Menu for  Theory and Research

Hope 1886 by George Frederick Watts (1811-1904)

     KISS is, to my knowledge, the only pedagogical grammar that is based on a theory of how the mind processes language. For my students, the model turns the study of grammar into a study of how their own minds make meaning out of the stream of words that they read or hear. The model is fundamental to the discussions about errors and about style.

   Many of the pronouncements against the teaching of grammar were based on (highly questionable) statistical studies. This section includes my own attempts at such studies, but unlike any others that I know about, it includes the texts in the studies and the analysis of them. Anyone interested in this type of study can thus examine what was counted and how. The inability to do this with most of the published studies is one of the major reasons for their being "highly questionable."

     This is a collection of observations on topics of general concern -- and repeated discussion -- in the teaching of grammar. 

     These reviews cover books about grammar, style, and general education.

       This is a book-length manuscript written in the mid-eighties. It includes a chapter on the history of the teaching of grammar and an overview of the KISS Approach and its advantages. It was submitted to several publishers, but the general consensus was that, although the book is different and interesting, since no one was using the KISS Approach, there was no market for the book.

     Somewhere around 2000, I was invited by an editor at NCTE to submit a TRIP (Theory and Research into Practice) book manuscript. I told the editor that NCTE would not publish it, but he said he could get them to do it. I was right. The above link leads to the manuscript and some of the story around it.

     This is my old statistical research area. Much of it has been included in the statistical studies noted above.