In KISS Level 1.1, students learned to identify the basic subjects and verbs that are the core of every sentence. In KISS Level 1.2 exercises one (a ? b), two, three, and four enable students to identify nouns and pronouns and to see that the words that function as subjects are called nouns or pronouns. These are basic identification exercises. More advanced questions about pronouns are explored in Level 1.6.

     Once students can identify nouns and pronouns (as well as verbs), Exercise five turns to the identification of adjectives and adverbs. Most textbooks include the KISS functional approach to teaching adjectives and adverbs — "adjectives modify nouns and pronouns"; "adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs." But the textbooks then focus on adverbs ending in "-ly," and/or explanations that adjectives and adverbs have comparative ("better") and superlative ("best") forms. The textbooks then drop adjectives and adverbs and move on to something else. In essence, students are taught the definitions, but they are never taught how to identify adjectives and adverbs in real texts. Thus the definitions are never used, and students forget them.
      KISS reverses the typical textbook descriptions. Instead of "adjectives modify nouns and pronouns," KISS phrases the idea as "A word (or construction) that describes a noun or pronoun functions as (and therefore is) an adjective." This may not seem to be a major difference, but the normal textbook definition actually assumes that one knows what an adjective is, and then it tells one what it does. The KISS explanation, on the other hand, enables a person to look at a word in a sentence and then determine that it is an adjective because it modifies a noun or pronoun. Getting students to look at the question in this way prepares them to be able to identify all the constructions that they will learn that also function as adjectives -- prepositional phrases, clauses, gerundives, and infinitives.
     In learning to identify adjectives and adverbs, students should learn the two basic rules and then do a few exercises based on them, exercises in which they draw an arrow from the adjective or adverb to the word modified. It will, however, become extremely boring and repetitive if you have students continue to identify all the adjectives and adverbs in everything they analyze. Once students become comfortable with the concepts, you should probably stop requiring them to identify every adjective and adverb in the texts they are analyzing. Obviously, students’ questions about the function of a particular word should be addressed, but otherwise the only exceptions to the preceding suggestion are 1.) exercises that focus on the logic or style of adjectives and adverbs, and 2.) assessment quizzes.

     Exercise six introduces the concept of phrases and explains that a noun phrase consists of a noun plus the adjectives that modify it and a verb phrase consists of a verb plus the adverbs that modify it. The instructional material for this exercise also explains the related concepts of "modification" and "chunking."

     The seventh exercise concerns the adjectival function of possessive nouns and pronouns. (In part, this exercise shows students that words like "its" and "their" function as adjectives, as opposed to the subject/verb function of "it's" and "they're.") Textbooks disagree on whether possessive nouns (Bill's) are nouns or adjectives and whether possessives such as "his" and "her" are pronouns or adjectives. Some textbooks do explain that grammarians disagree here, but the underlying problem is the assumption that a word has to fit into one part of speech or another. Many nouns, for example, also function as adjectives, and grammarians rarely discuss them (town hall, garden tools, weather report). There is, therefore, no reason why possessive nouns (Bill’s) cannot be considered as possessive nouns and/or as adjectives.
     The problem about ”his” and “her” is caused in part by the misperception that there must be one (and only one) explanation in any particular case. A look at why grammarians disagree may clarify the problem and explain why students should be allowed to give alternative explanations. In a sentence such as “That book is his,” some grammarians will see “his” as a pronoun that functions as a predicate noun. Other grammarians will see “his” as an adjective modifying an ellipsed “book.” Still others will explain “his” as a predicate adjective. All three of these explanations make sense, so by what right do teachers (or grammarians) claim that only the one that they prefer is correct?

     The next three exercises have a double function: 1.) reinforcing the identification of adjectives and adverbs, and 2.) extending students' vocabulary, and thus writing style. They are most effective if students share their answers in class. The eighth exercise asks students to fill in the blanks with adjectives and/or adverbs.  The ninth and tenth exercises, which explain synonyms and antonyms, ask students to think of synonyms (or antonyms) for a short list of adjectives, and then to use the words in a short sentence.

      Some teachers instruct students to use more adjectives and adverbs; others tell students to use fewer, and instead to use nouns and verbs that are more descriptive. Stylistic exercises on adjectives and adverbs are important, but they should be based on real texts. Descriptive nouns and verbs are usually better than non-descriptive, but the opposing “instruction” suggests that some teachers are attempting to impose their own stylistics prejudices upon their students. A better approach is to have students analyze short paragraphs in which writers use numerous (or no) adjectives and/or adverbs. Discussion can focus on the effects of the use (or lack of use) of adjectives and adverbs. By actually teaching students how to identify adjectives and adverbs in real texts, KISS enables students to make their own decisions about the use of adjectives and adverbs.

     Exercises eleven (a and b) can be used as simple identification exercises, but they are intended to be used as exercises in the logic of adjectives and adverbs. If you use them as such, and if you have used other texts that deal with the kinds of adjectives and adverbs, you will probably note a problem. Many texts treat the kinds (classes) of adjectives and adverbs as boxes into which an adjective or an adverb can be dropped. For example, they present adverbs of time and adverbs of degree, as if an adverb has to be one or the other. But in a sentence such as "They never eat chocolate," "never" denotes degree in time. Thus it can be seen as both an adverb of time and as an adverb of degree. The more you study the logic of adjectives and adverbs, the more you will probably agree that it is an extremely complex question.
     That is, however, no reason for ignoring the question, even with very young students. The foundation of the KISS Grammar approach to logic is David Hume's argument that thought is a matter of perception plus three categories of logical relationships -- identity, extension in time or space, and cause/effect. (For more on this, see "An Introduction to Syntax and the Logic of David Hume" in the Background Essays.) Put somewhat differently, we can say that words denote Hume's "perceptions," and the logical relationships denote the ways in which adjectives and adverbs modify words. Thus, in "They searched everywhere," "everywhere" modifies "searched" in respect to space.
     The logical relationships in KISS Level One are limited basically to identity, extension in time or space, and adverbs of manner. (For Hume, who uses an Aristotelian concept of "cause," "manner" is a cause.) The reason for focusing on these is that weak young writers often fail to include details of time, space, and manner. Bringing these logical relationships to the students' attention may improve their writing.
    The exercises on logic have a double function. For one, they foreshadow (and thus prepare students for) the KISS exercises on the logic of prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, etc. (You will probably find that logical details of time, space, cause/effect are more frequently expressed in prepositional phrases than they are in simple adjectives or adverbs.)
     These exercises are also intended to apply directly to the students' writing. Most textbooks tell students, for example, that adjectives "add information" about the words they modify, but these texts usually fail to point out that many adjectives "add information" by limiting other possible interpretations. "They went to the brown house" means that they did not go to the white house, the yellow house, or the pink house with purple polka-dots. In other words, many adjectives restrict the meaning of the nouns they modify -- they make the sentence more specific, more exact.
     The preceding may seem too simplistic to need teaching, but as a college writing instructor, I'll note that many college Freshmen fail to notice the differences among:

Lawyers are greedy.
A few lawyers are greedy.
Some lawyers are greedy.
Many lawyers are greedy.
Most lawyers are greedy.
All lawyers are greedy.

     The twelfth exercise is a "Passage for Analysis." This should be as much an exercise in style as it is in analysis. You can supplement this exercise in numerous ways. Select a short passage from what your students are reading. Have your students select passages (so that they know that you are not cooking the books). Perhaps best of all, have your students analyze and discuss a short selection from something that they themselves have written.

     The preceding discussion assumes that the students are beginning the KISS approach in primary or middle grades. In working with college students, I may spend five minutes, in class, explaining what adjectives and adverbs are, and then tell students that I will not expect them to identify any of them. There simply is not sufficient instructional and homework time to cover everything, and these students know that in “the old man,” for example, “the” and “old” form a phrase with “man.” And they know that in “He ran quickly,” “quickly” goes with “ran.” The concepts ("adjective" and "adverb"), however, appear when the students add prepositional phrases, clauses and verbals to their analytical toolboxes. Basic work on adjectives and adverbs makes the understanding of clauses and verbals much easier for students, but until our schools adopt a systematic sequence for the study of grammar, middle and high school teachers can only do so much.

     The workbooks originally included additional exercises. Among them were separate exercises on descriptive adjectives, on adjectives of quantity, on comparative adjectives (and adverbs), on sentence-combining, on sentence de-combining with adjectives, on sentence-building with adjectives, and on sentence-building with adverbs. These can be found in the on-line collection for KISS Level 1.2. In the primary grades, spending three to six weeks (at two or three exercises per week) on adjectives and adverbs may not be much of a problem. But if you are starting in later grades, do you really want to devote that much time to adjectives and adverbs? Do students really need exercises that name the types of adjectives? Do they need to be taught how to create comparatives? Probably not.

     Some textbooks use the term "articles" for "a," "an," and "the," and consider them a separate part of speech. Some modern linguists also consider these three words as a separate part of speech and call them "determiners." A focus on these three words is important for non-native speakers, but few if any native speakers have problems with them. Traditional grammars make the distinction between the "definite article" (the) and the "indefinite articles" (a and an.) I'm not sure that these different  labels add anything to native speakers' understanding of English, so KISS simply considers them as adjectives.
 

Exercises in KISS Level 1.2