The KISS Grammar Game
-- Tech Prep Editions
and the Teaching of Grammar?
As I prepared these editions, I
wondered about what I might say to introduce them. My introduction has
turned into a conclusion. The KISS approach has been a major project of
mine for the last fifteen years -- I have written a book about it, published
several articles, and designed at least two web sites, all of which discuss
the KISS approach, if not the game. What could I say that I haven't said
before? By chance, I happened to be reading Rogers' A History of Communication,
and, as I read about Norbert Wiener's theory of cybernetics, I said to
myself, "That applies to the KISS approach!" As I thought about it, I realized
that it applies in two different ways -- the theory of grammar, and students'
learning of it.
|| Cybernetics deals in circular
causalities in which A causes B, B causes C, and C causes A, so that A
causes itself (Krippendorf 1989a, p. 443). An example of such circular
causality is a speaker who modifies his or her presentation while monitoring
audience reactions to it.
Everett Rogers, A History of Communication Study: A Biographical
Approach (NY; The Free Press, 1997. 397.)
Cybernetics and the Theory of Grammar
Although even many English teachers
do not know it, there are many different grammars of English. Most people
think of grammar as THE rules for speaking and writing English (or some
other language). But as Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary states,
a grammar is "The elements or principles of any science or art."
There are, for example, "traditional" grammars. Then
there are structural, transformational, systemic, tagmemic, and a number
of other different grammars of English. Each of these grammars tends to
use different terms (to describe the same things), and each was developed
for a different purpose. The grammar that is taught in our schools is most
often a derivative of ancient Latin grammar (a problem I have discussed
elsewhere), but, more importantly, most often that grammar is taught in
a highly analytical, impractical way. I find myself blushing as I write
this, for normally I am constantly after my students to be more analytical.
It was Rogers' explanation of cybernetics and system theory that made me
see the problem.
Systems theory is holistic; it
stresses the interrelationships among the parts of a whole. Systems thinking
was a reaction to the reductionist approach of classical physics, which
had provided the ideal for scientific research. An example of reductionism
is investigating smaller and smaller pieces or components of a phenomenon,
such as the study of quarks in physics. Such reductionism removes the context
of the behavior of study and also eliminates the interaction among the
various parts. When the reductionist approach was taken from physics to
the biological and social sciences, which study living systems, it distorted
the reality of these systems. Systems theory arose in order to correct
for the inappropriateness of reductionism. Systems consist of sets of components
related to each other interdependently that work toward the overall objective
of the whole. A system is a grouping of parts that work together in order
to accomplish a set of goals.... (407)
At the first (1990) conference of the NCTE Assembly for the
Teaching of English Grammar, one of the common complaints of presenters
was that they had to teach the parts of speech over and over again, grade
after grade. Why, these presenters wondered, couldn't students learn them?
Perhaps the problem in not in our students, but in our approach to teaching
grammar. The parts of speech are the basic building blocks of all English
sentence structure. But to teach them AS parts of speech is to take a very
reductionist perspective. As Roger's notes, "Such reductionism removes
the context of the behavior of study and also eliminates the interaction
among the various parts."
Language consists of a
number of systems -- a sound system, a spelling system, a system for pronoun
references, and, most important for teaching, a sentence structure system.
Each "system is a grouping of parts that work together in order to accomplish
a set of goals." Each system, moreover, is "living," in a number of senses.
The sound system (accent) of someone born in Boston, for example, is different
from that of someone who was born in Arizona. But if the Bostonite moves
to Arizona, the odds are great that his or her accent will adapt to the
new environment. Likewise, an individual's syntactic system grows -- a
child's sentences are naturally shorter than they will be when that child
becomes an adult. In fact, the entire language is alive and adapting. Should
Shakespeare suddenly come alive today, he would find our English as difficult
as my students find his in Hamlet.
Unfortunately, the grammar taught
in our schools tends to ignore all this. There have been a few interesting
incursions, but on the whole the grammar taught in school focuses on individual
parts of speech, individual constructions (clauses, etc.), and individual
rules, all taught with some reference to "correctness," but almost never
taught with reference to a purpose. As Rogers says, "Systems consist of
sets of components related to each other interdependently that work toward
the overall objective of the whole." The objective of language, for most
people at least, is not "correctness," but rather the communication of
meaning. School grammar rarely gets to questions of meaning.
But the KISS approach
not only has meaning as its central focus, it also treats sentence structure
as a living system. It does this in several ways:
1. The KISS approach uses entire short texts, not individual
sentences, as the material for instruction. The ultimate question is therefore
always not simply is this "correct," but rather "how does this or that
grammatical construction affect the meaning -- and the communication of
that meaning -- to an intended audience?"
And, on a more theoretical level, the KISS approach explores
"the interaction among the various parts" of sentence structure. One way
it can do this is statistically. By using the KISS approach, I have learned,
for example, that in an average text written by an adult, one third of
the words are in prepositional phrases. On the other hand, less than one
percent of the words are in appositives. At first, this may not seem like
a big deal, but when we look at what is taught in our schools, we find
that prepositional phrases are usually ignored, and appositives are taught
as early as fourth grade! If our objective is to teach the system of sentence
structure, don't our schools have the situation backward?
2. The basic rule of KISS grammar is that every word,
in every sentence, is syntactically connected to a main subject / verb
/ complement pattern. Thus, not only is every sentence viewed as an interconnected
system, but connections between sentences within a text can be studied
3. The KISS approach is based on a psycholinguistic theory
of how the mind processes language. That theory basically explains how
every human's brain interprets sentences to convey or interpret meaning.
4. The KISS approach gives students the tools with which
they can not only see, but also understand and even control, their own
natural growth in sentence structure.
The KISS approach also focuses
on "sets of components related to each other interdependently that work
toward the overall objective of the whole." Consider the following two
sentences from a student's essay:
But the most vivid impression left on me this summer by this theater
came not from the stage; instead; it came from the rooms underneath the
theater. In this world underneath existed an atmosphere of mystery which
made me feel as if I was exploring an old dungeon in a decaying castle.
Traditional grammar would consider the word "underneath"
in the second sentence as an adverb. Well, o.k., but what does it mean
-- "Underneath what?" In the KISS approach, we look back to the preceding
sentence, where we find "underneath the theater." And that's what it means.
The "adverb," therefore, is really a partially ellipsed prepositional phrase.
The KISS approach reveals a
surprising number of such cases where one construction "slides into" another.
For example, one can slide from simple prepositional phrase ("After supper,
we played tennis.") to prepositional phrase with a gerundive ("After having
supper,....") to subordinate clause ("After we had supper, ...."). Or one
can slide back and forth between appositive and clause: "He is in Chicago,
the meat capital of the world." "He is in Chicago, which is the meat capital
of the world." And not only can they see that such "sliding" can be done,
but students can also intelligently discuss why writers might do it. In
general, the lengthier versions tend to slow the pace, whereas the shorter
constructions move readers more rapidly through the information. (As some
of the notes to these editions explain, there are sometimes more specific
reasons for specific cases.)
With an apology to Rogers
(for the theft), I thus want to claim that the KISS approach "is holistic;
it stresses the interrelationships among the parts of a whole." As it does
so, it makes sentence structure both more comprehensible and more interesting
Cybernetics and Students' Learning
Perhaps we might begin with the
question -- "Do students learn grammar?" One answer is a definite "Yes."
In order to speak the language, students have mastered a massive amount
of the grammar of the language. They learn this almost entirely on their
own. (How can anyone teach a baby English unless the baby first figures
out what those sounds mean?) It is often pointed out that, before they
enter school, almost every child has mastered almost all of the normal
constructions of English grammar.
But mastery of individual constructions
is not sufficient. Different grammar is appropriate for different situations,
and the boy who says "Me and Billy went to the store" probably should be
taught that, particularly among educated people (who tend to have more
power and money), such a statement will be seen as a grammatical error
and a breach of etiquette. But even more important, as children get older,
their sentences NATURALLY become more complicated, and many people have
troubles keeping the words in sentences aligned. Thus errors such as fragments,
comma-splices, and dangling modifiers appear; and, even worse, students
sometimes lose control of the structure (syntax) of their sentences and
say (or write) things that they do not mean. For these reasons, we teach
grammar in school. Do students learn this grammar? A few do, but for many,
the answer is an almost unqualified "No." Although most people remember
being taught grammar, other than a few English teachers and some grammarians,
most people do not believe that they understand it. In fact, they fear
it, which is why, when introduced to an English teacher, they think, if
not say, "Oh, I'd better watch my grammar."
Here again, perhaps Wiener's
concept of cybernetics can help us understand the problem. According to
Rogers, "Cybernetics as a communication theory is
unique in several ways:
1. Feedback is a particular type
of communication message flow, in that the information conveyed describes
the system's performance at a previous point in time to itself."
Let's consider the primary system we
are interested in to be each students' intellectual system for understanding
what it is they are learning -- and why. The system's performance, then,
would be how well the student understands the grammar that is being taught.
But because grammar is not normally taught as a system, there is no way
for an individual student to be able to accurately describe his or her
own performance. Internally, i.e., in the student's own mind, what is received
as feedback is an unconnected string of a few Got
its, usually buried in a buzz of question
marks: "A subject must agree with its verb
in number." --"I've
got it, or at least remember it." "Number?" "Subject?" "Verb?"
[Research shows that most high school graduates cannot identify the subjects
and verbs in a typical short passage; hence, the "rule" is useless to them.]
"A semicolon is used to join main clauses."
--"I remember that." "Clause?" "Main clause?"
Even those students who, in the short term, can remember what is going
on in the classroom, and pass the homework assignments and/or tests, (thereby
getting positive feedback from the teacher), generally get what we normally
call negative internal feedback because they cannot understand what they
are learning as a system, and they cannot see how well they are mastering
that system. As a result, the normal attitude toward grammar classes in
our schools, even among most English teachers, is a big "Ugh!"
approach reverses that situation simply because it treats sentence structure
as a relatively finite and closed system. In essence, this gives students
a goal which they can clearly see: if they can understand and explain how
every word in any English sentence is syntactically related to the subject
/ verb / complement pattern of a main clause, they have reached their goal.
And, more than that, the KISS approach is designed as a series of steps
or levels which enable students to see themselves making a lot of progress
right from the start. The KISS approach, for example, begins with prepositional
phrases. As noted above, in an average passage of an adult's writing, one-third
of the words are connected within prepositional phrases. The student who
understands and can identify prepositional phrases can thus see for him
or herself that one-third of the goal has been reached. And this is INTERNAL
feedback, or, as Rogers says, "the
information conveyed describes the system's performance at a previous point
in time to itself." As students progress through
the levels of the KISS approach, they see themselves mastering more and
more of their goal. (The answer keys for these editions of the game indicate
how much of the goal has been mastered at each level for each sentence.)
goes on to claim that:
2. Cybernetics implies a dynamic,
processual view of behavior over time.
One of the projects that made Wiener
and cybernetics famous was his work on improving the effectiveness of antiaircraft
guns. As Rogers puts it:
approached the problem of antiaircraft accuracy as a process of information
transmission. Each shell that was fired was considered a message. The degree
to which it approached the target was treated as information that was fed
back from a radar screen to the electronic gunsight of the antiaircraft
weapon, so that the next shot, fired a few seconds later, would be slightly
more accurate. Gradually, the antiaircraft fire would converge on and destroy
the target. (395)
The KISS approach requires "a
dynamic, processual view of [learning]
over time." It would be nice if the time required
were only the few minutes that an antiaircraft gun would be firing, but
in reality the conscious mastery of sentence structure may require years.
is based on the research into NATURAL syntactic development by educators
such as Kellogg Hunt, Roy O'Donnell, and Walter Loban. Among other things,
these researchers have shown that students do not develop UNCONSCIOUS and
natural mastery of the subordinate clause until sometime between seventh
and ninth grades. Constructions such as the appositive and the gerundive
are probably mastered a few years after subordinate clauses. If they are
right, and they seem to be, it simply does not make sense to try to teach
subordinate clauses to fifth graders or appositives to ninth graders. [It's
not only not nice, it may be damaging to fool with Mother Nature.] If instruction
in the KISS approach is begun in third grade, it is then simply a matter
of common sense, not to rush it and to spread it across grades at least
into grade ten.
of course, already have unconscious mastery even of the advanced constructions,
but even with them, conscious mastery requires time. I have crammed the
entire approach into a single college semester. Better students can get
all of it; average students can get almost all; a few less-prepared students
have had to repeat the course. The KISS approach is NOT something that
one can sit down and master in a single evening. The reason for this may
be explained by using the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky,
and the Short-Term Memory theory of George Miller.
and Vygotsky both contend that conceptual learning is a matter of mastering
a basic concept, digesting it, and then expanding or building upon it.
Piaget visualizes his theory as a line graph with what he calls "plateaus,"
or levels at which no apparent learning is taking place, but at which the
learner is in fact digesting and consolidating the recently learned concept(s).
Vygotsky, on the other hand, pictures learning by using two concentric
circles. The inner circle represents concepts previously mastered. The
area beyond the outer circle represents concepts that are beyond the learner's
current possible comprehension. (One cannot understand the theory of relativity
without some prior understanding of physics.) The area between the two
circles is what Vygotsky calls the "zone of proximal development." In this
area lie the concepts which the learner can currently master.
If students already have an unconscious mastery of these
constructions, why are the plateaus (or zones) relevant to their conscious
Making the unconscious into
the consciously conceptual is not simply a matter of turning a switch from
"off" to "on." Each level of the KISS approach requires students to memorize
and learn to apply a limited, but significant number of constructions and
concepts. In learning to recognize prepositional phrases, for example,
1. Learn to recognize words that can function as prepositions.
Depending on one's intellectual perspective, I suppose, the
preceding set of "rules" may be either extremely simple, or extremely complex.
But for someone who cannot recognize prepositional phrases, learning to
apply these rules -- and internalizing (or mastering) them -- requires
a fair amount of time and practice. Depending on the amount and frequency
of study and practice, (as well as of motivation, intellectual ability,
previous knowledge, etc.) it make take days, or it may take as long as
a year. Eventually, however, these rules can be internalized -- which means
that the learner can identify most (if not all) prepositional phrases in
a passage without consciously calling the rules to mind. If at all possible,
this internalization should occur before the student moves on to the next
level of KISS grammar.
2. Ask the question "What?" after those words (to find
3. Learn to ignore "to" plus a verb as NOT a prepositional
4. Learn to ignore sentences that answer the question
-- they are not
Miller's theory of Short-Term
Memory explains why. Miller argues that Short-Term Memory is, in effect,
a bottleneck at the entrance of the human mind that limits incoming and
currently active information to seven (plus or minus two) bits (or pieces)
of information at a time. We remember, for example, a telephone number
not as seven (or ten) individual digits, but rather as two (or three) "chunks"
of information. If we did not do so, the seven digits would completely
occupy Short-Term Memory -- and we would forget whom we were calling and
why. In effect, we would suffer from a form of information overload --
and not be able to make telephone calls.
Applied to the KISS approach
to learning sentence structure, Miller's theory suggests that the student
who is learning to recognize prepositional phrases has his or her STM fairly
full. If the "list" of words that can function as prepositional phrases
has not already been internalized, the student's mind must be shifting
through it to see if a particular word is on it. Once that has been decided,
the student must then apply the three following rules (above). Often, additional
questions have to be answered -- is "love" in "to love," a verb or not?
What does it mean in this particular sentence? (That question, in itself,
may strain a person's STM.) Although it seems easy to people who already
know how to do it, identify prepositional phrases is not that simple. It
appears simple to people who know how to do it because they have internalized
all the relevant rules. Those who do not know how to do it need time and
practice -- and no distractions.
Moving them on to the next level
too fast may cause disastrous distractions. Once the concept of prepositional
phrases has been assimilated, a student can mark them off in a sentence
with no problem: ZIP, ZIP; ZIP, ZIP; ZIP, ZIP. Prepositional phrases have
been placed in parentheses -- no problems, no worries; -- out of mind,
out of Short-Term Memory. But the student who has not assimilated the concept
must now contend, not only with the rules for identifying prepositional
phrases, but also with the rules for finding finite verbs, their subjects,
and their complements.
Again, for those who can already
do this, it appears easy. But for those who can't, the task is plenty to
fill Short-Term Memory. The first task, of course, is to find a verb (or
verb phrase) in the sentence. [Easily repeatable research has shown that
many college Freshmen consider "of" to be a verb, and are surprised to
learn that "is" is a verb.] Students who cannot identify verbs may have
to call into STM a wide range of "instructions," from the old and still
useful "A verb names an action or a state of being," to "A verb can fill
the blank in "[She / they] ____ (something) every day." It is not
my intention here to delve into all the possible suggestions given to students
to help them identify verbs, and the preceding should be enough to indicate
that this task by itself can challenge any student's STM.
Having identified a verb, the
student still has several things to do. Is it a finite verb (one of those
underlined twice in traditional grammar), or is it a verbal (a verb functioning
as a noun, adjective, or adverb). If it is finite, what is its subject
(Who or what + verb? -- Ignore words in prepositional phrases). What is
its complement (Verb + whom or what?). If it has a complement, what kind
of complement is it (Predicate Adjective, Predicate Noun, Indirect Object,
or Direct Object)?
The preceding should suggest
that a student's STM is heavily occupied as the student learns to master
S/V/C patterns. [Fortunately, these rules themselves can be chunked into
three groups: 1) Verb? Finite? 2) S/V/C (S = Who or what + verb?; C = Verb
+ whom or what?) 3) Type of complement (PA, PN, IO, DO).] But for the student
who has not yet mastered prepositional phrases, these rules are almost
impossible. Such a student often finds him or herself shuffling the rules
for S/V/C patterns out of STM to bring in the rules for prepositional phrases.
This back and forth shuffling overloads STM and causes frequent crashes
-- and lots of frustration. Don't rush Mother Nature.
The KISS approach "implies
a dynamic, processual view of [learning]
over time." Don't rush it. Fortunately, not
every high school graduate needs to master the entire approach. (It would
be nice if they could, but let's be realistic.) It is very important that
every student understands the goal of the approach, i.e., that they will
be able to explain the grammatical connection between every word in any
sentence and the subject / verb pattern in main clauses. Understanding
this, students can monitor their own progress. Beyond that, I would suggest
that every high school graduate should master through Level 4 (clauses)
and gerundives (in Level 5). Not only does an understanding of clauses
enable students to understand (and thus avoid) fragments, comma-splices,
and run-ons, it also provides a solid control of subordination and some
basic elements of style. And once students understand gerundives, they
will be able to avoid almost all problems with misplaced modifiers. But
even levels 4 and 5 should be sacrificed if rushing to them will mean that
students do not have a firm grasp of the lower levels.
Tech Prep editions, unlike the commercial editions, include separate answer
keys for each sentence at each level. These will better enable instructors
to focus students' attention on the level they are working on without distracting
them with answers to more advanced levels.
Rogers observes that:
3. Cybernetics assumes that the
control of a system lies mainly within the system itself. The results of
a system's own actions provide new information by which it modifies its
subsequent behavior. Thus, the system learns from itself. Information about
changes in the environment affect the system only as they necessitate adjustment
to feedback." (406)
We began with the assumption that "the
primary system we are interested in [is] each students' intellectual system
for understanding what it is they are learning -- and why." "Control
of [the] system
lies mainly within the" students themselves.
My experience with the KISS approach is that, once students begin to see
their own progress for themselves, they no longer need the teacher's external
motivation. Their own actions provide new information by which they modify
their subsequent behavior. Even more interesting, "information
about changes in the environment [their fellow
students] affect the system [them]
only as they [so as to]
necessitate adjustment to feedback."
in at least two different areas. For one, within the study of sentence
structure, they see their own success and that of their classmates. Nothing
breeds success like success. To my surprise, the Grammar Game, especially
the quick classroom version, provides even more initial motivation. In
the quick version, the class is divided into teams, and every student has
to respond every few minutes. The combination of team pressure and the
fact that most of the rest of the class is getting this stuff pulls most,
if not all, of the non-participators into paying attention. Once they start
paying attention, they start learning, and the self-feedback mechanism
important, the KISS approach pulls students into wanting to take control
of the sentence structure in their own writing. Although the game, for
obvious reasons, does not involve the students analyzing passages of their
own writing, the approach does. And, as the class works in groups, or calculates
statistical averages, students begin to see how what they are learning
can be applied to their own writing. For example, once students can identify
main clauses, they can count the number of words in a passage, and the
number of main clauses, divide the first by the second, and get their own
average number of words per main clause. In addition to the background
statistical information provided in various KISS materials, students see
for themselves, for example, that the class is averaging 15 words per main
clause whereas they are averaging only nine (or, at the other extreme,
twenty-four). The implications of this can quickly -- and comprehensibly
-- be discussed in class, and students can easily learn how to either increase
or decrease their average count. Control of the writing system now
resides in the students.
Implications for Teachers
The KISS Grammar Game and the KISS
approach change the teacher's role in the teaching of grammar. When students
are playing the game, the teacher's role will probably be that of scorer
and judge. Fourteen years as editor of Syntax in the Schools have
taught me that many teachers are themselves very uncomfortable with grammatical
analysis. For that reason, the editions include answer keys. Each edition
also contains notes on the answer keys -- additional explanations, should
they be needed. Although these notes are at times detailed, teachers should
try not to get bogged down in them. A wrong call on the part of the teacher
is better than a long discussion of an obscure point.
The implications outside the
game are even more important. The teacher is no longer the policeman or
the source of all answers. The students are exploring how sentence structure
works and how their own minds process language. The teacher is an important
guide, but only a guide. Teachers who feel uncomfortable with grammar should
let the students teach them. (That's what I did when I started.) One way
to do this is to have students themselves work in groups to create new
editions of the game. Then have each group present its edition, sentence
by sentence, to the class, and let the class, not the teacher, be the authorities.
(If the group cannot explain something to the class's satisfaction, then
the explanation has not been successful, no matter what the teacher thinks.)
Freed from the roles of policeman
and of source of all answers, teachers will probably find that the KISS
approach is not only rewarding, but also a lot of fun. The first time I
tried the game in a class, we used the long version -- two people up front,
one from each team, to analyze a complete sentence. I had hoped that pitting
the men against the women would raise a sense of competitiveness and enjoyment,
but I wasn't expecting much enthusiasm from my college Freshmen. I thought
they would consider it a "kid's game." I was stunned when one of the usually
bored men came up from the back of the room to rub the shoulders and "warm
up" the man who was next to compete for his team. And, to my surprise,
everyone paid attention. When a round was over, they wanted to know the
answers. Their motive, of course, was to count the points, but still, they
wanted to know the answers. How often, after a teacher has given and graded
a test, do almost all students want to know not just what they got, but
also what the answers were?