Herb,
I have good memories of diagramming too, and I taught it for years in high schools. The right brain functioning. I never taught KISS but have read some of the literature. It seems to focus a bit much on labels (which is what members have been discussing) but it alse requires lots of use, something that diagrammers sometimes don't. I would still use diagrams, generative grammar trees and sentence stratification (test sentences and so on too) as tools to show students ways to see and describe sentences and their component parts. The list of negatives is meant to make a point, I guess, that this activity can become an end in itself easily. Florey illustrates with some elegant diagrams.
Yup, we're back to the main question: what can and should be used. When these activities can be applied to showing students how to use structures to make particular kinds of sense in effective communication, they can be useful, ought to be used. Seems to me. Students need to be shown how. Use doesn't come automatically. Dick Betting
----- Original Message -----
From: STAHLKE, HERBERT F
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: relative advantages of marking sentences versus diagramming
Dick,
While I have good memories of diagramming, it's because I was one of those students who was good at it. It just made sense and came to me easily. I can't argue with litany of criticisms you review. I have, by the way, similar enjoyment of and problems with phrase structure trees, which I find generally more useful than RK diagrams, if not necessarily any clearer, and flawed in other ways although they do structure very well.
But I'm bothered by the criticism that either kind of diagramming is simply an exercise in geometry. I suspect it was that when I learned it and that it's all too often taught in that way: the diagram as an end in itself. But any sort of grammar, even without formal diagrams, can be taught as an end in itself, and that's the problem many of us have with traditional school grammar, that when it's not simply about formal correctness it is an end in itself. We classify words into parts of speech to classify words into parts of speech. We underline subjects once and predicates twice with the same circular goal. The problem with teaching grammar is most frequently that we don't know why we teach what we teach, and so we can't provide a curricular justification that will pass muster with any competent curriculum committee. We never explain the role of subject and predicate in expressing meaning effectively and in structuring discourse.
Asking why we teach what we teach will lead to answers that actually do deal with communication, spoken and written. Doing so will make us ask what developing writers need to know about their grammatical options so that they choose them with as much knowledge and care that we would like them to make other choices.
I disagree strongly with Florey's claim that you cite, "But there are other places to acquire it than in sixth-grade grammar classes. . . . The fact is that a lot of people don't need diagramming or anything else: they pick up grammar and syntax effortlessly through their reading . . . and they do things correctly without knowing why." This is the standard confusion of grammar as what children learn in their first five years as they acquire most of the first language and grammar as the anatomy and physiology of language that defines the rhetorical choices we can make as we speak or write. There is no question that children master the former sort of grammar. The problem is that they don't typically learn at the same time how to use that knowledge to good rhetorical effect without overt teaching. It's rather like saying that because children learn to run and swing their arms without overt teaching that they don't have to taught to play tennis, an activity in which directed and effective use of these natural motions is critical.
So we're back to the questions that continue to both plague and drive groups like ATEG: what should we teach and how should we teach it?
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of rbetting
Sent: 2008-04-11 09:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative advantages of marking sentences versus diagramming
You might consider my analysis of diagramming from Grammar Today:
The question is whether diagramming helps, whether students understand the functions of the various parts of sentences better with diagrams. Does it help to put flag and Camping on a line where the system says subjects belong? Students could analyze the sentences and come to the same conclusion without a diagram. What a diagram does illustrate is that Camping, normally a verb, is used as a subject. But students can also understand that without a diagram. They've used those kinds of nominatives for years. For visual learners, the diagram may help. Diagrams appear neat and attractive for some, frown formidably for others. Several problems with diagramming: (1) On some level the lines and sticks appear to make clear the relationship of the parts, but diagrams do almost nothing to explain meaning, while they oversimplify language structures. (2) Diagrams in textbooks use someone else's sentences. Few difficult ones. None that cannot be parsed neatly. (3) Diagrams are not predictive; that is, they don't help students produce sentences of their own. (4) Diagrams fail to distinguish between form and function; that is, any word or phrase in subject position must be a nominative. Many different kinds of structures can be nominatives: gerunds, infinitives, prepositional phrases, noun clauses. (5) Badly worded and ungrammatical sentences can be diagrammed as neatly as well-worded sentences can. (6) Diagramming as an exercise can become an end in itself. (7) Sentences are isolated from context, never the case in actual use. (8) Diagrams fail to make a connection between knowing how to do them and being able to speak and write more effectively. Diagrams don't automatically help students improve their style. They may even prevent students from exploring their own linguistic creativity.
In Teacher Man Frank McCourt explains his inability to teach diagramming, the "structure and Euclidian beauty of it." He admits, "I tried but failed. I made lines vertical, horizontal, slanting, and then I stood, adrift at the blackboard, till a Chinese student volunteered to take over and teach the teacher what the teacher should have known."
In her recent book Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog Kitty Burns Florey concludes that diagramming, while a joyful activity for some students, will not improve their writing or speaking. "Few people would deny that students need to master grammar in order to write decently," Florey writes. "But there are other places to acquire it than in sixth-grade grammar classes. . . . The fact is that a lot of people don't need diagramming or anything else: they pick up grammar and syntax effortlessly through their reading . . . and they do things correctly without knowing why."
Grammar Today 84 Chapter 6. The Beginnings of Traditional Grammar Dick Betting
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Woods
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 12:23 AM
Subject: relative advantages of marking sentences versus diagramming
Dear Listmates,
I would appreciate some comment on the relative advantages of marking sentences (following a KISS Grammar method or similar) versus diagramming sentences in the Reed-Kellogg style (or variant) for the purposes of teaching and learning how to understand sentence structure. The students are diligent upper elementary and middle school students performing at or above grade level; the teachers believe that grammar instruction is important; the administration lets the teachers do what they want, provided their students continue to outperform other schools. Should students learn diagramming? What advantages does it bring them that marking will not? When should they learn diagramming? Does anyone have any experience with using either both methods or diagramming with this age group? Is there any relevant research?
Thanks,
Scott Woods
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