Ed,
I have not done the tree diagrams with my class; I do know that a
teacher at our Central Campus has used both in her class and finds that
it works well. She does not do as much with sentence production as I do.
I worked on creating a course that works on improving writing as it
teaches the syntax of English sentences. This is not, however, a
composition course. I agree with Dick Veit that doing even a fairly
thorough job of teaching grammar is pretty hard to combine with a
composition course. Maybe if one has a semester instead of a quarter it
is more possible. 

As I have indicated before on the list serv, students who have taken
this class have reported back even years later that they were better
readers after taking this class. But since Reed and Kellogg is not the
only pedagogy in the class, I cannot claim that it is that that is
helpful. It might be the sentence combining or a combination of the
two--which is my pretty much untested theory.

Edith Wollin

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduard C. Hanganu
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 4:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: research on sentence diagramming?

Edith:

I have tried both Reed-Kellogg diagrams and tree diagrams in the English
Composition classes I am teaching and I found out that the students find
tree diagrams more intuitive and easier to understand than Reed-Kellogg
diagrams. Have you had a chance to compare the two types of diagrams in
classroom applications? 

As a curiosity, the students who had learned the tree diagrams with me
were able to remember the tree diagramming a semester later during a
grammar course taken with another instructor. As I don't believe that
their retention was due to my extraordinary teaching skills, the only
conclusion I can draw is that the students understood so well the tree
diagram approach that they had no difficulty remembering it.

Eduard 
 


On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, Edith Wollin wrote...

>Beth Rapp Brown's position on diagramming is certainly held by many 
>people, and I would certainly never use it as the only pedagogical 
>method for teaching grammar. However, I have found that the
traditional
>Reed and Kellogg diagrams (with some updating to fit more current 
>understandings of sentence syntax) help visual learners a great deal
in
>understanding the relationships amongst words in a sentence. I have 
>combined diagramming with sentence combining, writing one's own 
>sentences, using syntactic structures in context, etc. and have
found it
>very useful for student learning.
>
>Edith Wollin=20

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