Really, I’m just curious about what determines who did and didn’t learn this. Still, I’d appreciate it if you would respond to these specific questions:
**1) Did you learn to diagram sentences?
1a) In which grade, if you remember?
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar?
Which years did you attend elementary school?
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)?**
To answer my own questions:
Yes, I did.
1a) I learned in 5th grade. Mrs. Duffy’s class.
1b) Absolutely. Although definitely not to the extent of some of the Dopers here, I am pretty hard-core about grammar as compared to most of the people I know IRL. And when I find myself questioning the structure of a given sentence, I immediately have images of Mrs. Duffy drawing those lovely lines on the chalk board.
I started 4th grade in…1984, I think.
Private parochial school.
While this is a poll, I welcome general discussion about sentence diagramming. In fact, I’m probably going to look it up because there are certain sentence components that I don’t remember how to do.
Yes
1a) We did it for a few years. It started in 5th grade or so and went through 8th grade
1b) Probably didn’t hurt but I never liked it much. I doubt it has that much effect on me today.
yes. I learned it my freshman year of high school, however, we were the only freshman English class that did do diagraming. The (ancient) teacher insisted on it. I do think it helped me understand the basic structure of English better, but then I’m a very visual learner. That understanding served me well in college when I aced both my 200 level and 400 level grammar classes.
I attended high school in the late eighties/early nineties.
Not in elementary school.
a) My senior year in college, but only because I’m an English nerd and I took Advanced Grammar (and loved it!).
b) Definitely, but it would have been more beneficial if I’d been taught earlier. I already had a good (innate) feeling for grammar, and I learned a lot about the details when I studied French in High School.
Yes
1a. I think it was around 4th grade. But it is hard to remember.
1b. Yes, I think it did help. Years later, in high school, when I was taking German, I remembered those diagrams, and mentally swapping things around to fit German grammer. And I think being able to conceptualize from the diagrams helped change things for German.
1964 - 1977 (30th high school reunion this year !)
Yep.
1a. Oh. . . 6th-8th grade, maybe? May have done it twice (moved to a region of the country with less grammatical English so I might have gotten two doses years apart)
1b. In the long run, yes, although I didn’t see the point of it at the time. It’s only lately when my own writing has to be perfectly impeccable and I spend a lot of time trying to explain to students what’s wrong with a given sentence that I’ve been thinking about it a lot again. I’ve gotten much more careful about grammar recently-- both with English generically but also trying to rid my English of Germanic tendencies (much of my research is in German and Dutch and it starts to seep into my writing and I have a hard time realizing that a given set of clauses are out of control). But again it didn’t sink in immediately, perhaps because English grammar is so. . . invisible? Not overt and transparent like German. “Direct object or indirect object?” Doesn’t matter, it’s just ‘me’.
I did, in sixth grade. 1996/97 school year. I remember it was fun. Not sure I could do it now if my life depended on it. I went to Catholic school near Boston.
Did you learn to diagram sentences? Yes
1a) In which grade, if you remember? 7th grade
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar? Without a doubt.
Which years did you attend elementary school? 72-80
Did you attend public or private school? Private parochial school
Did you learn to diagram sentences?
I suppose I must have because I recognized what my grammar professor was doing when he demonstrated it. I don’t actually remember doing it, though, so I must have been very young. Definitely before 5th grade.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar?
Not much, given I don’t really remember doing so.
Which years did you attend elementary school?
I was in K-8 from 1983-91.
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)?
Public school. 5 of them by the end of grade 8.
By the way, I ran across this illustrative website, in case anyone isn’t sure what we’re talking about (or simply wants a refresher). Brought back many a painful memory for me.
I attended public elementary school (grades K through 8) in the years 1965-1974.
In spite of not knowing how to diagram sentences, I ended up teaching grammar at a community college from the years 1991 through 1998. Needless to say, in my lessons, we did not diagram sentences.
Nope. 1968-1975, public school, southern California.
I’ve heard from teachers that only some students are helped by this practice; for most, it appears to be quite useless and irrelevant. I’m not surprised to see that so many Dopers liked it, though.
It was part of the curriculum, but it never really sunk in.
1a. I can only remember it starting in 9th and lasted through 12th, but it could have started earlier than that.
1b. No. It was a waste of my time, and my teacher’s efforts.
Yes.
1a. Third or fourth grade.
1b. Yes. It was my first exposure to the structure of language-- not just the parts, but how it all fits together. I thought it was cool.
No, not in school, but my mother (a 6th grade teacher in another district) taught me how to do it when she was reviewing her own lesson plans and I got nosy.
1a. I think I was in fourth or fifth grade at the time; she taught her own students in sixth, but I don’t think it was part of the curriculum - this was back when teachers had a little more discretion in their own classrooms and since she thought it made writing better, she taught it. She’s not allowed to teach it anymore; she must stick to the district curriculum and not add anything else.
1b. Yes, I think it made my understanding of sentence structure more solid. I can still pick apart a sentence and mostly figure out what’s wrong with it, although I’m hazy on some of the terms (past participle? Wassat?) I (obviously) often ignore grammatical rules anyway, in favor of flow and style, but at least I’m aware that I’m doing so!
