but construes it differently and we discuss that.  So we
> come at it with a functional orientation, even playing around with
> sentences like "The driver who killed my dog just before Christmas was
> drunk" or "The dog the drunk driver killed just before Christmas was
> mine."  These are approached from the start as functional variations.
>    I don't do follow-up testing in my writing classes.  Maybe I should. In
> quizzes and tests in my grammar class, they need to identify each of
> these functions within single clause sentences.  I also ask them to
> convert active sentences into their passive versions. I have given
> these tests over a number of years and can say that these are pretty
> much give away points, among the easiest tasks, a good way to balance
> out the loss of points on more complicated tasks.
>    At the end of the semester, we do look at real world texts, and the
> passive is at least a working concept for them, even though they may
> not identify every passive that shows up. (Someone in the class
> probably will.)
>    It's hard, of course, to cover everything in a single semester and
> still have time to put it to work. I suspect, though, that it is not
> often taught in a way that seems to matter, and students probably know
> they won't be held accountable. Everything changes when learning
> grammar is the course's main goal.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
> Karl Hagen wrote:
>
> Ed,
>
>
>
> That's an interesting experiment.
>
>
>
> Would you be able to share with us more details about the items you used
> to
>
> test the students' understanding, such as their wording, and how the
> teachers
>
> actually attempted to introduce the passive during the year? (I would also
> be
>
> interested in the summary statistics, but that's probably too far off the
>
> purposes of the list.)
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Karl
>
>
>
> Edgar Schuster wrote:
>
>
>
> A couple of decades ago in September, I tested an entire tenth grade
>
> class on their ability to recognize passives---nearly 500 students in
>
> all, at a reasonably good suburban Philadelphia high school.  I used
>
> five multiple choice questions with four possible answers for each.  (I
>
> believe that means that a chance score would have been 25 percent.)  In
>
> September, the result was 50.0 percent correct.  Recognition of the
>
> passive was supposed to be a "Mastery" objective for tenth grade
>
> English.  I tested the same students at the end of the year in June.
>
> The result was 51.2 percent correct.  The "gain" was not statistically
>
> significant.
>
> At a later time, teaching junior and senior college business majors at
>
> Penn State, it was clear to me that they could not recognize passives.
>
> I conclude by quoting Ed Vavra, When and how (and we might add, "by
>
> whom?") can passives be effectively taught?
>
>
>
> Ed Schuster
>
>
>
> On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:55 PM, Edward Vavra wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Craig,
>
> First, the passives. Rarely, I think, do we teach students to USE
>
> constructions. They do so naturally. I'm amused to see your question
>
> followed by Scott's, to which I'll try to reply separately. Remember
>
> that I'm working in what I believe to be the current reality--most
>
> students are unable to identify finite verbs. If they cannot recognize
>
> them in the first place, what good does it do to "teach" passive
>
> voice. KISS introduces passives, as a concept to be learned, in fifth
>
> grade, primarily with the objective that students learn to recognize
>
> passive voice. Why? Because some teachers will tell students never to
>
> use passives (silly, but that is currently taught), and some
>
> instructors will tell students to use passive voice. Unless students
>
> can recognize passives when they see them, either "direction" is
>
> meaningless. It's my hope to include exploratory exercises on passives
>
> (uses and abuses) in the upper grades. Most of the
>
> "Practice/Application" sections in the upper KISS grades have slots
>
> for an exercise on passives. See:
>
> http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G10_WB1.htm#Practice_1<http://home.pct.edu/%7Eevavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G10_WB1.htm#Practice_1>
>
> Thus we agree, passives are "important to discourse decisions." Where
>
> we may disagree is when and how they can effectively be taught.
>
>
>
> I don't understand how you can think that natural language development
>
> can't occur without instruction. Isn't it obvious that the sentences
>
> of older students are more complicated, especially in terms of
>
> embeddings, than the sentences of younger students? Thus, for me, the
>
> question is the purpose of instruction. I'd say that it is to help
>
> students better understand how language works. In other words, the
>
> ability to analyze sentences enables students to discuss (and thus
>
> understand) how passives, for example, work. Or how deep embedding of
>
> clauses may cause problems for readers. True, some people argue
>
> against formal instruction in language, believing that it "just
>
> happens." But just because it happens does not mean that it happens
>
> effectively, and just because they are wrong does not mean that we
>
> have to be.
>
>
>
> Appositives -- as always, I argue that unless students are taught to
>
> recognize the things in the first place, instruction will not be very
>
> effective. Thus in KISS recognition (identification) always comes
>
> first. But KISS also includes a variety of sentence manipulation
>
> exercises and combining exercises in which students are asked to
>
> combine clauses by using an appositive, etc.
>
>
>
> My response to your last, and most important question, is the entire
>
> KISS site. It is more or less laid out at:
>
> http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Overview_Levels.htm<http://home.pct.edu/%7Eevavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Overview_Levels.htm>
>
>
>
> Ed
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>
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