Hear hear to teaching without denigrating.  I find Mark Twain and George
Bernard Shaw's *Pygmalion* (or even *My Fair Lady*) helpful for
students.  Talking about Twain's skill as a writer with an ear for
different versions of English can get students using their own ears, not
just for SE, but for all those glorious variants out there.  I'm sure you
can all think of many other examples?
 
BTW, I'm writing a simple little grammar text for my class, trying to
grab the best of all worlds and probably missing the boat, but I've got a
few questions.  Can any of you address these?
 
1)  Where can I find a good diachronic explanation of how we arrived at
cumulative vs. coordinate adjectives?
 
2)  Can an object complement ever be a pronoun?
 
3)  Can noun clauses work as objects of verbals?
 
4)  Does anyone know a good *short* summary of linguistics positions of
the last 100 years or so?  The last 25 years?  Padley et. al are great
but slow going for a neophyte!  (One who did more with Old English and
structuralism than anything else.)
 
5)  Max Morenbrug, in his nifty little text *Doing Grammar* talkis about
nominative absolutes beginning with "with."  What part of speech would
"with" be in a traditional/functional/trans-gen. system?  He gives as an
example, on page 149, "With a twinkle in his eye, the old man said
goodbye to his grandson."
 
Thanks!  Jeanie Murphy
         Pierce College
         Puyallup, WA