mazakaal Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Dd has just started KISS grammar. Today's exercise taught that in the sentence: He will begin to swim in the morning. 'He' is the subject. 'Will begin to swim' is the complete verb phrase with 'begin' as a helping verb. I'm confused because in Analytical Grammar, which my 13yo is doing, 'will' would have been labled the helping verb, 'begin' would have been the main verb, and 'to swim' would have been an infinitive phrase and the direct object of 'will begin.' At least that's what I would have expected according to what he did in AG last year. This lesson shows a whole list of words as helping verbs which I've never before seen on any helping verb list: begin, start, continue, keep (on), stop, like, love, hate, want, try. So are these helping verbs and I've just been living in the dark all these years? Or is KISS teaching something different from traditional grammar? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Jo Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 Are you on the yahoo group? I'd ask there, I'm sure you'll get an answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazakaal Posted January 4, 2012 Author Share Posted January 4, 2012 I didn't know there was a KISS yahoo group. I'd appreciate it if you could ask so I don't have to wait for membership approval, etc. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snickerdoodle Posted January 4, 2012 Share Posted January 4, 2012 :bigear: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
letsplaymath Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 (edited) ...He will begin to swim in the morning. 'He' is the subject. 'Will begin to swim' is the complete verb phrase with 'begin' as a helping verb. I'm confused because in Analytical Grammar, which my 13yo is doing, 'will' would have been labled the helping verb, 'begin' would have been the main verb, and 'to swim' would have been an infinitive phrase and the direct object of 'will begin.' ... Or is KISS teaching something different from traditional grammar? Yes, KISS is teaching something different from traditional grammar for now. KISS builds gradually, and the helping verb lessons (and least the ones I remember) are early in Level 1 -- basically the first year of study -- when the student is learning to recognize subjects and verbs. Finding subjects and verbs can be plenty hard enough for a beginner, so we don't want to discourage the student with complications. Infinitive phrases and other verbals are mentioned late in Level 2 (but only enough for the students to begin recognizing that they aren't part of the verb), and then become the focus of study in Level 4 -- roughly the 4th year of study, though my daughter and I have been stretching our lessons out longer than that. At that level, the KISS explanation will be exactly the same as what Analytical Grammar says. Or at least, one of the KISS explanations will be that. KISS Grammar always allows for alternative explanations, if they make sense, and in this case I think it would depend on how you read the sentence whether you consider "to swim" as part of the action (the finite verb) or as the direct object. My guess is that some people will see it one way and some the other, and I don't think Ed would consider it wrong either way. Also, KISS won't bother to separate "helping" and "main" verbs, after those early lessons. The only reason there are lessons about helping verbs is so children will realize the finite verb might include more than one word -- that they can't just find one verb and assume they are finished. But at any stage, the important idea is for the student to mark the sentence as it makes sense to him. So if your son marks "will begin to swim" as the verb, that's fine. If he marks "will begin" as the verb and recognizes that "to swim" is something else, but doesn't know how to mark it (or marks it as the complement), that's fine, too. But if he did something like just mark "swim" as the verb, that would be wrong, because a sentence like "he swim" does not make sense -- that would be a signal to go back and reconsider the marking, to find the extra parts of the verb and make it sensible. This sort of multiple-right-answers approach is, in my experience, unique to KISS Grammar and is one of the reasons I love it. It matches the way we come to understand language, bit by bit. And it allows students to analyze real sentences from real literature, even though they haven't yet learned all the constructions. In most of the levels, the KISS Analysis Key contains all the markings for all levels (for the teacher's information), but the students are only expected to do what they've learned. And they are expected to get confused and make mistakes, because these are not pretend sentences made up for the lesson. They are real sentences from real books, and they often have complications. In our experience, my daughter and I average 1-2 sentences per lesson where we say, "I don't know. Here's my best guess, now what does the AK say?" Sometimes we read the AK, and it makes sense, and we can see what Ed means. But on occasion, we like our explanation better than what is written there. Then we write a note to the Yahoo group to make sure we're allowed to explain it our way, and so far he's always said it's fine. (And at least once, he changed the AK to add our idea as an alternate explanation, which I thought was cool!) Edited January 5, 2012 by letsplaymath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewelma Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Wonderful description. We have used KISS for 4 years now, and my children have had no trouble with this approach to verbs. Ruth in NZ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Embassy Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 This part confused my son so much I stopped using KISS. It confused me also:tongue_smilie: We are happily using Rod and Staff now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nansk Posted January 5, 2012 Share Posted January 5, 2012 Wonderful description. Totally agree! I am bookingmarking Denise's post. This question about KISS Grammar Level 1 approach to marking verb phrases has been asked more than once in the recent past. Next time, I will just link to Denise's explanation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazakaal Posted January 5, 2012 Author Share Posted January 5, 2012 Denise, thank you so much for that explanation. It makes sense now. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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