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: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar              
><[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 Nancy, I noted the 107 page document that 
>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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