Tom, et al. I would like permission to print your post in Syntax, together with some of the responses to it. (I'll need your permissions, and, Johanna, I'll need another copy of yours since I accidentally deleted it.) Personally, I agree with Bob, except that I probably feel even more strongly than he does that teachers should be able to demonstrate proficiency in identifying such things as subjects, verbs, objects, clauses, etc. in any piece of writing. As for Johanna's questioning of the reason for that, my first impulse is to respond with another question -- Johanna, do you teach writing, or linguistics? As a writing instructor, I regularly discuss sentence structure as it relates to meaning -- and to ethos. I make the students learn to identify subordinate clauses. We also discuss what subordinate clauses do within a text. (Back into that MIMC thing.) Then I have them analyze a passage of their own writing and calculate the number of subordinate clauses per main clause. The class average is usually one per main clause. Some students have NONE. They see for themselves that their writing is "different," and they also see how they can change it to be more like that of their classmates. From my perspective, it is totally irresponsible of us NOT to teach not just teachers, but all students how to identify subjects, verbs, clauses, participles, noun absolutes, etc.