Kate Zernike's article on sentence diagrams, "Modifying the Subject," finally appeared yesterday. Zernike had interviewed me for this article, but she didn't quote me. (*sigh*) Zernike did allude to one point I made: that sentence diagramming fell out of favor only because research indicated that formal grammar instruction failed to improve student writing. During our conversation, she seemed to believe that teachers stopped diagramming due to worry that a grammar focus would "damage students' self-esteem." (This from our "liberal media.")
Zernike interviewed the experts I referred her to: Martha Kolln and David Mulroy. Of course, she could have found those people without me, but I still feel as though I helped shape this article, albeit in a tiny, unseen manner.
Overall, it's a decent article, but I do have a couple of follow-up comments. First, the article makes some broad assumptions:
- Teaching diagrams helps students understand grammar better
- Teaching grammar helps students write better
- Therefore, teaching diagrams helps students write better
Yet neither expert entirely supports this syllogism; Kolln and Mulroy both talk about diagramming as a tool for understanding/reading and not writing.
Only the [elementary school?] teacher, Betsy Coe, makes the final leap, asking, "if a student doesn't know what a subject is, how can I say you don't always have to start with a subject, you can start with an adverbial phrase?''
As someone who frequently teaches Reed-Kellogg diagrams, I have to say that these diagrams are of limited use for Coe's goals, because the diagrams don't preserve word order. An R-K diagram would look the same whether the adverbial phrase started the sentence or ended it, a significant reason that linguists largely prefer tree diagrams.
I do believe that explicit grammar knowledge helps people write better, in the same way that explicit physiological knowledge helps athletes perform better. In other words, those born with great talent can become gifted writers without ever learning the stuff. For the rest of us, grammar instruction may or may not helpful, depending on our goals.
Frankly, though, I think grammar/linguistics is a worthy topic in and of itself. It should be taught more widely for that reason alone.
Second, Zernike makes a weirdly hostile comment about the National Council of Teachers of English, saying, "Even the council now admits that diagraming can be useful." Huh? As though the NCTE were fundamentally anti-grammar, or as though the organization grounded its positions in politics rather than a concern for student learning. The organization's top-level webpage features a collection of grammar teaching resources , a collection that has been built over many years of solid teaching and scholarship.
I completely agree with Kolln's final quote about the purpose of diagrams:
Ms. Kolln, however, cautions that, as with many things in education, the pendulum can swing too far. ''If you teach diagraming for the sake of diagraming, that's the wrong way,'' she says. ''You teach it for the purpose of having students understand sentences. My own children were graded on how straight their lines were. That should be art class, not language class.''
Still, I wonder how art teachers would feel about that? Do art teachers grade on how straight the lines are?
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