Menu of Theory and Research 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. This is a book-length manuscript written in the mid-eighties. It includes a chapter on the history of the teaching of grammar and is still the best 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. This is my research area. Many
of the pronouncements against the teaching of grammar were based on (highly
questionable) statistical studies. The Corner 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."
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