Text based

This is a rant, (and why else do we have blogs, really?) posted here because I'm failing to get through to certain people with whom I work.

"Text-based grammar" is more than a buzz-word. It has meaning. If you don't think it works, fine; say so and be done with it. But...

Taking an article, removing the endings off all the nouns and adjectives in the accusative case, helpfully writing plural under those that are, and then putting at the top "Provide the accusative case ending for each blank" is not text-based grammar instruction. You could just as easily have given them a list of words with no surrounding text at all.

At the very least - the absolute very least - you could instruct them to provide the "appropriate case ending". That way they'd have to read a few sentences before figuring out that everything was accusative.

Your cloze is nothing more than a declension test. Here's a word, put it in the accusative.

This is not - I'll say it again: not - text-based grammar instruction.

What is?

Let's assume you want to focus on the accusative. Take your same text and ask them to identify all the accusative case nouns and adjectives in it. That's elementary. For a more sophisticated task, challenge them to not only identify the accusatives, but explain what's happening in the syntax of that particular clause that requires the accusative. Don't just do a rote "produce the ending" drill; get into the usage. Direct objects, accusatives of time and motion... Focus on the sentence fragments Russians are so fond of: why is this lone noun phrase, with no verb or preposition next to it, in the accusative? (a parallel English example might be asking "what is 'candy' in this: "Candy. He didn't eat it." Only by going back to a previous "I gave him books. He didn't read them" could you know.)

Later, you can take your text and isolate those words with endings that might be one thing or might be another - U, for instance, which is feminine accusative and masculine/neuter dative. Don't ask for the ending - give it to them - instead, ask which case it is. If they don't know the word, they'll have to use the syntax. Look at neuters and masculine inanimates and soft-sign feminines, where the accusative and nominative endings are the same; look at masculine animates, where the accusative and genitive endings coincide; again, don't ask "what's the accusative ending?", ask "what case is this? And why?" Participles and relative pronouns both have standard adjectival endings but take different cases (participles match the noun in case, number, and gender, but relatives take the case dictated by their own clause, that is, gazeta chitannaya Ivanom and gazeta, kotoruyu Ivan chital, though they both mean 'the newspaper Ivan read' have a nominative participle and accusative relative; moreover, if the newspaper goes into genitive, so will the participle but not the relative) - they're a fertile field for asking "what case should this be, given that it modifies/refers to this noun?"

That's text-based grammar instruction. Surrounding your list of words to be made accusative with text most of your students won't look at and none of them need to, that isn't.

Is that concept really so hard?