The National Council of Teachers of English, whose directives shape curriculum decisions nationwide, has quietly reversed its long opposition to grammar drills, which the group had condemned in 1985 as "a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing."
Now, even the sentence diagram, long the symbol of abandoned methodology, is allowed...
Ooh! Sentence diagramming! I approve!
Posts
34 comments:
My first job as a teacher was to teach Language Arts/Social Studies cores at the middle school level. (I am a Government teacher by training)
I was amazed to be roundly criticized by my administrator and fellow teachers for teaching sentence diagraming. (This was in 1996) I was even more amazed to discover that I was the only language Arts teacher to know how, and why to teach sentence diagraming.
Those same teachers still complain about the fact that their students don't know the parts of speech, or how to write complete sentences in the 7th and 8th grade. ( I no longer teach Language Arts for some reason....)
No no no no NO!
Nobody learns grammar by diagraming. The drudgery of that. It's so tedious.
You wanna know the best way to teach English Grammar?
Foreign Language. Mastering the grammar rules, tenses, verb conjugation.. of a foreign language---and you can't help but to sharpen your English skills.
That, and just basic reading.
Peace, Maxine
The more I hear these wacky news stories the more I love the curriculum at my kids' (charter) school.
In second grade, they learn basic editing, including proof reader's marks. They have daily work which includes editing sentences for punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. Of course the sentences are geared to their grade level, but I know a lot of adults who would struggle with that work.
They start diagramming sentences in third grade.
Starting in kindegarden, they keep journals for creative writing -- no need for correct grammar or spelling, just keep the thoughts flowing. Starting in second grade, they work on drafting, revising, and publishing shorter works -- some topics I've seen are "How I eat an Oreo" and "Why pizza is my favorite food."
They're learning things about grammar, logic, and structure that I didn't get until high school. It's very exciting. The kids like it, too. They love puzzles and enjoy being able to "decode" sentences. I think it's very cool that my 5-year-old knows about nouns, verbs, and adjectives already.
Take heart. It's not all bad out there.
Greenwald really kicked your ass, didn't he, you blithering fucking idiot?
You're toast lady - a joke, a well-known joke, and don't you ever fucking think otherwise.
I like the idea of experimentation. But the problem with public education is that experiments like this one end up screwing up a half a generation or so - meaning probably tens of millions of innocent students.
Looking back, of course diagramming sentences is useful. So is learning your addition and multiplication tables.
I do agree that a foreign language is useful in understanding grammer. However, they are often taught from the point of view of how these languages differ from English, thus presupposing that the student already understands how this language was structured gramatically.
Another problem with learning English grammar through learning a foreign language is that many foreign languages are structured quite differently than English. My guess is that the closer a language is to Latin, the more its grammer translates into English (and, indeed, after Virgil and maybe Horace, English grammer is a snap).
Yo.
What up wit dis?
Gramma?
Why they teachin' us gramma?
Homey don't need no verbs. Homey be conjugatin' sweet up in here.
Fo shizzle.
-very impressive cirriculum, Joan. Hope floats. I recall tutoring a fellow his first semester in college and he could not compose a sentence. He had been passed through the grades because he was a talented athlete.
I remember the Diagramming is Worthless textbook from 10th (9th?) grade. Even after recognizing the different clauses (easy), we had to figure out the specific diagramming architecture to represent them (hard). So part of it is a waste of time.
The Education Utopians have been messing up the teaching profession since Dewey was around.
So now they've rediscovered grammar. Woot. Can the rediscovery of discipline and civics be far behind?
And you can thank the homeschoolers for this trend.
Is there a computer program that automatically produces a diagram of a sentence? I'd like to see that. Visualizing structure -- it's good. Kids should learn to be analytical.
But it's a poor substitute for learning grammar the easy way, which is NOT by reading a lot. It's by hearing grammatical speech spoken to you long before you go to school. Kids who speak bad grammar are doing a perfectly good job of talking like the adults in their lives. It's a real disadvantage to start from. Good grammar should just feel right, and it's not going to be easy for them to get that feeling.
I remember diagramming sentences, or rather I remember my teacher doing a lot of diagramming that made no sense to me (or most people in the classroom).
There's a big problem in that what's taught as traditional English grammar is crap (really, there's no nicer word for it). There's lots of complicated reasons for this, mostly having to do with the social context that the first formal grammars of English were written in.
Without getting into specifics, the result is that trying to teach English grammar according to the traditional rules makes no sense. On the other hand, certain traditionalists will fight anything more modern and/or reasonable tooth and nail. This ugly impass led to grammar being dropped from the curriculum and just bringing back sentence diagramming in a vacuum won't accomplish anything good.
IME the grammar explanation in English as a second language courses is far more accurate and reasonable than nonsense 'rules' like "don't split infinitives", "don't end a sentence with a preposition" or "don't begin a sentence with 'hopefully'".
Good foreign language education will also do a lot to educate students about grammar (hint: it used to be called 'grammar school' because foreign languages were some of the main subjects). Learning Spanish was a huge help to me in bringing my unconscious knowledge of English grammar up to the level of consciousness.
Also, native English speaking children have flawless mastery of English grammar, what they need to learn in school is how to make their unconscious knowledge conscious and how to modify their language use in specific situations.
You're welcome.
Re: "Maybe more people will be able to read Glenn Greenwald now"
It'd be easier to read civet scat than retrieve meaning from the gaping maw of a Greewald post.
Mr. Anderson, it's past time you learned that obscurant verbosity is no mark of intelligence, but of sloppy thinking, if thinking is involved at all.
"Because it's full of things that are only correct because they're grammatical but they're tough on the ear. This is a very wearying one, it's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding."
Anderson's got a beagle as a profile picture. Hmmmm...
I'm not suggesting that Anderson is Sullivan or anything. He could simply be one of Greenwald's little friends...
"Sentence diagramming, I approve of"
-Yoda
Diagrams aren't relevant. People don't speak in diagrams, and they don't read in diagrams.
Kids that learn Latin have no problem with English.
Latin and German, learn those two, and you'll have to recognize parts of speech.
If you look at foreign language learning.....they don't use diagrams. Instead you are immersed in the language.
That's what needs to happen with English and native speakers: immerse them in usage, great speeches, reading, and rhetoric.
Not some weird diagram.
Peace, Maxine
I don't know what the big objection to diagramming is, as long as the purpose behind doing so is understood. Like Joan said, once I understood that it was a way of decoding and analyzing sentences, I really started to rock out on it. Maxine's point about diagramming being tedious is valid, but I think much of the drudge results from a lack of teacher enthusiasm, as well as poor teaching skills. Once I got a really good teacher who was actually excited about taking sentences apart like that, diagramming became fun and challenging, not boring and tortuous.
Anyone wanna tackle Greenwalt's sentences from the earlier post?? :)
-----
As an aside: dave (lower-case "d", impolite, Blogger ID 744940, the misanthrope with the stupid cat blog) is the master of drive-by snarking, but a poor example of content and substance. Perhaps if he’d endeavor to be something other than a (as he puts it) blithering f****** idiot himself, he wouldn’t come off as such a moron.
To be distinguished from dave, of course (also lower-case “d”, Blogger ID 2987898, but far more polite, constructive, and likeable).
Maxine wrote: People don't speak in diagrams, and they don't read in diagrams.
You must not know any mathematicians.
Shanna writes:
I knew enough to tell my coworkers that “it’s” means “it is”
ok, great, but then she(?) follows that with:
they are significantly older than ME [not I, or better, I am]
I think it's so funny when people make grammatical errors in a post criticizing the mistakes of others!
Oh, and Ann, living in Wisconsin doesn't the ever-present "shoulda went" or "woulda wrote" constantly grate on your ears? The joys of the irregular past participle.
Thank god most of my teachers in grade school were from the old guard. I remember diagramming sentences and doing multiplication tables until it was all second nature. I'm baffled that these sorts of rigorous exercises were/are dismissed as worthless. I guess it's because of "complicated" theories about the social context that the first formal grammars of English were written in...
Sounds like the brilliant idea that classrooms were bad, and schools needed "teamrooms" instead. My grade school and junior high were both built at the time this theory was in vogue. By the time I was in college, they were remodeling both buildings to have single classrooms again... Seems having 100+ kids in one big room, with three teachers teaching three different subjects all at the same time was a little distracting. Duh.
I think it's clear that Education and Child Development "experts" just make shit up that sounds creative and exciting to them, and then implement it wholesale--without testing it first-- through the Department of Education. Then, as someone else noted, a whole generation of kids pays the price.
When one many german sentences mastered, one's english grammar sometimes backwards became.
It might the structure differences have been.
I'll have to agree that some diagramming is worthwhile. It eventually is of great assistance in writing clearly, making sure you know which noun your various verbs are relating to and so forth. It's not meant to make you diagram every sentence that you write in your head, but to give you a basic toolkit that you can use to ensure that your sentences actually make sense.
My main gripe with the "new education" has been the vilifying of anything like rote learning. The argument always ends up as something like "We want kids to think critically rather than just recite rules, etc." Problem is, however, that one cannot think critically about anything unless one first masters the basics in any discipline. All those names, dates, and multiplication tables are the basic currency of critical thinking. And that requires a certain amount of memorization.
Ann Althouse said...
Kids who speak bad grammar are doing a perfectly good job of talking like the adults in their lives. It's a real disadvantage to start from. Good grammar should just feel right, and it's not going to be easy for them to get that feeling.
Sure it is...they were doing it for thousands of years before anyone even thought of teaching it...where do you think it came from in the first place?
Kids acquire grammar naturally, and primarily from other kids, not adults. That's why living languages change, and Latin doesn't.
And if we're getting grammatically picky, you cannot "speak bad grammar", you can only speak with bad grammar...grammar is a structure, not a sound.
I agree with what Tibore said above, that diagramming was actually fun. Hopefully it also helped. Try diagramming the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, a project I set my students on back when I was teaching English to eighth-graders a long time ago. The simple subject and verb of that sentence? "Respect requires."
"Me? Polite? Constructive? Likeable? Wow, I have to try harder..."
Hehe... sure. Just do quick, stupid, moronic hits like the afore mentioned blithering f****** idiot and you'll totally be there.
"When one many german sentences mastered, one's english grammar sometimes backwards became.
It might the structure differences have been."
Ow... ow... thanks a lot, man, I broke my brain trying to parse that! I totally blame you, dammit!
:)
Tibore, Maxine suggested that learning German helps with parts of speech. I don't disagree, but it sure played hell with my english word order instincts as my illustration tried to show.
"the social context that the first formal grammars of English were written in..."
Was that writing grammars was a cottage industry in England and many people who had no training in the language arts turned their hands to it (mostly trying to squeeze Germanic English into their school Latin - a straightjacket which it absolutely did not fit into).
A lot of what was produced was pure nonsense (the old will/shall rule was created out of whole cloth by a mathematician IIRC) but managed to somehow gain the glitter of 'tradition' and lots of people tried to believe it. But it absolutely does not work in practice.
For the sentence diagramming enthusiasts, please define the word 'preposition'.
Hey, I never claimed to be a mathematician, but
two: a cardinal number, (the sum of) one plus one
still waiting for the definition of preposition
"Is there a computer program that automatically produces a diagram of a sentence? I'd like to see that."
There is something better,
Penn the Treebank Project
LDC Link
As they mention in their google summary, the Penn Treebank is "A corpus of parsed sentences. Used by many researchers for training data-driven parsing algorithms." We still use this in NLP (Natural Language Processing) for a wide variety of solutions, although 100% data driven approaches are rapidly increasing in terms of their viability.
There may be some software out there claiming to accomplish the feat you mention, but I would be extremely wary of any such bold claims. Like spontaneous speech recognition, I suspect that comprehensive and error-free sentence diagramming is still many years away. Of course, your word processor probably has a pretty sophisticated parser - that's what it is using as it fumbles about trying to correct your grammar in real time.
But by and large, people power still far outstrips the computer in the area of natural language Problems.
Regarding the comment about foreign language learning, I definitely advocate the position that it boosts critical awareness of one's native language, but only when study is sufficiently deep. Then again, developing easy fluency in a foreign language, comparable to the way one commands their native tongue, is a truly incredible task. I have spent the last three years learning Japanese intensively as part of my graduate studies in NLP, in Japan, and it is only now, after tremendous effort and loads of help from my loving girlfriend that I'm reaching the point where I can teach rudimentary probability theory in clean crisp sentences...
...K個の赤いボールからJ個の赤いボールを取り出す時の組み合わせの数と、
集合全体の数N個から赤いボールの数K個を除いた残りのボールから、取り出すボールの数M個からそれに含まれる赤いボールの数J個を引いた残りのボールを取り出すときの組み合わせの数をかけると、
J個の赤いボールを含んだ組み合わせの総数となる。
その数を、全体N個からM個を取り出す組み合わせの数で割ると、
J個の赤いボールを取り出す確率が出る。
YAY!
Diagramming is sheer excitement. Finally some fun has been put back into school.
It was the only thing I liked in school as much as geometry.
I also liked dodgeball but I'm not sure it was a "subject."
I can imagine that dodgeball has been banned in some schools. Is it still going?
Prepositions:
aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, vor, zu.
These came from deep in the memory bank, stored and unused for about 48 years.
Just in case someone's still around, the correct answer to 'define prepositions' is a question: In what language? (yes, it's a trick question but they behave differently enough in different languages that they have to be defined language specifically)
In English, prepositions are case markers, that is they indicate some kind of semantic relation between a nominal (noun or noun-like word) and some other word, usually a verb.
At some level of structure they appear before the noun they govern, but may be separated from it
(Who was he talking to? is derived from "He was talking to who?")or the nominal may be deleted in some cases leaving the preposition all by itself (That's the house she lives in.)
you're well-diddley-come
Diagramming sentences was the only thing I liked as much as dodgeball.
They outlawed them both when I was in fifth grade.
Too hard on kids, the principal said from the monitor.
I thought the Quakers had taken over (school was near Philadelphia). Thank heavens it's back. Maybe now they'll bring back dodgeball, too.
Post a Comment