At 6/27/00, David wrote:

Hmmm.  Some interesting thoughts here:

>I would like to give you my angle on sentence diagraming. . . .

> You can in some sense
>understand things in themselves without knowing how to represent them
according to a particular system of symbolization.   . . .
>Nevertheless, systems of symbolization have huge advantages.  They >enable
you to photograph your understanding, examine it, compare it >to others'
etc. For these reasons, I don't see how the study of >grammar can get along
without diagraming or an equivalent system of >symbolization.

In a sense, perhaps any study of grammar itself is, in essence, a system of
symbolization.  The metalanguage about nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
provides us with a way to "photograph our understanding, examine it,
. . . "   And I suppose it is also true that the modified form of
diagramming is a visual way of symbolizing the way we use language to put
things together.  I have found that symbolizing things in a visual way can
be an extremely helpful mode of learning for a large number of people.  It
is also true that not all people learn as well visually.  For people who
are verbal thinkers and are not visual thinkers, the verbal language of
grammatical terms might perhaps be more effective and appropriate.

Perhaps, much of the discussion on this list that revolves around how to
teach grammar might be just as much a conversation about which system of
symbolization is most appropriate to use, and to what ends.

Hmmm. . .

Susan Mari Witt



240 ERML, MC-051
1201 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL  61801

Phone:  (217) 333-1965
Fax:      (217) 333-4777

[log in to unmask]