Craig,

Aren’t you, below, making an argument that students should have been taught (AND LEARNED) some things (like the ability to identify verbs) before they got to your course?

Ed V.

 

 

Ed, Ed, Karl,
   My approach to teaching passives is a little different in my grammar class than it is in my writing classes. In both, I usually start with the idea of "subject function" from functional grammar. There are three subject functions to correspond with the three major metafunctions--grammatical subject (the usual idea of subject), actor (doer of the deed or whatever is verb appropriate), and theme (stepping-off point for the message structure of the clause). I often use the sentence in my book: "A drunk driver killed my dog just before Christmas." In this version, all three functions are conflated. We play around with versions that split the functions.  "My dog was killed by a drunk driver just before Christmas." "Just before Christmas, my dog was killed by a drunk driver."  Each of these represents the same happening in the world, but construes it differently and we discuss that.  So we come at it with a functional orientation, even playing around with sentences like "The driver who killed my dog just before Christmas was drunk" or "The dog the drunk driver killed just before Christmas was mine."  These are approached from the start as functional variations.
   I don't do follow-up testing in my writing classes.  Maybe I should. In quizzes and tests in my grammar class, they need to identify each of these functions within single clause sentences.  I also ask them to convert active sentences into their passive versions. I have given these tests over a number of years and can say that these are pretty much give away points, among the easiest tasks, a good way to balance out the loss of points on more complicated tasks.
   At the end of the semester, we do look at real world texts, and the passive is at least a working concept for them, even though they may not identify every passive that shows up. (Someone in the class probably will.)
   It's hard, of course, to cover everything in a single semester and still have time to put it to work. I suspect, though, that it is not often taught in a way that seems to matter, and students probably know they won't be held accountable. Everything changes when learning grammar is the course's main goal.

Craig

   

Karl Hagen wrote:

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

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