Ed,
I know your dislike for linguistic terms;  but, as Bill and Herb have shown, there are concepts/terms from linguistics that are particularly useful.  For example, if you REALLY want your students to understand something about the English language, you should show them how they can use inflectional endings to define categories:  words which take the -s plural suffix are nouns;  words that take the -ing suffix are verbs.  This is a much more accurate than than "a noun is a person, place, thing or idea" and a verb is "an action word" and it IS based on linguistic concepts.
Cornelia

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