Sentence diagramming - what's the purpose?

[Capt_Uhura]

I read that one as well Colleen. It help me to see what SWB was talking about.

[PeterPan]

I was speaking of using AG for parsing instead of diagramming because at least one person in the thread mentioned doing just that. I'm not sure why one would use AG if they don't intend on teaching diagramming because that is it's goal, and why I feel their parsing is inferior. AG just didn't work for us (and I DO like diagramming) but the reason had nothing to do with their parsing.

 

Shurley English's parsing is much more detailed than AG's but still IMHO far inferior to MCT's 4 Level Analysis, especially when it comes to phrases and clauses.

 

Just to nitpick here, Shurley doesn't even cover phrases and clauses till 7th. It's not really practical to compare it to MCT in that sense. Ahh, I went back to read more of the thread and saw Cheryl already said this. Well good. So Cheryl, did you try doing the AG review books *without* using their instruction? It was one of the ideas I tossed around as a way of avoiding discontinuity. Sounds like you're happy in MCT now. I picked up some delicious diagramming books at the convention last spring and hope someday to get dd interested in them. :)

http://www.german-latin-english.com/

Edited January 28, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

Just to nitpick here, Shurley doesn't even cover phrases and clauses till 7th. It's not really practical to compare it to MCT in that sense. Ahh, I went back to read more of the thread and saw Cheryl already said this. Well good. So Cheryl, did you try doing the AG review books *without* using their instruction? It was one of the ideas I tossed around as a way of avoiding discontinuity. Sounds like you're happy in MCT now. I picked up some delicious diagramming books at the convention last spring and hope someday to get dd interested in them. :)

http://www.german-latin-english.com/

 

Shurley not covering phrases until Level 7 is my major beef with Shurley. There is much about it that I really like (the jingles and the question answer flow) but leaving things like phrases and clauses until the very last level (and towards the end of that level) is rediculous. My kid's had 6 years of Shurley (we did Level 7 over 2 years) and they didn't work with phrases or clauses long enough for them to be able identify or work with them. MCT isn't perfect either but is far superior to Shurlley in this area.

 

No, I didn't use AG's review books because I wanted additional, and more in-depth, grammar instruction. They weren't getting that with AG and weren't going to get it with just the review books.