Ed,
Constructions and categories sliding into
each other is most certainly an advance topic, but it’s also in the very
nature of grammar and of language. Traditional school grammar tends to be
strongly categorical, and for teaching in the earlier grades there’s good
reason for that, but once that knowledge base is established then directly
confronting the squishiness of grammar becomes both possible and important. I’m
glad to see you’re doing that later on with phrasal verbs, which are
about a squishy a category as anyone could want.
Herb
Herb,
For more than two decades, I've been struggling in attempts to teach students,
at the college level, to be able to identify clauses. Once they can do so, they
can understand why punctuation errors are errors, they can consider for
themselves if the MIMC rule is valid, they can begin to understand major
questions of focus, logic, etc. In order to get students to that level, that
quickly, terminology has to be kept to a minimum. In developing the KISS site,
on the other hand, I'm learning that a distinction can be made between the
terms that the students need and terms that are useful for teachers. Thus, for
example, you will find "phrasal verbs" mentioned in the third grade
workbook. See S1, Week 14, and S2 Week 9 at:
I do not think
that third graders need to learn the term, but I do think that that term is
helpful to parents and teachers as it designates one of the problems they will
run into as they try to teach their students to recognize prepositional
phrases. Similarly, S1W10 deals with "passives," but not to teach
students passive voice. Rather, it presents the problem of alternative
explanations — passive voice or predicate adjective. Similarly, in grade
four
"verbals"
are introduced, not to teach verbals, but to help students (and teachers) to
distinguish between finite verbs and verbs that are not underlined twice.
Note that KISS does not preclude any teacher from using such terms as
"phrasal verb." It does, however, suggest that terminology is less
important than is the ability to distinguish what is, or is not, a
prepositional phrase. Note also that KISS allows for alternative explanations.
In They were looking at the doggie in the window. KISS accepts both
"looking at" (watching) as the verb and "doggie" as the
direct object AND "looking" as the verb and "at the doggie"
as a prepositional phrase. Someone on this list (or perhaps it was an NCTE
reviewer) claimed that the latter explanation is incorrect, and that students
would have to "relearn" "looking at" as a phrasal verb. I
see that objection as sheer nonsense. In some cases (I don't have the time to
think of one at the moment.) I myself have been puzzled to find a single verb
to replace the phrasal — and I have a better vocabulary than most of my
students do. The constructions slide into each other. I can see devoting some
time and discussion to examples of phrasal verbs — in upper grade levels after
students have learned, at a minimum, how to identify the clauses in a text.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 10/4/2005 1:32:05 PM >>>
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:
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:
><[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
>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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