Is Diagramming Sentences Still Use When Teaching Grammar?

Discussion in 'Education & Learning' started by Boris Boddenov, Feb 13, 2021.

  1. Boris Boddenov

    Boris Boddenov Very Well-Known Member
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  2. James Hintze

    James Hintze Very Well-Known Member
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    #2
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  3. Boris Boddenov

    Boris Boddenov Very Well-Known Member
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    Any language? Or just the Romantic ones? Asian? Teutonic?

    English is of course bastardized, borrowing from a number of others.
     
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  4. Hedi Mitchell

    Hedi Mitchell Supreme Member
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    I have never understood the purpose having to do that. Even when I went to school in high school I thought was dumb. have never ever had anyone ask me about my dangling participle:p
     
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  5. James Hintze

    James Hintze Very Well-Known Member
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    I'd say any Indo-European language. For a start German or Flemish (Netherlands, Belgium) and English are almost dialects of each other. More challenging would be Latin or Russian, but they would certainly do it. The big problem that mono-English speakers is the difference between subject and object: "Me and John went to the show.," or "John visited my wife and I," or "He sat down between my wife and I."
     
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  6. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Man, I've said that so many times.

    And that especially applies to learning a "there are more exceptions than there are rules" language like English. It took learning the parts of speech in a consistent language like Spanish before I could grasp them in the seemingly randomness of English.

    There's nothing like having an "AHA!" moment in your own language at the age of 16 while repeating "¿Dónde está Susanna?" over and over in a trance-like state. It was a seminal moment in my life.

    Regarding Latin: I wish I had studied it, for no other reason than to increase my vocabulary.
     
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  7. Hugh Manely

    Hugh Manely Very Well-Known Member
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    Would you diagram this sentence:

    All the courses he had had, had had no effect on his career.
     
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  8. Shirley Martin

    Shirley Martin Supreme Member
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    All the courses he had taken had no effect on his career.
     
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  9. James Hintze

    James Hintze Very Well-Known Member
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    You might consider taking a look at Latin now. There are free classes on the internet. You might check your local public library. Ours here has access to very good language classes.
    When wife and I took a cruse up the coast of Norway a few years back I spent an hour each evening learning Norwegian. Carrying on a conversation would be a stretch, but I could read the billboards and advertisements. I had two years of Russian as an undergraduate, which I refreshed with one of these courses. I still tinker with that. I had to take a crash course in Latin during my graduate studies. It's a fascinating language. Give it a try!!!
     
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  10. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    Not us...we conjugated Verbs!
     
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  11. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    All the courses he took had no effect on his career.

    There..I got rid of 3 "hads" for ya!
     
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  12. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    I was ready to give a positive response to the opening post until I read the other responses. I thought I was in a 'hot button' thread. :rolleyes: Seeing that it's not. I didn't have any problem understanding the method referenced in the OP while in school.

    @Hal Pollner, I'm right along with you.
     
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    Last edited: Feb 14, 2021
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  13. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    You know, I just may do that.

    Spanish was one of those subjects that came easily to me. I took 3 years of it and aced every semester, and never cracked the books outside of class. Well after high school, I would grab the local free Latino newspaper just to retain when I had learned, and to increase my vocabulary. I could carry on a conversation if the other party spoke slowly enough...but that applies to some native-born Americans as well ;) I cannot imagine learning Russian. That (and Chinese) and the foreignest of foreign languages.

    The whole subject of languages has fascinated me, from the perspective of humans learning to communicate in so many disparate--yet complex--ways. I once signed up for a college course in the development of languages, but it was a graduate-level class and I was taking undergrad classes (this was at night while I was employed. I ran out of bandwidth.) One reason I wanted to take it was as a back-door way to fill in the [considerable] gaps in my knowledge of history. I'm a math/language/science guy. History has always made my eyes glaze over, and I've never found a way to remediate my lack of knowledge.
     
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  14. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    I liked diagramming sentences. It was the only thing in English class I could do. :rolleyes: How I learned to recognize parts of speech.

    Took 2 years of Latin in HS. Diagramming definitely helped in Latin. The first year was not bad. There were rules. The second year it got complicated. :p Not all it's cracked up to be, imo. So wish I had taken Spanish instead.
     
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  15. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Did you go to a public high school? I cannot recall if Latin was an option when I went (not that I would have taken it.) Does it help your English vocabulary in the present day?
     
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