Gretchen and Johanna,
You both appear to be looking for suggestions, so I am curious about why neither of you appear to have looked at the Guide to KISS Grammar that I have recently suggested
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/LPlans/Guide_Book1.htm
It clearly addresses scope and sequence, errors, style, and assessment. I also has hundreds of exercises that teachers can simply take and use * for free. As I have noted previously, the approach is constantly being modified and improved, primarily by sugggestions from members of the KISS list who are using the approach.
Johanna,
As for practical and not sterile * I would consider it as practical if it can be used to help students analyze their own writing. I don't think your definitions can, nor do I see any attempt on your part to even try to do so. That you note that perhaps you should is a sign of hope. I sympathize with your problems in the course. I used to teach a similar course, but I concentrated on what students need to know, and they do not need much of the linguistic stuff that you include. Bascially, I took the attitude that they need to be able to identify subjects, finite verbs, complements, and clauses. We did include some work on verbals and noun absolutes, but, and in this I agree with you, for most students this was too much. We need to distinguish, however, what we do in the college classroom from what needs to be done in K-12. If students were taught how to identify the basics in K-12 (through at least clauses), your job in the college classroom would be much easier and productive. Feel free, by the way, to use the students' samples from the KISS site for your own work. See (again), for example, those from the Pennsylvania standards at:
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G06/Nov/index.htm
Collecting a valid sample is not easy, and the state standards are not the best, but they are an objective collection, not made by the researcher.
Finally, my sense is that you think you have to teach students how to identify every word all at the same time. Thus you refer to sentences that are too complex. Thus, for example, if a sentence includes a participle my sense is that you feel the need to explain participles to the students. I have not found that to be true. It takes some practice, and there are a few "keys" that will help students (for example, a finite verb phrase can never begin with "to"), but students, using, as you say they should use, their own unconscious understanding of grammar, can learn to identify all the subject / finite verb / complement patterns in even the most complex sentences. Once they see that they can do that, they often WANT to learn about the other constructions. This is not just my experience, it is also being reported on the KISS list.
Ed
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/01/05 9:59 PM >>>
In a message dated 4/1/2005 5:51:13 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
If you don't know about these, I can lead
you to a few sources.
Johanna,
I know a few of the tricks or tags (some I learned from you at Asilomar!),
but I'm always interested in more. Please send me the sources at your
convenience. I'm sure my whole team will thank you!
I'm finding that our whole elementary school is packed with teachers who
don't want to teach grammar, spelling, or mechanics because they want writing to
be "fun" for the kids. They think that making them concentrate on how they
are writing, at the expense of what they are writing, will make them hate
writing. (And it took numerous meetings for me to drag this out of them as they
all give lip service to the idea of teaching all aspects of writing). So by
the time they get to fourth grade (the grade we started with our grammar
materials), some students still have to be repeatedly reminded to capitalize the
beginning word of a sentence.
My goal in teaching grammar is to let the students see that the language
comes in chunks, and by varying the location and types of chunks, they can
vastly improve their writing. In order to do this, they have to recognize the
chunks, and for them to see the chunks, we have to teach them how they relate to
each other. The idea that we call them clauses or adverbial prepositional
phrases is just a convenience. I tell them that they will (I hope) learn about
different grammars as they attend more school and that none of this is writ
in stone, so they shouldn't be disconcerted if someone uses different
terminology.
I just want them to be able to choose to open a sentence with a noun
absolute or a participle and be able to tell me why they chose that construction.
What effect were they aiming for? Did they accomplish that goal? What do other
writers do to accomplish the same goals? It's all very well to say they
don't need the terminology to do that, but it really helps them organize
language if they have some way of classifying it. It gives them a neater, more
accessible tool box for writing and reading.
I teach punctuation and mechanics in the same vein - as the Romans used to
say, the "new aids to the readers" help people construct meaning and navigate
the thinking behind the writing. It's not "wrong" to punctuate in
nonstandard ways, but it has real life consequences - the potential for being
misunderstood in meaning and the reality that people will judge you in life by certain
rules that historically the "educated" people have used.
I know it's hard, but somewhere there has to be lots of material about the
ages at which kids can start to recognize these constructions (recognize, not
use - I'm aware they use them much earlier), and write something like the
Washington list that makes sense in the way kids learn. (I know Ed Vavra quotes
extensively from Loban and Loban, but I can't find a copy of that in print.)
My frustration ("Oh, God, here she goes again!") is that people start
talking about these issues and get so bogged down in the minutia (not to be
disrespectful, but it happened in this very thread about what the subject of Ed's
sentence was) that the grander scheme of things like scope and sequence gets
lost in the arguing.
If the Washington list is so bad, someone cobble together one that makes
sense with regard to how kids learn and look at language and post it. Let us
see it and discuss it. Or tear the Washington one to bits, so those of us in
the middle school/high school trenches can see what you all object to. My
guess is that most public schools have a mandated list like this, and lots of
teachers are using it because they have no options.
~Gretchen
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