Jo,
   I have had good luck teaching the restrictive/nonrestrictive
distinctioin with potentially ambigious statements that come close to home.
    "She's tired of dating guys who are always into themselves."
     "She's tired of dating guys, who are always into themselves."
     "She won't rent to college students who are into wild partying."
     "She won't rent to college students, who are into wild partying."

I usually present these and then ask for an interpretation of the
different meanings.  With sentences two and four, if you're a guy or a
college student, you are out of luck.  With sentences one and three, you
can convince the girl or landlord that you are one of the better members
of the group, not just into yourself or not at all into wild partying.
    Martha has a neat example in Understanding English Grammar, a debate
in the Republican convention about whether to say "We are opposed to
taxes which hurt the economy" or "We are opposed to taxes, which hurt
the economy."  The first puts them on the record as against all taxes.
 The second allows some selectivity.
    You can also get a laugh with "My wife Laura" or "My boyfriend
Pete", which imply that you've got at least one more on the side.
    You can make a case for this distinctiion as one of the most
important in grammar.  It's not just that they punctuate carelessly, but
they don't havce control of a tool for conveying important meaning
distinctions.  (These are signalled in speech through the intonation
system.)
For students used to thinking of nouns as "things," it also helps focus
attention on the notion that a noun often names something as a member of
a group, and much modificatioin simply narrows or restricts that down.

Craig
Jo Rubba wrote:

> Help!  This is driving me nuts.
>
> My students don't know when to put a comma before the title of a book,
> story, poem, etc. I am having trouble figuring out the rule. I'm  hoping
> it's not the standard restrictive - non-restrictive principle, because
> half of them don't get that. It seems to have to do with prior mention,
> but I can't formulate it. Here are some typical contexts:
>
> Charlotte Perkins' short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" portrays a woman
> going mad.
> In his poem "In Hardwood Groves", Robert Frost exploits the metaphor
> PEOPLE ARE PLANTS ...
>
> I know that commas around the story/poem title would be wrong; in the
> second context, the comma after the title is required to set off the
> initial adverbial phrase.
>
> Most commonly, my students use the comma(s) when they should not. Is
> there a straighforward explanation for this? Please don't tell me I have
> to explain noun complementation or restrictive/non-restrictive
> appositives ... please ...
>
> ***************************************************
> Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
> English Department, Cal Poly State University
> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
> Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
> Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
> ***************************************************
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