Although KISS is primarily focused on syntax (how words relate to each other to create meaning), students should have a basic understanding of case (nominative, possessive, objective), number (singular vs. plural) and tense (past, present, future). This section of KISS Level One focuses on explanations and exercises on these questions. The instruction is important because students will need them for two reasons—to learn to avoid errors, and to be able to follow directions.
     Some of the errors are usage errors—“Billy and me went fishing.” In this instance, “me,” an objective case pronoun is used where a nominative case (“I”) is the standard. Ironically, some students may make this error because they have been taught not to use “I.” They have been so taught because students are not generally well taught about grammatical “person.” “Person” refers almost exclusively to personal pronouns. (See the instructional material, below.) Students should know what grammatical “person” means because in some college courses, such as civil engineering or human services, they will be instructed not to use “first person” in their papers. Students have reported having to rewrite papers, or even, in some cases, losing a letter grade on papers because they were told not to use “first person.” Not knowing what that means, they used it, and suffered.
     “Tense” can become a maze of grammatical categories -- see, for example, the conjugation of the verb "discover." The major practical problem for some students, however, is that they “shift” tenses—from past to present, etc., and teachers mark this as a “tense shift.” Once students realize what the teachers mean, they do not have much trouble learning to fix (or better, avoid) the error, but that means that they need to know the differences among “past,” “present,” and “future” tenses. Instead of teaching this to future teachers, some idiotic “professors” teach students that there is no future tense. (They claim this because unlike past and present tenses, the future tense always requires a helping verb. The instruction, however, does not help students in some courses where they may be directed to use future tense in some assignments.)
     In addition to “tense shifts,” some students have problems with “pronoun shifts.” This means that they shift from “I,” to “you,” to “he” without reason. Here again, the question is primarily one of understanding the grammatical terms. Once they do, they usually can see and understand any problems.

The Exercises in KISS Level 1.6

Exercise # 1 - The Antecedents of Pronouns
     Once students can identify pronouns, they can begin to understand the question of antecedents. Note that the instructional material points out that some "antecedents" come after their pronouns, and that some pronouns do not have antecedents.

Exercise # 2 - The Antecedents of Pronouns - Fill-in-the-Blanks
     This is a simple practice exercise.

Exercise # 3 - Pronouns as Subjects in Multi - S/V/C Sentences 
     This exercise focuses on pronouns such as "who," "which" and "that" that can also function as subordinating conjunctions. In a sentence such as "They saw the mouse that ate the cheese," some students will find the verb "ate," ask "Who or what ate?" and conclude that the subject is "mouse." Students should have been taught that neither the complement of a verb nor the object of a preposition can function as the subject of a verb, but some students will forget. Thus this exercise gives them practice on identifying "who," "which," and "that" as subjects.

Exercise # 4 - Pronouns -- Person, Number, and Case
     This exercise focuses on the personal pronouns and adds the concept of "case." Different grammar books use different terms for the cases, and some grammar books claim that there are more than three. KISS uses the terms "nominative," "possessive," and "objective." Exercise 4a consists of ten sentences -- in an attempt to include as many different pronouns as possible. Exercise 4b consists of a short text -- to show how the antecedents of many pronouns appear in previous sentences.

Exercise # 5 - Pronouns: The Gender Question
     This exercise addresses the problem of using masculine or feminine pronouns in sentences such as "Everyone should bring his/her book." It is a question of usage rather than syntax, but students should be made aware of the question.

Exercise # 6 (a ? b) - Writing Sentences with Personal Pronouns
     In these two exercises, students are asked to write sentences using various personal pronouns, and then to label the person, number, and case of each pronoun..

Exercise #7a - Pronouns as Predicate Nouns
      Pronouns as predicate nouns raise questions of usage and sometimes of meaning. This exercise focuses on "SAE" (Standard American English) that students are expected to use in formal writing.

* Exercise # 7b - Pronouns as Predicate Nouns (Choose)
     This exercise, the same in every grade level, is like those "(who/whom)" exercises that many of us had to do in school--and some students may still have to do. The difference is that in KISS students should already have learned to identify subjects and complements. Thus they will be able to understand why direct objects, for example, are in objective case. The exercise also includes some sentences in which either objective or nominative case can be used.

* Exercise # 7c - Pronouns as Predicate Nouns -- A Research Project
     Students are invited to use the sentences in exercise # 6b as a survey, asking a number of other people to make the choices. The students can then discuss the results and explore a difference between formal and informal styles.

Exercise # 8a  - Identifying Tenses
     This is the first KISS exercise on identifying past, present, and future tenses.

Exercise # 8b - Changing to a Different Tense
     For practice, students are given a short passage (or several sentences) in one tense, and they are asked to rewrite the sentences in the two other tenses.

Exercise # 9 - Person, Number, Case, and Tense reviews the primary concepts covered in this section.
 

Exercises in Level 1.6