What is the web address for the KISS site?
Thank you,
Christine Gray
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Subject: Re: KISS Definitions * a request for input t
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
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Subject: Re: KISS Definitions * a request for inpu t
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.
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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.
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>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 "
>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
>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.
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