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Grammar Lessons

Grammar Lessons

Grammar Lessons

(OP)
I tought I'd share this article in yesterday's newspaper with eveyone.  Grammar instruction in US schools is coming back.  I remember diagramming sentences at some point, but learned more about langauge structure only by studying foreign langauges.  What about you?

************************************
REBELS WITH A CLAUSE ARE BACK
Grammar in style again as SATs mark decline in verbal pent
        
By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post

October 26, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Mike Greiner teaches grammar to high school sophomores in half-hour lessons, inserted between Shakespeare and Italian sonnets. He is an old-school grammarian, one of a defiant few in the Washington region who believe in spending large blocks of class time teaching how sentences are built.

For this he has earned the alliterative nickname "Grammar Greiner," along with a reputation as one of the tougher draws in the Westfield High School English department.

Or, as one student opined in a sonnet, "Mr. Greiner, I think you're torturing us."

Greiner, 43, teaches future Advanced Placement students at the Chantilly, Va., school. Left on their own to decide where to place a comma, "they'll get it right about half of the time," he said. "But half is an F."

Ten or 20 years ago, Greiner might have been ostracized for his views or at least counseled to keep them to himself. Grammar lessons vanished from public schools in the 1970s, supplanted by a more holistic view of English instruction. A generation of teachers and students learned grammar through the act of writing, not in isolated drills and diagrams.

Today, Greiner is encouraged, even sought out. Direct grammar instruction, long thought to do more harm than good, is welcome once more.

Several factors--most notably the addition of a writing section to the SAT college entrance exam in 2005--have reawakened interest in Greiner's methods.

Nationwide, the Class of 2006 posted the lowest verbal SAT scores since 1996. That was the year the test was recalibrated to correct for a half-century decline in verbal performance.

Gaston Caperton, the College Board president, has lamented the scarcity of grammar and composition course work in public schools. In surveys, not quite two-thirds of students said they had studied grammar by the time they took the 2005 SAT.

Those concerns, and a growing consensus among scholars that many high school graduates "can't write well enough to get a passing grade from a professor on a paper," drove the addition of a third section to the SAT, upending decades of balance between reading and math, said Ed Hardin, a content specialist at the College Board.

The new section introduced a long-form essay and--less publicized--a series of multiple-choice responses that test how well students can assemble and disassemble sentences.

"We're interested in writing at the sentence level, at the phrase level, at the word level," Hardin said.

The National Council of Teachers of English, whose directives shape curriculum decisions nationwide, has reversed its long opposition to grammar drills, which the group condemned in 1985 as "a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing."

Now, even the sentence diagram, long the symbol of abandoned methodology, is allowed, if not endorsed, in the classrooms of high-performing school systems throughout the region. To diagram a sentence is to deconstruct it, with the main noun, verb and object written on a horizontal line and their various modifiers attached with diagonals.

"Our time has come," said Amy Benjamin, head of a council panel that concerns itself with grammar. In 17 years, her Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar has evolved from "kind of a revolutionary cell" into standard-bearers.

Grammarians are regarded as a rather grumpy lot. They decorate their classrooms with quotation marks rather than quotations, brood for hours over the staff memo that misuses the contraction "it's" and ply students with unpardonable puns. Greiner, in a recent lesson, elicited groans by invoking Santa's workshop while discussing the subordinate clause.

Of the 26 sophomores in his Honors English II class, six had diagrammed sentences before they met him, evidence that his brand of grammar has not reached much of the Washington region. Greiner, it should be noted, does not diagram; he prefers livelier methods.

For a half-hour one recent morning, students repaired broken sentences, an exercise with all the glamor of a linguistic assembly line. When one young woman read past the proper noun "southwest" without stopping to capitalize, Greiner politely reminded the class: This very word, or something like it, is bound to show up on Virginia's Standards of Learning exams in the spring.

- - -

7 sins, according to Mike Greiner

- Griener. It's "Greiner"; I'm an exception to the rule about i and e.

- Many writers think commas are cool, semicolons are special and sophisticated. Use a semicolon between independent clauses.

- english. Capitalize the most important subject ... or proper nouns.

- Between you and I ... Use the objective case, i.e., "me," after prepositions.

- This is her. Use the nominative/subjective case for predicate nominatives.

- Grammer. If you'd like an A in English, spell "grammar" with 2 A's.

- I'm doing good in English this year! Really? Are you curing cancer or helping the homeless? If not, use the adverb "well," not the adjective "good."

-- The Washington Post

RE: Grammar Lessons

I had diagramming in middle school but none after that.  The thing is, studying grammar really does help all around.  I don't understand why it would be phased out. The 7 sins should be on a poster.

RE: Grammar Lessons

I had diagramming sentences 40 years ago in 5th Grade.

"The St. Martin's Handbook" by Andrea Lunsford is an excellent book for improving one's writing skills.

The "How to Say It Style Guide" by Rosalie Maggio is also very useful.

RE: Grammar Lessons

“Dantas might know grammar, might know syntax, might know medicine, might know how to cook suppers for cardinals, he might know everything except to write which is the only thing he does).”

Extract from Anti-Dantas Manifest

Almada Negreiros (D´Orpheus Poet Futurist and everything)

Portugal

RE: Grammar Lessons

JNieuwsma,

Thanks for your interesting post. A star for you. In elementary school during the '60s, I diagrammed sentences in 4th, 5th or 6th grade. I can't imagine kids not doing that anymore but my daughter never had to diagram.

NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas

RE: Grammar Lessons

I'm interested in the use of the word 'diagramming' to describe what I remember as parsing (if I recall correctly)when I did grammar 40 years ago in England.

I've never come across this word before in this context. I assume it's an American usage?

RE: Grammar Lessons

(OP)
"Diagramming" is what we say here in the States, at least in midwest primary schools of the 1970's and also apparently in Virginia.

Incidentally, my seven deadly grammar sins are different:

1. Misue of their/they're/there
2. Misuse of your/you're
3. Improper pluralization using " 's "
4. Misuse of nominative pronouns in compound objects
   (ie. "to her and I" instead of "to her and me")
5. Sentence fragments
6. Comma problems
7. Misue of colon preceding lists

RE: Grammar Lessons

The best way to understand grammar (in my view at least) is to learn a language like German (or Latin).  Things that seem like second nature suddenly need to be recognised and understood.

RE: Grammar Lessons

If they're going to go back to diagramming, I recommend using binary trees (of the form used in yer typical Linguistics 101 class) rather than the old-school diagram style.  Not that anyone's asking me.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

RE: Grammar Lessons

I'm not sure if it was because I moved schools a good few times between about 7 & 10 or if it was just out of fashion but I did relatively little grammar at school.

Kind of wish I'd done more, but perhaps not enough to do anything about it.

RE: Grammar Lessons

I did diagramming, sentence repair, etc. just a few years back.  Not in public school, though.  In a way, I think the non-grammarians have a point.  I believe that good writing can best - perhaps only - be learned by reading copious amounts of truly good writing.  It trains your mind to think in certain patterns.  Think about learning to ride a bicycle.  Someone can give you all the excellent technical instruction in the world, have you do pedaling exercises, teach you how to change the tires, or even explain all the physics involved in keeping you upright.  However, until your mind is trained to do all the necessary actions subconsciously, you will fall.  Halfway through the learning process, when you can manage to stay up without falling, you still have to concentrate so much on not falling that you can't really get anywhere.  It's the same with writing.  Once the mind is trained to think in patterns of good writing the mechanics are taken care of subconsciously and the conscious mind can concentrate on what you actually want to say.  

Also, take a look at truly great writing.  It doesn't always follow the rules.  To continue the bicycle analogy, when great writing bends or breaks the rules it's like riding no-hands or doing a wheelie.  You can't teach someone who can't stay up on two wheels how to ride down the road on one!  

OK, off the soapbox.  This method doesn't translate to a school setting anyway.  There's no way to make all 30 kids in a class read the amount of quality literature required for this mental training.  

RE: Grammar Lessons

My dad is a retired teacher...
Whether it is written or spoken, it had better be correct around him!

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP1.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

RE: Grammar Lessons

Handleman, I agree, reading makes a huge difference.

I am learning Hebrew this semester, and that is another great way to learn grammar, but the verb forms may well be the death of me....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Grammar Lessons

Once I had a chance to meet a professor of  english language who spoke my native language exellently so I asked him about the rules of setting commas in english because I was wondering why they were used more or less deliberately. He answered me that the rules were exactly the same as in my language but people were not aware of them and could not use them correctly "because of the low standard of education in England", as he stated.
I would add that consequently there are "law standards of education" in my country too: if I read newspapers or listen to the local radio stations sometimes I  ask myself  what language do they speak there. The impression is they hired tremendously advanced apes...
m777182

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