Connie,
     I don't take what you said as a personal attack. In fact, I worried
throughout the day that members of the list might take what I said about
your work as a personal attack. I am very happy to see that we can have
a civilized, yet sharp discussion on this list among people who have
very fundamental disagreements. There are a lot of important comments
that have been made in the last twenty-four hours, and I can't respond
to all. I think that I will touch on some of them by focussing on
Connie's "absolute horror" at my suggested objective -- that every high
school graduate be able to explain how every word in ANY sentence is
syntactically related to the basic pattern of a main clause.
      Here again, I would suggest that Connie's horror results from her
not understanding what I mean. My guess is that she is looking at
grammatical concepts, rather than at USING concepts to analyze
sentences. Although the difference seems simple to me, most people don't
get it.
     Instead of beginning with grammatical constructions, begin with a
text (any text).  Imagine that the text has 100 words, and consider each
word as a dot. In order to connect the dots, a person has to make 99
lines (connections). Suppose that three of the words are "an old house"
-- two adjectives that modify a noun. Anyone who can identify adjectives
can thus make the two connections between the adjectives and the nouns.
Similarly, anyone who can identify adverbs can make all the connections
between adverbs and the words they modify. If one can identify
prepositional phrases (99.9% of which function as adjectives or
adverbs), one can make approximately 40 to 50% of the connections
(depending on the level of the writing). Add subjects / verbs /
complements to the mix, and one can account for close to 95% of the
connections. Add verbals (gerunds, gerundives, and infinitives) and one
is close to 98%. Add six more constructions, some of which are simple
(direct address), and some of which are a little more complicated (noun
absolutes), and one can do exactly what is causing Connie "absolute
horror." I used this approach with future teachers, and in a single
semester, all of them got the basics -- through clauses; several of them
got it all. This was in a 15-week course, in which we also had to cover
language development, usage, a survey of basic linguistics, etc. I
wasn't satisfied, but I had to remember that many of my students were
entering with no idea of what a verb is.
     In the KISS curriculum, I suggest spreading this instruction out,
ideally beginning in third grade. As I suggest in my description of the
curriculum (http://www.sunlink.net/rpp/GC.htn), if we did this, it would
probably take a LOT less time than is currently given to grammar, and it
would be able to develop each of the concepts in much more meaningful,
relevant, detail. (As I have said before, when my students work in
groups to analyze their own writing, they begin to see for themselves
that their sentences are too short and simple, fragmented, or too long
and complex, etc. The grammar becomes meaningful to them.)
     If we want to help the students, the instruction has to be
systematic. By beginning with prepositional phrases, students
automatically exclude objects of prepositions as subjects of verbs when
they advance to the study of subjects and verbs. Having learned to
identify finite verbs, their subjects, and their complements, clauses
are relatively easy to learn because every S/V/C pattern is the core of
a clause. (If they have three S/V/C patterns underlined in a sentence,
there are three clauses in it.) Once they have mastered finite verbs and
clauses, verbals are easier to identify -- any verb that is not
underlined twice HAS TO BE a verbal. The preceding explanation, although
it covers the essentials, is, I admit, somewhat simplified. My point
here is that such a systematic approach builds on itself. Teaching
Grammar as a Liberating Art explains the theory behind the approach, but
for a better feel of what I mean, check out the Self-Paced Course for
Teachers at:
http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/SP/index.htm
Currently, I have the texts of nine jokes, six fables, and the opening
passages of five famous novels analyzed at each level, with indications
of the percent of connections made at each level. By level five, each
text is 100% analyzed. (You can work your way backwards through each
exercise by beginning at the answer key for level 5 at:
http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/SP/L5N06A.htm.)
    Now I am well aware that the explanations that will satisfy me will
not satisfy many of the linguists on this list. I agree here, with Harry
Noden, and I would put myself in his first group. I am not after
ultimate grammatical definitions. I am after grammatical concepts which
students can use not just to discuss, but to understand how syntax
affects writing. (Again, the student who sees, in working in groups,
that his or her peers have gerundives (participles) or appositives in
their writing, but that there are none in his or hers, will want to
learn how to get them in -- we are all group animals.)
       Again I want to suggest that the KISS curriculum has been
designed based on a lot of research. It is a lot easier for fifth and
sixth graders to learn to identify finite verbs because there are fewer
distracting verbals in their writing. The work of Hunt, Loban, and
O'Donnell has, to my mind, conclusively demonstrated that mastery of
subordinate clauses (as opposed to their use as formulas) develops
between grades seven and nine. There is no need to rush the curriculum.
As David Mulroy pointed out, currently many (I would say most) of our
high school graduates cannot identify verbs (or tenses). Likewise, I
will say again, when SiS published the series of articles on the main
idea in the main clause, some TEACHERS contacted me and said that they
could not understand the articles because they could not identify
clauses.
      Connie stated that I would be "dooming most students to failure."
But from my point of view, her approach does that. She underestimates
the intelligence of students. I will agree that not every student may
have the ability to get every word in every passage, but EVERY student,
by twelfth grade, can learn to identify clauses. Once they can do that,
by the way, they can understand for themselves the "errors" of
fragments, comma-splices, and run-ons. Our current failure to respect
students' intelligence is what dooms many of them to failure. I
continually ponder what Vygotsky meant when he wrote "our analysis
clearly showed the study of grammar to be of paramount importance for
the mental development of the child." (Thought, 100) Unfortunately, he
did not explain it, at least not in his two best known books. I don't
think he had in mind the stuff that is in the major textbooks --
definitions and simple sentence exercises. Nor do I think he meant
linguistics. Perhaps he meant something such as Churchill describes --
in essence the diagramming of sentences. But even more, I think what he
had in mind is something that grammar can offer better than any other
subject. The introduction to inductive thought. All of our grammatical
terms are abstractions -- and if we teach them as such, by having
students identify all the variations of the concept in living language,
the study of grammar may develop abstract thought. This is, I realize,
the topic of an essay, if not a book. By the way, Connie, in looking for
my notes on Vygostky, I ran across my notes on your Grammar for
Teachers. I "grade" almost everything I read, based on a five point
system. A five means that it is worth re-reading, a three that it might
be, a 2 that it probably isn't. Your first six chapters got a five, two
four pluses, and a four minus. Seven through nine, where you got into
details, got "2-". Put another way, I think I agree with what you want
to do with grammar; I just strenuously disagree with the way you want to
do it. And that is because all of your examples are so simple.
     And that brings me to Susan Witt's comments about what happens as
children move on from one level of complexity to the next. I've just
been rereading Hunt's 1970 study (on the Aluminum passage). One of the
things he notes is that by seventh grade, most students are using all of
the basic constructions very well. From that point on, he suggests
further development is a matter of combining and embedding
constructions. As Susan notes, as Hunt noted, as Mellon noted, this
further development leads to more errors. On the surface, the errors
look similar, but they are not. As Edith noted, in their research
project, some students produced more comma-splices, etc., but, when they
looked closer, they found that many, if not most of these errors, were
at least accompanied by (I would go so far as to say caused by) more
complexity in the writing -- either compounding or subordination. Edith
wishes that she could have the students for another semester. Don't we
all? But the fact is, that we cannot. We can, however, develop a
coherent, systematic curriculum, especially in middle and high school,
in which each teacher could do his or her part, knowing that the
students would be moving on to teachers who would have the students use
what they learned from us and develop it further.
      Before leaving, I want to note that I agree in principle with
David Mulroy. The KISS approach currently pays almost no attention to
verb tenses, or to pronouns, or to a few other grammatical concepts that
students should (and could)  probably learn. I find it very frustrating,
as an instructor of writing, to speak to college Freshmen of tense (or
number) and have them have no idea of what I mean. I am, however, only
one person, and thus far I have been attempting to explain the
fundamentals of KISS -- the things that students need to know at one
level (S/V/C patterns) so that they can use them at the next (clauses).
Note that in the ideal curriculum, I suggest that grades four through
six be devoted to S/V/C patterns. Over the course of three years,
students could probably also get the basic ideas of tense and number.
     I will be interested., of course, to know if, after looking at the
materials in the Self-Paced course, Connie (or anyone else) is still
horrified. But I would like more specific objections. What, in the KISS
curriculum, will probably not work, and why?
     As always, I would appreciate help, not only in response to the
previous question, but also in guidance for the direction that my work
should take. It took me all of last summer to put the Self-Paced course
on the web. Those passages, with their levels of answer keys, are
designed 1) to demonstrate how KISS works, and 2) to be used as
exercises, both for and by teachers. I could devote a lot more of my
time in that direction -- developing instructional materials. On the
other hand, there is the call for research. This summer has basically
been devoted to the 93 Aluminum revisions. In the setup of those
passages, specific constructions are identified, but I am not attempting
to explain the "connection" of every word. The aluminum passages also do
not make very good instructional material for teachers in their
classrooms. I'm caught between the two directions. Making instructional
material is useless if no one uses it -- the research might get more
people to use it. But a lack of instructional material (examples) may
also makes the approach unattractive. I'm open to suggestions.
     If you got this far, thanks for your patience. And Connie, thanks
again for not taking my remarks personally.
Ed V.