Beth,

    Those are thoughtful observations about the value of using diagrams when the express purpose of the course is a deeper understanding of how language works (at the level of syntax.) The blog entry dismisses it because it doesn’t help you compose writing and lumps it in with “drills and exercises.”  

   I suspect the diagrams are only “weird wrong” if you look at it from the perspective of diagramming with the aid of understanding (or trying to interpret) what the sentence means. A computer has no way of doing that. For example, the computer can’t differentiate (syntactically) between “He pissed off the balcony” and “He pissed off his boss.” You might be able to program in alternate possibilities and even fine-tune the occasions when one or the other would be more likely, but doing that for the whole language (on the basis of form alone, which is all the computer can read) is an impossible task. (The language is a shifting target as well.) Janet’s example is a case in point. If the machine is programmed to require explicit subjects, it will treat commands as incomplete. It’s “weird wrong” but predictable.

    It’s the same sort of “weird wrong” you get when students “correct” passives at the behest of a grammar check. The computer just has a programmed reaction to forms. It isn’t tuned in to context or purpose.

    Any diagram is just a way of talking about (expressing) an understanding. The Reed Kellog diagrams don’t accommodate message structure. They don’t by themselves express the connection to the sentences that preceed it and the sentences that follow (though they may give us information that is useful for that.)

    Understanding language is a monumental task. Is there any single step that will get us there?  Can this kind of diagram be of some use? Those seem to me the kinds of questions a thoughtful person would ask.

  

Craig

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Beth Young
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 12:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: NCTE-FYI

 

I dunno, grading students on right/wrong for ANYTHING can be discouraging for the students.

I used to teach R-K diagramming in my grammar class, partly because some of my students (some future K12 teachers) would need to know them, partly because the textbook used them, partly because some students really liked them and seemed to learn from them. The assignments were for extra credit. One extra credit assignment asked students to create a new way to diagram that used the colors, fonts, etc. that we all have now in our word processors, which (when students put thought into it) was fun to see.

Now, there is a website that will make R-K diagrams for you. http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/ The diagrams are often wrong, but when the site went live, I found I was getting many more extra credit submissions to grade, and curiously many of them were exactly the same kind of weird wrong that the online diagrammer produced.  That tipped the benefit ratio way too far into the negative, so I don't do this anymore. Some students ask about R-K diagrams and I am happy to teach them when asked, but that's it.

Beth

Dr. Beth Rapp Young

Associate Professor, English
[log in to unmask]

University of Central Florida
"Reach for the Stars"

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jean Waldman [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 11:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: NCTE-FYI

The trouble with articles like this is they never mention phrase structure trees.  They talk as if there is only one way to make a geometric diagram of a sentence.  It might be an enlightening exercise to have students invent new ways to show the relationships between the words in a sentence.  Having them use Reed-Kellog or phrase structure diagrams and then grading them on right or wrong is discouraging for the students.  

 

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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