My mom currently homeschools two of my nieces in Houston who are the same ages as my two oldest daughters. We hold "class" over the phone several times a week, with my mom teaching Spanish and History while I cover English. One day in the middle of diagramming sentences with noun clauses, my niece asked, "When will I ever have to know this in real life?"
Her question caught me off guard. I find grammar and the diagramming of sentences to be a fascinating puzzle, almost fun. A couple of months ago, to my family's annoyance, I spent hours discussing the function of a word in a sentence. Was it part of the verb phrase, a predicate nominative, or an adverb? After discussing all the possibilities and reasons for them with first my daughter Karina and then my husband Eric, they both eventually responded, "Who cares?"
Should I care about grammar? Does anyone really need to know how to diagram sentences? What is the purpose of education anyway and where is the place for complicated grammar?
The diagramming of sentences seems to be a dying art. Neither in my home schooled or my public schooled years as a child did I learn the skill. It was not until I took Grammar in college that I first experienced it. I chose English as a major because of my love for literature and a desire to improve my writing. It wasn't until I took courses in grammar and the history of the English language that I realized that my interest in linguistics possibly surpassed my zeal for literature.
I am well aware that everyone does not share my fascination. Some people find grammar irrelevant and studying it to be either extremely difficult or as dry as I find the history of weaponry. Knowing extensive grammar may actually hurt them if it kills any desire to learn. Sentence diagramming is not necessary.
I do not agree with E. D. Hirsch, who in Cultural Literacy argued that there are certain facts everyone needs to know to be well-educated. For me, education doesn't consist of a list of things students know or do not know, where education ends once the checklist is completed. Instead, it is about how what they are learning develops them as human beings. Shinichi Suzuki put it eloquently in Nurtured by Love when he wrote, "For the sake of our children, let us educate them from the cradle to have a noble mind, a high sense of values, and splendid ability." As I teach, I need to keep in mind this goal.
If, in teaching grammar to my daughters and nieces, I fail to make it relevant, if I fail to make my fascination with the beauty and complexity of our language contagious, if I fail to make the meaning of sentences clear by analyzing them, then there is no purpose in diagramming sentences. It is a worthless enterprise that won't develop good character but may lead to a lifelong grammar aversion.
On the other hand, words do have power and magic. The gospel of John begins with the announcement, "in the beginning was the Word." As I contemplate the purpose of grammar and how it can enrich my niece's life, if I can help her see the miracle in the miniscule building blocks of language, if diagramming helps her understand a sentence better, if she can feel wonder and gratitude that we have the written and spoken word, it will meet the true purpose of education. I will be preparing a noble soul to serve the world in word and then in deed.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
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We must share the same love for linguistics! With my Spanish class at the Honduran private school and my Spanish tutor in Honduras, we would diagram sentences. I loved it! Conjugating verbs is another favorite of mine!
ReplyDeleteI agree that it may not be necessary for people to learn sentence diagramming along with many other facts and concepts. But I do think it is wonderful to share these ideas and maybe it will spark some interest and they can "feel the wonder" as you put it. It is wonderful to expose them to all types of ideas and disciplines so that they can find what inspires them the most. Thanks for sharing these wonderful insights, Amy!
I did diagramming sentences in homeschool and enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good reminder of what our purpose should be in teaching all things. I got really frustrated this week with children that I wasn't inspiring. I shouted out as I burst into tears, "It's about learning and being excited about learning!" Hopefully I can apply some of your points here to have a more succesful upcoming week.
Sentence diagramming helps you when learning a foreign language. Also, If you want to be a writer, understanding the grammar is very important. Maybe sentence diagramming in moderation?
ReplyDeleteI had hoped that I left the impression that diagramming sentences is helpful and a good enterprise for aiding in understanding but not necessary. In addition, perhaps our primary goal in everything should be motivating our students and if what we are currently doing fails at that, it will never be beneficial. That is what I believe.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry I never did sentence diagraming with you but as you can see from Johanna's comment, I did with her. I love language and doing puzzles which is what I think of diagraming. It is fun. I think of it like equations in grammar. You learn the rules and then apply them. Everything comes out neat and orderly like my house when I straighten it up after a day of homeschooling. I feel calm and accomplished.
ReplyDeleteI wish my love for diagraming would make me a better writer as you are. I wish I could make my thoughts as thought provoking as yours but mine seem weak beside yours. My joy is that you are mine and I had a part in making you, you.
Your mother
I also didn't do sentence diagramming until college, where I discovered that I very much enjoyed it. It's a little disturbing to me that I was not taught this in grade school as it is VERY helpful in learning how to construct grammatically correct sentences. As an English teacher to 10th graders, I certainly wished THEIR grade school teachers had done sentence diagramming with them. My own experience with it helped me tremendously with my Spanish grammar. But you make an excellent point: unless students see, and we teachers help them see, the value of this seemingly outdated dissection, it cannot be beneficial to them.
ReplyDeleteFor the purposes of gaining FLUENCY IN A LANGUAGE, sentence diagramming is of absolute not use.
ReplyDeleteSure, sentence diagramming will help you learn something about a language but it does not help in gaining fluency.
Here's an analogy: a socio-linguist can learn something about the relationship between Spanish (a language) and Mexican culture. But what he learns about Spanish language in Mexican culture WILL NOT help him or her gain fluency in Spanish, because gaining fluency is not contingent on learning particular sociolinguistic elements of a language.
Likewise, sentence diagramming is helpful to understand the deeper underpinnings of a language but those underpinnings DO NOT HELP you gaining fluency.
I speak French and Chinese, and I have never learnt to sentence diagram in either of those languages and wouldn't know how. I also obviously know English, but I also can't sentence diagram that language either.
Gaining fluency in a language is not that much dependent on parsing out the grammatical and other underpinnings of a language. You can gain fluency in a language in effective ways that do not require you to be a linguist in that language!
Thibault doesn't understand the FULL use and understanding of diagramming sentences. So sad.
ReplyDelete@ Thibault: reading comprehension must not be your forte. No where in this poster does the writer say that this concept is necessary for language fluency. Seems to me some one feels inadequate. I also find it a bit bitter on your part that you capitalize what sentence diagramming DOES NOT do instead on what IT DOES DO.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that "In the beginning was the word"....but here the source for "word" is the greek "logos" which more accurately means order, reason, rationality, etc. Sometimes it is translated as "word" (because language is indicative of reason and rationality) and sometimes it is even translated as "God"...in the sense that the source of the logos could be understood as God. But the word "logos" cannot be reduced to the simple meaning of "word"
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteI meant all of the above when I said, "In the beginning was the word": order, reason, rationality, even God, as revealed by language and grammar. You oversimplified my meaning in your reading.
For writing poetry and even prose that is not boring or mundane, diagramming sentences can only help?
ReplyDeleteI teach sentence diagramming to my college students because it makes them slow down and analyze language, a critical thinking skill too many lack. This helps with reading comprehension and sentence formation. I've also started teaching it on Udemy with great success. : )
ReplyDelete