** Reply to note from Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]>         Tue, 27 Jun 2000 15:11:10 -0500

In the midedle 60's at the University of Nebraska, the first Freshman English course
was a study of English (just because it's worth studying). One of the texts we used
was W. Nelson Francis' "The English Language: an Introduction" (Norton, 1965),
Francis used a diagramming method that involved 5 constructions: predication,
modification, subordination, coordination, and complementation. The diagramming of
sentences by this method ended up looking like an inverted tree. One advantage I saw
to his method was the focus it placed on immediate constituency. It also encouraged
us to see most adverbials as sentence modifiers (a description that makes sense of
the moveabililty of adverbials).

I don't have my students do any diagramming, but this is the method I use when I'm
chalk-talking my way around a sentence.

For those coming to the conference, I'll have a copy of Francis you can look at.



______________________________________________________________________
Dave Sawyer, local host,
ATEG-2000 <http://sites.netscape.net/desawyer>
North Hennepin Community College
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