This has been an interesting thread, but it also exemplifies why I have basically given up on the effectiveness of ATEG. I would like to thank Bill McCleary for mentioning my work in his "Proposal," and I admire his attempt in that proposal. It is, as he notes, ambitious, but nevetheless, I wish him well with it * it is, if I remember correctly, the only grade-sequential proposal provided by an ATEG member (other than KISS, of course). Personally, however, I think his proposal still misses the main problem, a problem that actually has a very simple answer.
    The problem has been, and continues to be, that grammatical terminology is too ambiguous, and too poorly taught. That is why the general public knows so little. I looked through the syllabi on the web and found them very interesting * my guess is that many, if not most, of the graduates from these courses will still not be able to identify the subjects, finite verbs, complements, and clauses in the writing of their future students. And if these future teachers will not be able to do so, surely they will have great difficulty enabling their students to do so. But subjects, verbs, complements and clauses are the core of English grammar. Any other grammar that is "taught" may be memorized, and simplistic examples may be identifiable, but the "teaching" will not enable the students to apply it to what they themselves read and write. As a result, the students will not be able to even begin to explore questions such as style, logic, and, yes, "correctness." And, as a result of that, they will find "grammar" frustrating, useless, and boring.
     From my perspective, the fault now lies in ATEG. Years ago (2000?) , in Seattle, we discussed developing curriculum proposals. The group, against my whining objections, decided to develop just one (whereas I had suggested two or three). That one proposal, as far as I have seen, has never been developed. It hasn't developed because there are too many cooks * too many members who want their terminology, their grammatical theory, included. Thus, for example, the group cannot agree on a pedagogical definition of "clause." Now the public, justifiably, does not want two, three, or four different concepts of "clause." Those differences are fine for linguists, but they simply confuse the public.  As some of you may remember, for example, at one conference I asked people to underline the main clause in

He said she would be a good president.

Half of the participants said that the main clause is "He said," and the other half said that it is the entire sentence. When fundamental definitions such as this change from teacher to teacher, grade level to grade level, the public is right in simply sending grammar and its teachers to Hades. This is particularly true if one wants to have the students apply the grammar to the analysis, stylistic and other, of their own writing.

      One of the surprising things about ATEG, for example,  is that there has been so much resistance to my use of "gerundive." I say "surprising" because so many members talk about * and want to teach * the distinction between form and function, but they do not realize the form/function problem that students * and teachers * have with using just the term "participle" for all the "ing" etc. forms of the verb. Thus teachers, and researchers, claim that young children use "participles" and thus we can teach them to fourth and fifth graders. But there is a major developmental difference between "When I was playing in the park, I saw Bill." and "Playing in the park, I saw Bill." Hunt, although he did not name the construction, claimed that gerundives, such as "playing in the park" do not develop before college. I think his research is flawed here, but he is certainly right that gerundives are a very late developing structure. In spite of Hunt's research, there are still many teachers attempting to teach "participles" to fifth and sixth grade students, students who have not been taught to identify finite verbs in the first place.

     There is also a problem of ignorance among some of the teachers of teachers. I was invited to submit a KISS grammar manuscript to NCTE, and I told the editor who invited me to do so that NCTE would not publish it. I was right, but I was amazed at the ignorance expressed in some of the reviewers' comments. Thus one reviewer, the only one who actually focussed on the grammatical theory, insisted that noun absolutes can only function as "sentence modifiers." [Note that he avoided the traditional "adverb.'] Never, he(?) stated, had he ever seen them described as anything else. Now I do not claim to be a "linguist," but I can read. George Curme is noted in the histories of linguistics as one of the two major twentieth century "traditional" grammarians. I have posted on the KISS site the pages on which he discusses noun absolutes used as nouns.

 See: http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/kiss/wb/G11/IM_NounAbs_TN.htm

Not to my surprise, NCTE had relieved the original editor who had invited me to submit the manuscript, and the new editor used this "linguist's" opinion as a major reason to reject the KISS manuscript. 
     The real reason lay elsewhere, but the point of my story in not so much sour grapes as it is an example of how and why this group will probably never arrive at an effective pedagogical grammar. Disagreements about terminology, etc. will result in one group shooting down the proposals of others. ATEG could prove me wrong on this, of course, but I challenge ATEG to arrive at an "ATEG offical" pegagogical definition of "clause." Do main clauses include all subordinate clauses or don't they? Is an infinitive construction a "clause" or a "phrase." Many ATEG members have an elitist attitude that, since they can understand the use of the terms, the public should be able to also. Indeed one prominent ATEG member once told me that if teachers cannot identify clauses, they should learn how to. That ATEG's teachers of teachers might have the responsibility to teach them did not seem to compute with the member who told me that.

    The KISS solution to the problem is, as the name implies, very simple. Keep the terms simple, but clear, and then teach students how to identify the constructions within their own writing. Third and fourth graders can easily learn to identify adjectives, adverbs, preposiitonal phrases, and S/V/C patterns in their own writing and in that of their peers. As the KISS approach is developing, it appears that two to three 5-minute exercises a week are more than adequate to enable students to learn to do this. An understanding of clauses is built on students ability to identify S/V/C patterns * every such pattern is the core of a clause, and thus there is one clause per pattern. Students who can identify clauses in real texts, including their own, can meaningfullly discuss questions of style, error, and even logic. In addition, most of the KISS exercises are based on either literary passages or on examples of students' writing. 

      I have, of course, argued the KISS perspective within ATEG for years, but few members listen. And the real point is not that KISS is the only way, for it probably is not, but rather that students (and teachers) need help learning to recognize the basic constructions * prepositional phrases, subjects and verbs, clauses. Most members (especially the teachers of teachers) are not really interested in teaching this. (That is apparent from the syllabi.) Instead, they want to teach lingistics, socio-linguistics, and bunches of terminology * with various teachers teaching different terms, but no one, except now for Bill, even addressing a sequential curriculum. Instead, I have seen numerous "arguments" as to why students cannot be taught to identify prepositional phrases, or finite verbs, etc.

     Some members of this list will see this message as more whining on my part, and perhaps it is. But Johanna started the thread and it is an interesting one. As one of the primary founders of ATEG, I feel I have the right to put in my two cents every once in a while, and thus I do. Basically I keep quiet and devote my time to developing the KISS site. I might note that the users of that site have made major contributions to improving the KISS Approach and the design of the site. It will probably take another year or two before I am basically satisfied with the site, and when I am, my intention is to try another book, this time for the general public, on why English educators cannot effectively teach grammar.

    Before closing, I'd like to note that the KISS Approach could probably fit very nicely within Bill McCleary's much more general, and much more ambitious, curriculum proposal.

Ed V.

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/