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Seven Necessary Additional
Constructions
& One Short-Cut
If you
have worked your way through the first four levels of the KISS Approach,
you have seen for yourself that there are not many words left that you
cannot explain the function of. The following eight constructions will
enable you to mop these up.
The first
three are very easy to understand and could be studied earlier in the approach.
In my teaching, I find that many students have mastered them before I officially
get to them. As we run across such constructions in analyzing sentences,
I often say "That's a noun used as a adverb. We'll study that later." As
we run into more of them, I hear students telling each other, "That's a
noun used as an adverb. We'll study that later."
Appositives and post-positioned adjectives are, developmentally,
reductions of subordinate clauses and therefore should probably be
taught only after subordinate clauses have been mastered:
Comprehension of noun absolutes depends upon an understanding
of gerundives, so they should be addressed only after verbals have been
well-studied.
Although delayed subjects often involve subordinate clauses,
many of them also involve infinitives. Thus they are best reserved until
after students have mastered verbals.
To understand retained complements, one must first be able
to identify passive verbs. Theoretically, passives (and thus retained complements)
could be taught simultaneously with, or immediately after S/V/C patterns.
Doing so, however, may give students too many new concepts to juggle at
one time. (Remember that, currently, most high school graduates cannot
even identify the verbs in a sentence. Within that context, introducing
them to passives simply adds one more meaningless and confusing defintion.)
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