Grammar Gurus? diff. between KISS grammar and more "traditional" grammar instruction?

[Halcyon]

Besides the absence of diagramming, can anyone explain to me how Ed Vavra's KISS approach to teaching grammar differs pedagogically from the older, traditional ways of teaching grammar (I'm thinking particularly of Reed and Kellogg's books).

 

Any grammar gurus out there who care to help me out here?

[mrbmom77]

:bigear:

[nansk]

Some of these type of questions been answered in the KISS Intro document.

 

I suggest you join the KISS Yahoo group and ask Ed directly.

[Halcyon]

Thanks, I'll do that. I have read all his intro docs, particularly here and I do see his systematic approach as having a lot of value. Already my children are "seeing" things in their own writing that they hadn't noticed before.

[nansk]

This is the intro document that I found useful in understanding the KISS approach and how it differs from other grammar curricula.

[Halcyon]

Thank yoU!

[Tracy]

:lurk5:

[letsplaymath]

Besides the absence of diagramming, can anyone explain to me how Ed Vavra's KISS approach to teaching grammar differs pedagogically from the older, traditional ways of teaching grammar (I'm thinking particularly of Reed and Kellogg's books).

 

Any grammar gurus out there who care to help me out here?

For those of you lurking on this thread, perhaps this will help answer the question. I was reading today the intro to level 3 of KISS Grammar (psyching myself up to get back to schoolwork after an extended holiday), which is approximately middle school at my pace. It could be the third year of grammar, if you started in 3rd-4th grade and worked steadily. We started in 2nd grade and worked sporadically, so we entered level 3 around the end of 6th grade.

 

Anyway, reading this introduction reminded me of what I hate about traditional grammars: that they give you a huge pile of jargon to memorize, with only the simplest of sentences to analyze -- sentences that are made just for the exercise and that therefore fit the rules they have decided to teach. KISS Grammar is different because it teaches students to analyze real sentences. So, for instance, a middle school student like my daughter may never have heard terms like "definite pronoun" or "past perfect progressive tense", but she can identify all the nested subordinate clauses in a sentence like the following and explain exactly what role each clause is playing in the sentence.

[Quoting from the

introduction to Level 3

of KISS Grammar. The red lines are part of the marking that the student does in analyzing the sentence: vertical lines mark the end of a main clause, while square brackets surround the subordinate clauses.]

 

... But consider the following sentence from the children's book

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic

, by Betty MacDonald:

Mrs. Jones looked at him suspiciously

|

but he widened his large blue eyes

|

and --

[

as

he was only eight years old, a little small for his age and seemed even smaller in ten-year-old Jan's pajamas,

[

which

he had swiped the night before

[

because

he had forgotten

[

that

he had stuffed his own in the window seat

[

when

he was cleaning up his half of the room

]]]]]

-- Mrs. Jones convinced herself

[

that

he wasn't fooling

]

and let him go out to play.

|

That sentence contains three main clauses and six subordinate clauses. And note the five closing brackets after "room." Those subordinate clauses are stacked five deep. And by the time they have mastered KISS Level 3.1.3, students should be able to identify every one of them! ...