Some of us oldsters were taught deductive reasoning; however, I prefer the inductive approach. Give sufficient very specific examples "good" and "bad" and let the students come up with the general rule. I used a sentence such as "Everyone walked to their car after the game," and illustrate by having everyone trying to get into a single car, mentioning the clowns at the circus and singing to them a line from an old song, "There were forty-five men in the telephone booth last night." When the students come up with the rule, they internalize more quickly and easily. With a very sharp class, I have even made errors on the board--wittingly or unwittingly. Any student catching me in an error received an extra point on the daily average for the six-weeks/semester, depending upon whether the class was secondary or university level. An incorrect assumption subtracted a point--unless there was a sense in which the student could have been correct. I always seized the opportunity to demonstrate ambiguity. To conclude, I never taught specific concepts; instead, I "learned" them to the students by having them generalize the rules for situations from the examples. Their "critical experiences" were of the "aha! genre. I concur in the unusual problem of having parents who spoke "correct" English at the dinner table and in social situations. Not until 10th grade, when I first encountered the colon as end punctuation for an independent clause, did my punctuation based upon speech fail me--prompting me to study the rules for the first time since grammar school (5th grade). Scott Catledge Quite simply, we can teach very specific concepts to our students, but unless they care to learn and use that knowledge, the methods we employ are ineffective or unsuccessful. And so I can use a sentence like (or any that Ronald posted): Everyone walked to their car after the game and I can point out the problem(s) with this sentence, and my students can understand what I have told them, but they will continue writing and speaking with the same error. It seems that only with an appropriate "critical experience" will they begin to dispositionally understand the relevance of the concept and avoid committing the same error. *********************************** To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/