[log in to unmask]" type="cite">Ed, That's an interesting experiment. Would you be able to share with us more details about the items you used to test the students' understanding, such as their wording, and how the teachers actually attempted to introduce the passive during the year? (I would also be interested in the summary statistics, but that's probably too far off the purposes of the list.) Regards, Karl Edgar Schuster wrote:A couple of decades ago in September, I tested an entire tenth grade class on their ability to recognize passives---nearly 500 students in all, at a reasonably good suburban Philadelphia high school. I used five multiple choice questions with four possible answers for each. (I believe that means that a chance score would have been 25 percent.) In September, the result was 50.0 percent correct. Recognition of the passive was supposed to be a "Mastery" objective for tenth grade English. I tested the same students at the end of the year in June. The result was 51.2 percent correct. The "gain" was not statistically significant. At a later time, teaching junior and senior college business majors at Penn State, it was clear to me that they could not recognize passives. I conclude by quoting Ed Vavra, When and how (and we might add, "by whom?") can passives be effectively taught? Ed Schuster On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:55 PM, Edward Vavra wrote:Craig, First, the passives. Rarely, I think, do we teach students to USE constructions. They do so naturally. I'm amused to see your question followed by Scott's, to which I'll try to reply separately. Remember that I'm working in what I believe to be the current reality--most students are unable to identify finite verbs. If they cannot recognize them in the first place, what good does it do to "teach" passive voice. KISS introduces passives, as a concept to be learned, in fifth grade, primarily with the objective that students learn to recognize passive voice. Why? Because some teachers will tell students never to use passives (silly, but that is currently taught), and some instructors will tell students to use passive voice. Unless students can recognize passives when they see them, either "direction" is meaningless. It's my hope to include exploratory exercises on passives (uses and abuses) in the upper grades. Most of the "Practice/Application" sections in the upper KISS grades have slots for an exercise on passives. See: http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/G10_WB1.htm#Practice_1 Thus we agree, passives are "important to discourse decisions." Where we may disagree is when and how they can effectively be taught. I don't understand how you can think that natural language development can't occur without instruction. Isn't it obvious that the sentences of older students are more complicated, especially in terms of embeddings, than the sentences of younger students? Thus, for me, the question is the purpose of instruction. I'd say that it is to help students better understand how language works. In other words, the ability to analyze sentences enables students to discuss (and thus understand) how passives, for example, work. Or how deep embedding of clauses may cause problems for readers. True, some people argue against formal instruction in language, believing that it "just happens." But just because it happens does not mean that it happens effectively, and just because they are wrong does not mean that we have to be. Appositives -- as always, I argue that unless students are taught to recognize the things in the first place, instruction will not be very effective. Thus in KISS recognition (identification) always comes first. But KISS also includes a variety of sentence manipulation exercises and combining exercises in which students are asked to combine clauses by using an appositive, etc. My response to your last, and most important question, is the entire KISS site. It is more or less laid out at: http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Overview_Levels.htm Ed -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar 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/