Karl and other interested parties,
    Unfortunately, I no longer have the questions, but I'm fairly certain  
that each one simply asked the students "Which one of the following  
sentences is active/passive" and the answers contained three of one  
type, one of the other.  It was quite straightforward (or intended to  
be).  No tricks were involved.  Here are the specific Sept and June  
percentages of correct answers:

        Sept    June
        37      46
        53      57
        75      72
        43      41
        42      40

    Clearly, the third question must have somehow been easier than the  
others, but I have no idea why.  But all of them except the first show  
virtually no change from September to June.  That was unsettling.
    The curriculum was designed by the English teachers themselves, and  
they had determined that recognizing the difference between actives  
and passives should be mastered by the end of tenth grade.  As to how  
the teachers introduced the passive-active distinction, I am not  
certain but a good guess would be that they had the students read the  
textbook (most used Warriners) and gave them exercises.  (BTW, Craig,  
test your students sometime; you might be surprised by the result.  I  
know I was when I tested my Penn State juniors and seniors.)
    In this district, for what it's worth, virtually all students were  
white; the largest minority was Vietnamese.  However, the families  
were basically middle middle class---neither poor nor wealthy.
    If there were consensus about the importance of knowing the passive/ 
active distinction and if we were to take it seriously, it's clear  
than Ed Vavra is on the right track:  we'd better start a lot earlier  
than tenth grade.

Ed S

On Feb 5, 2009, at 11:13 AM, 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
>>> 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
>>>
>>> Ed
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 5:12 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Developmental phases of grammar knowledge
>>>
>>> Ed,
>>>  I would disagree with you on passives, though I'm confused about  
>>> why
>>> you would say you introduce it in fifth grade but don't feel  
>>> students
>>> need to learn it. Are you making a distinction between the KISS  
>>> program
>>> and your college teaching? In an ideal world, wouldn't passive verbs
>>> (and their function) be a natural part of the curriculum? They  
>>> seem to
>>> me important to discourse decisions. And students need to deal  
>>> with the
>>> computer grammar checks, which routinely underline them as wrong. I
>>> find them important to my own understanding.
>>>  I'm also troubled by the routine assumption that language  
>>> development
>>> occurs "without instruction." Certainly, we are capable of  
>>> learning all
>>> kinds of things from observing what's going on around us, languaqe
>>> included, but this seems to me to routinely downplay the possible  
>>> kinds
>>> of interactions that would help mentor the process. The argument
>>> against making language a major part of the curriculum depends on a
>>> belief (I think mistaken) that it just happens.
>>>  When you say appositives should be taught, do you mean recognition?
>>> Use? I like to make the point that entities can be named over and  
>>> over
>>> again, and that seems to help, at least at the college level. George
>>> Will is more than just a well-known columnist, so appositives
>>> (renaming) can happen forever. He's also a passionate baseball fan,
>>> though that may not be relevant to the context. And he's not an  
>>> example
>>> I would use for my students. Maybe Oprah? Perhaps it's the  
>>> "cognitive"
>>> and functional recognitions that matter the most. At least at the
>>> college level, students seem to get it quickly.
>>>  What knowledge about language helps in discussions about putting
>>> language to work? Can we build that knowledge about language as we
>>> mentor students into different language worlds, including the  
>>> world of
>>> school? I think those would be my central questions.
>>>
>>> Craig
>>>
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