The end of the semester rush, combined with the need to develop a new
multicultural course on literature, made me unable to keep up with this
list for the last several weeks. Several interesting discussions have
been going on, and rather than making multiple posts, I'm going to try
to cover everything in this one.
1. A separate list for middle school teachers?
I have serious reservations about that. First, if college types,
myself included, are allowed to join, the odds are that most of us would
-- and we would probably bring all our theoretical baggage with us.
Second, can practice really be separated from theory? I realize that
some people may feel overwhelmed, but it is not that difficult to push
the delete button (or set up a filter). If we do decide to set up
multiple discussions, might I second the idea of multiple guest books
set up in something like FrontPage? (I am already planning on something
like that, but it is intended just for the discussion of the KISS
Approach. (See: http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/GB.htm) I note the
example because I think it would allow people to switch from book to
book rather easily, and it would (unless edited, as mine will be)
maintain a searchable record of all the comments that are posted.
2. Those "simple?" questions
I want to second (or sixteenth?) the response of those members who
have invited members of the list to post ANY AND ALL questions about
grammar. If I see that someone else has already responded as I would, I
don't usually respond, but that is because I try to keep my posts as
infrequent as possible. My main objection to making Syntax a "refereed"
publication was that I felt it would discourage contributions (both
questions and explanations) from teachers in K-12. Please don't do that
to this list as well. (I much prefer those simple questions to the
diatribes about the state of education -- most of which are deleted
before being read.) I've also noted that many of these questions are
preceded by apologies about what the poster doesn't know because they
were never taught it. The apologies are not needed. Those of us who have
been with this group for any length of time know that most teachers
(often including the ones we ourselves have taught) are poorly prepared
to teach grammar. No one on this list, in my memory, has ever criticized
anyone for asking such a question, and, as the responses about a second
list have shown, even those of us at the college level are eager to hear
and respond to them.
3. Resistance to instruction in grammar.
Paul Doniger noted that "the resistance to grammar that we meet
from our students is not very different from their resistance to poetry,
reading of any kind, algebra, geography, or chemistry." It is a point
well-made, but it overlooks the fact that most of the resistance comes
from the teachers, not the students. And that resistance, in turn,
results from the poor preparation that teachers have been given. This
was noted at the last ATEG conference held in Williamsport -- several
years ago, and it was also reflected in the summaries from the NCTE
middle school list. I had hoped that the ATEG 3S committee would have
been able to address this problem by providing a clear sequence and
curriculum, but thus far I haven't seen that. (A large part of the
problem is that members of this list have very different concepts of
grammar, use terms in different ways, etc., all of which confuses
teachers who simply want to know what they should do on Monday.)
4. Noun Absolutes -- The Definition of
I appreciate the contributions to this thread, and agree with most
of them. I do, however, disagree with Martha's way of explaining them,
and I note this because it reflects my basic disagreement with all of
the "grammarians" on this site. Martha gives a rather extensive list of
possibilities -- which is not needed. A noun absolute is simple a noun
plus a participle. If they were taught using the KISS Approach, students
(at KISS Level Five) would easily be able to identify all of them --
plus, perhaps, others.
I would also suggest that the noun absolute actually appears
frequently as a direct object. I make this claim not on the basis of
grammar books (I don't care, anymore, what they say.), but rather on the
basis of logic and a grammar based on meaning. (And it was a student who
pointed it out to me.) The sentence "They saw the soldiers departing."
does not mean "They saw the soldiers," nor does it mean "They saw the
departing." The meaningful direct object of "saw" is the noun absolute,
"soldiers departing."
5. Noun Absolutes -- The Teaching of
First, I want to thank Fr. Laurence for noting that the absolutes
he collected were from seventh graders who were "good readers." That
still, however, does not answer my question about how long it took to
collect them. Put another way, what I want to know is what percentage of
the class contributed them? One of the mistakes that we frequently make
is that we note what some students are doing without thinking about the
class as a whole. Loban's work really made this apparent to me, but as a
specific example, let me refer to my own research. Such research is
time-consuming, so thus far I've only been able to analyze the work of
fourth graders, but it should make my point. If you look at the web page
at http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/R/1986/W4/W4Stats_Sum.htm
you will find a summary of statistics on ten fourth graders' writing.
The column I am interested in is near the middle -- TSC/MC.
Unfortunately, this research is usually reported in averages, but the
averages hide the differences among the students. Note that the four
writers averaged 22 subordinate clauses for every 100 main clauses. But
one of the writers averaged 42, and another 38. At the other end, one
writer averaged only six, and still another only 2! I cannot, of course,
repeat all the ideas in Teaching Grammar as a Liberating Art here, nor
can I summarize all of the work of Hunt, O'Donnell, and Loban. The
conclusion, however, is that rushing instruction, whether it be in
clauses, participles, or noun absolutes, probably harms those students
in the lower stages of natural syntactic development -- precisely those
students who most need our help. And, in the lack of any convincing
evidence that "premature" instruction has any lasting effect, I see no
reason for teachers doing it.
My reasons, however, go beyond the possible harm. Brock (Thank you
again, Brock) has noted (as have others), that at the college level they
are still trying to get students to learn how to identify subjects and
verbs! (And, if they cannot identify verbs, they cannot identify
participles or absolutes.) It would, in my opinion, be much better to
give students a thorough, conscious grasp of clauses before teaching
them about participles and absolutes. That leads me to my next topic --
6. The KISS Approach and "explicit" and "implicit" instruction
There are, apparently, misconceptions about the KISS Approach. I
realize that many of my comments on this list relate to specific
constructions -- and to how to get students to be able to identify
them. But remember that I am proposing a curriculum for grades 3 - 11,
not just for one year. Essentially, that curriculum is:
3rd Grade -- Prepositional Phrases & Compounding, Adjectives & Adverbs;
Ellipsis
4th, 5th, & 6th Grades -- Add Subjects, Verbs, and Complements;
7th, 8th, & 9th Grades -- Add Clauses (Main and Subordinate)
10th Grade -- Add Verbals
11th Grade -- Add Seven Additional Constructions
This curriculum would, for example, include three years during which
time "explicit" instruction would be limited to the study of subjects,
finite verbs, and complements. During those three years, teachers could
and should use a wide variety of implicit instruction -- including
fill-in-the blanks, analysis exercises, sentence combining (and
decombining), sentence modeling, etc. But at the end of those three
years, students should be able to identify ALL the subjects, finite
verbs, and complements in any passage that they read or write. This
would mean that they would not have to be retaught this every year
through high school and into college, especially since the next level of
KISS, clauses, (as does each following level) USES that knowledge of
S/V/C patterns. Notice that, if they had been taught with the KISS
approach, Gretchen's students would not have had the problem she notes
-- "my sixth graders can't recognize
some of the structures that require commas in their own writing. The
difference between
two independent clauses (however you define them!) joined by a
conjunction
and a sentence with a compound verb seems to be as big a mystery as it
was
before we started." The problem, I will say again, is that most members
of ATEG are looking at their own classes, and not looking at an
integrated curriculum within which they could build on what students had
already learned. The KISS Approach actually advocates tons of implicit
instruction which will reinforce the limited explicit instruction at
each level.
7. The Research
I am, by the way, disappointed by the reactions within this group to
research which, it appears, has not been read. That research not only
clearly shows that specific constructions blossom at specific times
(subordinate clauses in grades 7-9, and participles, appositives and
absolutes after that), but in TGLA I have also proposed a
psycholinguistic explanation of why development occurs in that sequence.
And that leads me to my next point.
8. O'Donnell's concept of "formulas"
Edith noted "I know that my children used subordinate clauses
before they were
5 and relative clauses around 6. That was in speaking." The question is,
where they true subordinate clauses, or were they formulas. O'Donnell
describes formulas as strings of words which students learn whole, often
with possible substitution. An example of my own is the young child's
"When we get home." Children hear "when ___ get(s) ___" hundreds of
times, and O'Donnell suggests that this construction is not a true
subordinate clause. We saw, by the way, an example of the creation of a
formula in Pam's question about "The idea being that ..." The students
simply pick up the phrase. Formulas, of course, also raise questions
about the noun absolutes noted by Fr. Laurence (and others) in their
students' writing. In order to know for sure, we need to look at
specific examples.
9. The "zone of proximal development"
It's getting late (or I should say early), so I can't go into
detail, but there is evidence that the syntactic zone of proximal
development is domain specific. We can see examples of that when those
of us who teach writing complain that our students do o.k., or even
fine, in writing narratives, but their writing falls apart in expository
essays. The KISS sequence, by the way, is heavily dependent on the zpd,
which is one of the reasons that I question teaching appositives,
participles, and noun absolutes to sixth and seventh graders. The more
advanced students can use the instruction, but for the rest of the class
...? Can anyone offer real proof that these constructions are in these
students' zdp? (Remember that the research has to make the original
writing available for inspection so that we can check for formulas.)
10. P[aula?] Hostmeyer's 24 patterns.
I too would like to know more about these patterns, but I would
note that she? was working with junior high students (grades 7-9). That
is precisely the right time for explicit and implicit instruction in
clauses. (I'm still not so sure about the participles, and I'm not sure
that we need to teach gerunds and infinitives).
11. Francis Christensen
Don Stewart asked about Christensen. My problem with Christensen is
that he advocated modeling (and combining?) exercises intended to move
students toward developing right-branching subordination (after the main
subject and verb). Why can't we teach students what these constructions
are, and then let students decide for themselves whether they prefer
right-branching, or mid-branching, or left-branching? (Walker Gibson
suggested that left-branching reflects a more organized mind.)
12. And finally
Thank you if you have read thus far. I'm sorry if I overlooked
anyone's comments, but I have already spent over four hours on this. (I
log my time.) I would like to note that Peter Feely, the K-12
Acquisitions Editor for NCTE, has asked me to submit a TRIP book
proposal on KISS. He apparently took my proposal before the Board, and
they expressed tentative interest. He has also more or less promised to
help me write the thing such that it is acceptable to NCTE. It will,
however, still be subject to approval by readers, etc. (I have my doubts
that it will be accepted.)
TRIP stands for "Theory and Research into Practice." Thus part of
the book will be based on the theory and research in TGLA, but I want to
devote as much of the book as possible to practical exercises, including
lots of "implicit" instruction. Although he tells me that we cannot pay
contributors, we certainly can acknowledge them. I will certainly
appreciate any help that anyone wants to offer, and I am especially
interested in grade-level appropriate passages that demonstrate the
connections between syntax and style. I remember, for example, a teacher
at a conference who demonstrated the noun absolutes (again!) in a
passage from Twain.
I didn't get to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but I hope you all have
a safe and happy New Year.
Ed V.