Bill,
   I agree with you totally about the problem you describe, but I don't see the need for new linguistic terms to help students resolve it. KISS, for example, is based on the concept of linguistic chunking * words into phrases, phrases into clauses. The fundamental KISS definition of a clause is "A subject / finite verb / complement pattern and all the words that chunk to it." I also agree with what you said about parts of speech, but the problem is that the "parts" are normally taught as word categories rather than as basic functions. For example, one might start with the basic concept "noun," but if it is limited to single words, then it is not very useful. It can, however, be easily expanded to include the noun functions of verbals (gerunds and infinitives) and, of course, noun clauses. Here again, I would suggest that the major problem is that students are being taught catergories and definitions, and they are not being taught how to apply the concepts to an analysis of their own writing.
Ed



>>> [log in to unmask] 04/12/05 3:06 PM >>>
As another linguist, I'd wholeheartedly second Herb's list. As he
mentions, there will be some differences of opinion, but not major ones.
Underlying several of the points on the list are a couple of foundation
skills that can be fostered very early:

(1) Thinking consciously about how groups of words in language "clump."
(2) Thinking consciously *about* particular words and their use.

Every year, I ask students in my introductory gen-ed linguistics survey
course to take a sample of their own writing and simply draw circles
around sets of words that they think cluster together. I don't grade it
(and they know I'm not going to), but I'm genuinely curious about what
they do. About 60-70% of the students do various permutations of what I
might expect -- i.e., circle some noun phrases, or prepositional
phrases, or the like. These don't always match linguistic theories
(e.g., grouping the subject and verb together, and excluding the
object), although a clear rationale for clustering is present. But there
is always a remaining 30-40% that appear to be circling at random
(they'll group an adverb with the definite article of a following noun
phrase, for example, while excluding the adjective and noun in that noun
phrase). I get a similar pattern in composition courses when I try to
engage students in talking about what is broadly termed "diction" --
while almost no one *wants* to talk about diction, some of them *can't*,
in the sense of being able to discuss why one word might work and
another not in a particular context.

 In both cases, the impression I get is not that the students are
somehow organically incapable of this kind of analytic exercise, but
that it's so totally new to them that they can't process it -- the
"scaffolding" isn't there. From conversations, I find that many of them
had units on "parts of speech," but more as a memorization activity
(granted, though, what they remember and what they actually did may be
two different things). 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

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