Will diagramming sentences help with this delay?

[NotSoObvious]

I never learned to diagram sentences, so I'm not really sure what to expect down the road.

 

We are using FLL 3 and so far I LOVE the diagramming. It helps my girls to remember the parts of speech and I can already see how it will help them set up sentences correctly.

 

My dd has a severe language and speech delay. She has made a lot of progress and has a great vocabulary, but her grammar is sometimes still wrong. For instance, today she wrote, "I want for Christmas is Legos, history stuff, and a secret gift." While this isn't suuuuper common, and narrations have helped tremendously, I'm wondering how diagramming sentences fits into all of this.

 

Diagramming basically provides the "rules" for a sentence, correct? Are your older kids able to look at a sentence and tell if it's put together properly? Would someone elaborate a little or share your experience?

 

Thanks!

[Lots of boys]

I am curious about this too. My youngest has a speech delay and other language processing issues and I wonder how, in the future he will make out with writing.

[Tracy]

My ds3 has a speech delay. I am not at that point with him, yet. But our speech therapist has told us that any and all exposure to language will help--anything that will help them to see the patterns in our language. She was quite pleased, for example, when ds3 decided he wanted to participate in memorization with his older sister. While no one can know for sure if a particular activity will help a particular child, I would say that diagramming is as likely to help as any other exposure to language.

[boscopup]

:lurk5: Likewise, I have a younger child with speech/language delay. He has strange word order, and I know he'll require early formal grammar and probably lots of repetition. Funny thing is... He's my creative one with good physical writing skills, so I could see him enjoying writing stories and such when he's older (he's only 5 now, and only barely reading simple words via sounding them out mostly).

[Bloggermom]

I don't think it would hurt. However, for a child with speech delay I am wondering if parsing the sentences and seeing how they fit together in the sentences instead of taken apart would be better.

[G5052]

Diagramming can be confusing to kids who have word-order problems because you have to rearrange the words to fit them into the diagram. Some children I've worked with truly can't pick out the words to put on the diagram with any sense of how they go back together. For them, parsing works better in most cases because the sentence stays "in place" and then you work on it from there. Diagramming can be a little unnerving because one diagram can be deconstructed into multiple sentences once you get into more complicated ones. If you aren't doing this, you might try diagramming and then reconstructing from the diagram There you can point out that the verb goes after the subject.

 

I teach locally with a program that uses both diagramming and parsing, and that is actually my favorite way because I can tell the parents to use what works for their student -- one or the other or both. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a curriculum sold to the general public that is this way.

 

For just diagramming, I like the Peace Hill materials or Rod and Staff, for just parsing, Shurley English is the most well-known one.

Edited December 15, 2011 by GVA