For the past six years, I've used and taught (and had my students at the board practicing) rk diagramming in my grammar course at a community college.
Diagrams-especially rk diagrams-make visible the abstract-ness/abstraction of language.
Some students just never "get" diagramming; others, however, enjoy it, thinking of it as a game or puzzle.
On student evaluations, many students write that diagramming was one of the most useful activities in the class.
I prefer rk over tree diagrams, which are, I think, the type preferred by several people on this list.
But, tell me, does a tree diagram give a better visual of a sentence's structure? I don't think it does.
I am interested in hearing why some instructors prefer tree diagrams over rk diagrams.
Christine in Baltimore
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 9:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Reed-Kellogg diagrams
In a recent posting I mentioned Mark Lester's Grammar in the Classroom. I find it in many ways a fine text, but I haven't used it in my UG grammar classes because of its heavy use of Reed-Kellogg diagrams. But my hesitation may be unfounded; hence my question. What is the role of Reed-Kellogg diagrams in contemporary K12 grammar teaching. I've looked at various language arts series, and some of them use R-K to varying extents. I've occasionally used them in my classes for their ability to represent certain types of grammatical function, something that phrase structure trees do only tangentially, unless you code function into node labels like Max Morenberg does in Doing Grammar. R-K diagrams are weak on structure, and they aren't consistently reliable on function, but they do represent a respectable tradition of grammar teaching, and I know they have some level of support. Do K12 language arts teachers need to be familiar with R-K? Should they be covered in a UG grammar course for developing language arts teachers?
Herb
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