John,
     Your confusion is, I think, based on an erroneous assumption ― that it would take too long and be too heavy-handed to teach students to explain every word. If you examine most of the analysis keys in the KISS workbooks, you will see that, with randomly selected texts, or with entire sets of texts chosen by state education departments, 90 to 95 % of the words can be explained just in terms of adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, conjunctions, S/V/C patterns, and clauses. What I have found, both with my own students, and with members of the KISS group is that, once people get this far, (and it really does not take that long to get them that far) they want explanations for the remaining five or ten percent. And it is not that difficult to provide them, just using the list in the KISS toolbox that I referred to in my last post. 
     Now that does not satisfy Herb [See his message.], but Herb's position does not make sense to me. He admits, if I understand him correctly,  that for primary and middle school students my explanation would be satisfactory, But then he says that he agrees with the NCTE reviewers that it is not satisfactory. Is he saying that NCTE is not interested in teaching primary and middle school students?

     I would suggest that the discussion between Herb and Karl may help me explain my position to Kirsten. Herb and Karl have different views of how to explain "on" in "put on." In itself, that does not bother me, but I do think that they both should address the question of what should be taught to primary and middle school students. I find this particular topic (phrasal verbs) particularly irritable because I don't know of any native speaking student who has serious problems using them. Nor, as far as I can see, would this question be related to style or logic. 
      Note, however, that Herb agrees with the NCTE reviewers, thereby suggesting that students should be taught phrasal verbs. O.K., then explain how ― are we going to give third or fourth graders a list of all the phrasal verbs? Are we going to give them Herb's explanation of the phenomenon, or are we going to give them Karl's. Perhaps we should give them both, plus a dozen others, and really confuse them. (And make them hate grammar. Many, if not most, third graders will not recognize "put" as a verb, and here we are discussing different ways of looking at phrasal verbs?

     But I also have another question for Kirsten. She ends her message with "What is the KISS explanation of the sentence you asked about? I wonder
whether it differs substantially from the one offered here, which you dismissed." But there wasn't one offered here. There were several, many of which depended on an understanding of the underlying grammatical theory from which the explanation came. And what annoys me is the fact that most of the people who offered them did not at all address the question of how those explanations would fit into a K-12 presentation of grammar. As for the KISS explanation of the original sentence, I plan on putting it in the workbooks. When I do so, I'll also post it here. I might note, by the way, that of all the explanations given here, it was, if I remember correctly, Craig Hancock's that made the most sense to me. 
      Perhaps as a further explanation to Kirsten, my sense is that this group basically likes to play with pebbles on a beach and ignores the entire ocean of what can realistically be done about students' problems with grammar. If I remember correctly, a year or so ago Gretchen started a separate discussion group for K-12 teachers simply because this group refuses to address the practical problems. When ATEG was started, it was my impression that the practical problems were to be its focus. 
Ed

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