Ed,
Your analytical descriptive decisions frequently, as here, make a lot of
sense when one considers your pedagogical goals, and there is very good
reason for holding that pedagogical grammars, like KISS, and descriptive
grammars are very different animals. However, I'm struck once more by
the ability of terminology to arouse your irritation. So you don't like
the term "phrasal verb". I'll grant it's a very complex concept and not
one I'd want to present in detail to elementary or middle schoolers.
But given that you do want them to pay attention to meaning, isn't "put
on" a meaningful unit, just as much as "on your thinking cap" isn't? At
what point do you tell your students that verbs in English can be made
up of a verb and something that looks confusingly like a preposition,
and that this class of verbs often has single word counterparts that are
more appropriate to formal situations? Is appropriateness something
you deal with? Do you deal with phrasal verbs by any name whatsoever,
and if not why not?
Herb
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edward Vavra
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 12:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: KISS Definitions * a request for inpu t
Geoff,
Thanks for the response. I'll try to explain. The KISS sequence is
cummulative, and when one is working with middle school students up,
their sentences often include prepositional phrases that result in the
student identifying the object of the preposition as the subject of the
verb. Remember that in the KISS sequence students do not study
grammatical constructions in isolation. New concepts are always added to
the students' analytical toolbox. Prepositions are much easier to learn
than are subjects and verbs, and thus, in working with older students,
prepositional phrases are an initial focus. In this context I would note
that members of the KISS list easily convinced me that in working with
third and fourth graders, the initial focus should be on subjects and
verbs - in simpler sentences. Thus the KISS 3rd grade workbook primarily
focuses on subjects, verbs, and complements.
One of my problems, I think, in working with members of this list
is that few members have actually tried to teach students how to analyze
the structure of their own sentences. Thus, for example, in the KISS
NCTE manuscript, and in this list, I have mentioned the sentence "Put on
your thinking cap." In KISS, the focus is always on meaning, and thus I
noted that "on your thinking cap" is not a prepositional phrase because
the sentence does not mean "Put something on your thinking cap." Members
of this list, and some reviewers of the NCTE manuscript, objected that
"put on" is a "phrasal verb." That's nice, but for students it is
meaningless. There are hundreds of phrasal verbs, and I have yet to see
a complete list of them (not that it would be helpful). From a student's
perspective, "phrasal verb" is meaningless. The problem is that in
analyzing their own sentences, many students would mark "on your
thinking cap" as a prepositional phrase. "Phrasal verb" does not help
the students, but paying attention to meaning does.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 9/28/2005 7:05:11 PM >>>
Ed - It's me - Geoff - and once this administratively-laden week is
over,
I'll try to give you a more detailed response. But to give you a brief
example right now, my concerrn with KISS terms can be illustrated by the
focus on the preposition (please forgive me if my KISS references are
not
completely accurate - it's been a while since I've visited the site).
As I
recall, your belief is that a preposition is something that students
should
know a lot about. I start with the premise that every student already
knows
what a preposition is, and the fact that they don't know what to call it
is
fairly irrelevant. For example, no native speaker would fail to
complete
the sentence "'She put the book on. . ." Knowing that they are using a
prepositional phrase is not very useful - UNLESS you are teaching the
student to create meaning with the phrase. For example, I teach my
students
to create "WHERE" meaning by using a list of "WHERE" prepositions - the
list
is quite long and extremely useful if the goal is to write
intentionally.
However, the focus is not on prepositions but rather on the creation of
meaning using this particular construction that they already know - but
don't know that they know! A similar argument can be made for simple
adverbs and adverb combinations (i.e., "late last night" or "early
yesterday
morning") and for dependent clauses.
Good discussion! More later.
Geoff
>From: Edward Vavra <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: KISS Definitions * a request for inpu t
>Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:41:47 -0400
>
> I apologize for not remembering the name of the person who noted
that
>KISS appears to be very "term/definition" heavy. My initial reaction
was to
>defend KISS, but without giving up that defense, I would also
appreciate
>more specific suggestions, particularly on the types of exercises that
>people would like to see. KISS does include punctuation exercises,
>sentence-combining exercises, de-combining exercises, sentence-models,
and
>fill-in-the-blank exercises (which are primarily vocabulary exercises
that
>focus on specific parts of speech). It also includes directed combining
>exercises such as those on rewriting main clauses to subordinate and
then
>to gerundives, appositives, and/or post-positioned adjectives. See the
>bottom of the "Pericles" page:
>http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G08/Dec/D01/Per.htm
> Obviously, the site could use more of many of these exercises,
and I
>would welcome suggestions for other types of exercises. I would note,
>however, that there is a difference between designing instructional
>materials and using them. To my knowledge, no one ever slavishly
follows a
>textbook. Thus users of the KISS site are encouraged to pick and
choose, to
>use the KISS exercises as models, as starting points, and to adapt them
to
>their own purposes. It is fairly easy, for example, to turn any written
>passage into a punctuation/capitalization exercise. Simply strip the
>captialization and punctuation, have the students replace it, and then
have
>them discuss what they did and why. Similarly, any passage can be
>simplified into a sentence-combining exercise, and many passages can be
>used as decombining exercises.
> I'd also like to note that in my Freshman composition courses, I do
not
>even expect students to be able to identify adjectives and adverbs.
>Similarly, I literally tell them that I do not care if they label
indirect
>objects as direct objects. We simply do not have the time for such
>questions. In response to Nancy, I noted the 107 page document that
>includes the instructional materials I use, but I'll repeat the link:
>http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/ENL111/Syntax/Lessons/index.htm
>If we have time, we do a little exploration of appositives and
gerundives,
>but basically the students are expected to learn to identify only
>prepositional phrases, conjunctive adverbs, S/V/C patterns, and
clauses.
>From there we go on to questions of errors, logic, and style, including
>"syntactic maturity."
> Any suggestions for KISS will be appreciated.
>Ed
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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