Did you learn to diagram sentences? Yes.
1a) In which grade, if you remember? Some time in fourth through sixth grade.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar?
Absolutely. Which became invaluable when I later learned the other two languages I am now fluent in. (I am aware that I ended my sentence with a preposition, and I meant to do it).
Which years did you attend elementary school? Around '73 to '78.
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)? Public.
Yes
1a. 7th grade - Mrs. Hanson
1b. Absolutely. The next year, when I took first year Latin, my Latin teacher commented that I must have had a very good grammar teacher.
Parochial school (Catholic school, run by full-dress nuns)
Most of the diagrams we did were incredibly obvious. The more interesting diagrams, with understood subjects and subordinate clauses and the like, which begin to resemble abstract mobiles, used rules and constructions so arcane that the teachers couldn’t even keep them straight, so what was the point?
) Did you learn to diagram sentences? Oh, yeah.
1a) In which grade, if you remember? I believe that it started in the 3rd grade and continued through the 9th.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar? Yes.
Which years did you attend elementary school? From 1960 through 1968 (it was a 1st through 8th grade school.)
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)? St. Anthony of Padua School in Baltimore. Franciscan nuns in full battle regalia.
I missed the part about public/private. I went to Catholic school and I can picture the sentences diagrammed and written in that impeccable script all nuns had.
Exactly. If you have a run-on sentence, it becomes immediately obvious when you try to diagram it - there’s nowhere for the second subject to go! Ditto for all sorts of other grammar mistakes like direct/indirect object gaffes, sentence fragments, and a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten.
Yes.
1a. Probably around 3rd grade or so. We continued it into 6th grade to make sure everyone understood it well.
1b. It was a good idea, but we should have gotten into more complex areas of grammar (tenses beyond the simplistic past, present, and future). What really helped was adding punctuation and spelling into the equation via paragraph exercises (one long, unpunctuated paragraph with spelling errors on the board) where we’d have to proofread and correct for these things.
1st grade through 5th grade = fall 1989 through spring 1995.
Private parochial school; Missouri Synod Lutheran if it matters.
I think you’re right; in Latin we do parsing, and you have to take a word and say all the things it’s doing. Like “mensa: subject, nom. singular.” and so on. I was never taught that in school either, so I’m learning it now.
I never studied parsing while I was in K-12, but I can tell you that it does horrible things to unwitting linguists students; one of the first tools we give undergraduates for studying syntax is something called a tree structure, which is just an old timey schematic representation of how the constituents in a sentence hook together. The funny thing is that we can almost always predict who will have trouble internalizing the process: almost every single person who has studied parsing in grade school has a lot of trouble with it. (It’s actually become problematic enough that we specifically warn them on day 1, and recommend that anyone who did parsing come for office hours to get de-programmed. )
I attended Catholic school. I remember the phrase “diagramming sentences” but had to go here to be sure.
I thin it was about the 5th or 6th grade. I finished 8th grade in 1971 . (Yay St. Pascal Baylon). I don’t remember much so I suppose concept didn’t make much of an impact on me. The “good girls” Joanne C. and Karen L. probably rmember everything about diagramming sentences (yeah…they with their perfect penmenship and perfect attendance) I was too busy writing stories about escaping.
Did you learn to diagram sentences? Yes
1a) In which grade, if you remember? I distictly remember 7th grade and 9th grade. Might have in 8th grade, but not sure.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar? Oh, yes. Definitely.
Which years did you attend elementary school? Well, my 7th grade year was 1980-1981. You can do the math from there.
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)? 7th grade: public school in Santa Ynez, California. 8th grade: Public school in Germantown, Tennessee. 9th grade: Private school in Cordova, Tennessee.
Did you learn to diagram sentences? Yes
1a) In which grade, if you remember? I may have started in elementary school, but I definitely remember doing it ad nauseum in 7th grade.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar? A little bit, but I never really learned grammar until I took Russian in college.
Which years did you attend elementary school? 1956-1962
Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)? Public
I’m not really sure I understand the utility of diagramming sentences, although I think students should be taught their parts of speech early on; it’s a lot easier to talk and think about writing when you have the vocabulary.
No. I do remember learning how to underline the predicate, and all that stuff. It may have helped, but I think I’m pretty good at grammar anyway.
1984-1991
Public
Incidentally, it was always to the chagrin of my mother that I was not taught this. It was her default comment every time the subject of “what the schools aren’t teaching that they should” came up. Given her extraordinarily high value of education, I was always a little surprised she didn’t plunk me down and teach it to me herself. She did that with a lot of other things.
1a) In which grade, if you remember?
Somewhere between 6th and 10th grade.
1b) Do you think it benefitted you in terms of understanding grammar?
Absolutely. It’s a great way to see the structure of a sentence. My sister, a managing editor for a couple of decades, has said that she owes her career to diagramming.
2) Which years did you attend elementary school?
1st through 5th (Ages 6-11.)
3) Did you attend public or private school (or “other,” I suppose)?
Public.
1a. Junior high school.
1b. Yes, English was never my strong subject, math and science were. So diagrams helped me visualize the “logic” in grammar, as if there is any.
Elementary school: 1977-1984; Junior high school: 1984-1986.
Both are public schools and have been ranked “lower than average” among California schools for years. I was in the honors courses, which doesn’t really mean much. :rolleyes:
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