I suck at diagramming. *Sook, sook*

[Rosie_0801]

I'm up to the adverbs section in Analytical Grammar and am having trouble with the diagramming. For some reason I'm having trouble figuring out which parts of the sentence relate to the subject and which to the verb. This seems like a dumb thing to have trouble with, but I am!

 

:confused::confused::confused:

Rosie

[Mama Lynx]

Can you give us an example?

[Blueridge]

"Poor,desperate Rosie simply sucks tremendously and continually at diagramming!"

 

So, find your subject noun (Rosie) and the verb (sucks) and then put each word beside each of them to see where they belong.

Poor (Rosie)

desperate (Rosie)

simply (sucks)

(sucks) tremendously

(sucks) continually...with the 'and' to bridge the two

(sucks) at diagramming

 

:D

 

Do those nasty, lengthy sentences the same way. Or maybe I am completely wrong. I suck at diagramming, too! :001_huh:

[sonsmama]

That is just where we are and we are also having trouble. I keep telling my husband that I have lived for 50 years without knowing how to diagram and our son will be all right. I haven't convinced him.:tongue_smilie:

[TerriMI]

Hi Rosie!

 

You might not recognize me for I don't post that often. But I see and enjoy your posts.

 

For diagramming you must first identify the core of the sentence. There are a limited number of patterns that the core of any English sentence can be. Our family learned these the year that we studied Shurley English. Does AG teach these? Each core pattern of course includes the subject noun and the verb of that noun. Some core patterns have objects and some have complements added to the main noun-verb. I think it is really important to have those identified before you decide if there are adjectives and adverbs. Maybe it is not so hard with single-word adjectives and adverbs, but with phrases or clauses that function that way, it can get a little tricky if you aren't sure of the core sentence patterns.

 

So first you identify the core pattern. Then mostly all you have left is the adjective or adverb modifiers. Yeah, you still need to know prepostions and conjunctions and pronouns, but those seem pretty simple and straightforward for the most part. It seems the great work of diagramming is with the modifiers. Now the one year we spent in Shurley (we did level 5) was helpful here too, for we memorized not only definitions, but the adjective and adverb questions to ask. The answer to those questions determines the identity not only of a single word, but also the function of any modifying phrase or clause. Does AG have anything helpful like this? Once you've determined if the words or phrases modify nouns or verbs, then you know which side of the diagram to place them.

 

The next step is to determine what sort of adjective or adverb they are. The real fun has to be that the phrases or clauses or other things that aren't simple. Are they prepositional phrases? Vebals? Relative clauses? or what? The answer to that determines how they look on the diagram. Then of course you have adjectives and adverbs modifying each other!!

 

So it seems to me that the real work (and help!) of diagramming is sifting through all the different kinds of adjectives and adverbs, seeing how they contribute to the meaning intended by the author.

 

Keep at it! And keep asking for help if you need it! Diagramming is just an artistic skill. And it just takes practice!

Edited August 13, 2010 by TerriKY

[Robin in DFW]

I had trouble with AG as well...I was just helping my dd17 get through it, though.

 

For some reason, she could not complete that course. The diagramming did not click for her. She can label the sentences all day long. I didn't have her finish it. I decided there were other things that were more important for her to work on at this stage in her life!!!

 

Good luck!

[Susan C.]

I guess you all don't want to hear that whatever program I use, I skip the diagramming! :o

[Tullia]

That's especially true when the lines between structure and function aren't clear. Very often in real-world sentences you have to learn to live with occasional fuzziness. At the risk of throwing one thing too much into the mix, here's my two cents worth: there really isn't any one right way to diagram--and even though it's frustrating it's also an excellent tool for teaching structural awareness at the sentence level which is the whole point of diagramming.

 

If you're totally frustrated with tree-branch diagramming, you might have a look at Professor Robert Einarsson's workbook. He looks at diagramming from the perspective of word clusters or phrases. Once I'd gone through his workbook a couple of times...first by myself and then with co-op classes I had a much easier time with "traditional" diagramming. Instead of dissecting a sentence word by word, he looks at phrases. He doesn't go on to do word by word parsing in his workbook, but IMO his word-cluster approach is a nice intermediate step. The workbook is a good way to help students' reading comprehension too. Since he offers the workbook free of charge on his website I hope I'm not guilty of being a curriculum shill. :D

 

http://www.classiclanguagearts.net/workbook.htm

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

"Poor,desperate Rosie simply sucks tremendously and continually at diagramming!"

 

So, find your subject noun (Rosie) and the verb (sucks) and then put each word beside each of them to see where they belong.

Poor (Rosie)

desperate (Rosie)

simply (sucks)

(sucks) tremendously

(sucks) continually...with the 'and' to bridge the two

(sucks) at diagramming

 

:D

 

Do those nasty, lengthy sentences the same way. Or maybe I am completely wrong. I suck at diagramming, too! :001_huh:

:lol::lol::lol:

 

Rosie,

 

We did Shurley English and the question/answer flow helped us tremendously. Adverbs would answer the question "how, when, where, why, to what extent?" Adjectives would answer "what kind, which one, how many?"

 

In regards to the above sentence I'd ask:

What kind of Rosie? Desperate Rosie. Sucks how? Tremendously sucks. Sucks when? Continually sucks. Etc...

[Rosie_0801]

"Poor,desperate Rosie simply sucks tremendously and continually at diagramming!"

 

So, find your subject noun (Rosie) and the verb (sucks) and then put each word beside each of them to see where they belong.

Poor (Rosie)

desperate (Rosie)

simply (sucks)

(sucks) tremendously

(sucks) continually...with the 'and' to bridge the two

(sucks) at diagramming

 

:D

 

Do those nasty, lengthy sentences the same way. Or maybe I am completely wrong. I suck at diagramming, too! :001_huh:

 

:lol: But that was an easy sentence! Easy to parse and easy to live :D

 

 

Hi Rosie!

For diagramming you must first identify the core of the sentence. There are a limited number of patterns that the core of any English sentence can be. Our family learned these the year that we studied Shurley English. Does AG teach these?

 

Ah. I wondered about that actually. The next chapter is patterns and I thought that might resolve the issues I'm having now, but I didn't want to move on without getting the hang of this chapter. Unless someone familiar with the program told me to, that is. Anyone who's done AG able to comment here?

 

I had trouble with AG as well...I was just helping my dd17 get through it, though.

 

For some reason, she could not complete that course. The diagramming did not click for her. She can label the sentences all day long. I didn't have her finish it. I decided there were other things that were more important for her to work on at this stage in her life!!!

 

Good luck!

 

Rosie runs this through her internal translator.

 

*mechanical beeping noice* (I didn't just say "beep beep" or Robin might have thought I was swearing at her. :lol:)

 

Ah, the print out:

 

"Oh Rosie, what a good woman you are to persevere through this icky, stinky diagramming business!"

 

Ha. Groovy. :lol:

 

 

That's especially true when the lines between structure and function aren't clear. Very often in real-world sentences you have to learn to live with occasional fuzziness. At the risk of throwing one thing too much into the mix, here's my two cents worth: there really isn't any one right way to diagram--and even though it's frustrating it's also an excellent tool for teaching structural awareness at the sentence level which is the whole point of diagramming.

 

Ahhhh. So what you're telling me is there are some sentences you are sure to get text book correct answers only if you wrote the textbook? Heheh. Maybe the author is going to jump on here and tell us we are Curriculum Blasphemers and of course she deliberately chose unambiguous sentences and I am Just Plain Wrong! (But never mind, Dear, you'll get the hang of it.) Heheh.

 

We did Shurley English and the question/answer flow helped us tremendously. Adverbs would answer the question "how, when, where, why, to what extent?" Adjectives would answer "what kind, which one, how many?"

 

Yeah, I've been doing that. It might be as Martha said, that some sentences aren't so clear cut that this technique will easily yield the right answer. It's bugging me. I feel like I must have been fudging reading comprehension all these years!

 

Thanks guys :)

 

Rosie