Grammar

[lgliser]

I have talked to a few people lately about grammar.  My kids' tennis coach is a high school English teacher and he was glad we were teaching grammar.  (We use FLL).  He said that most students come to his class not knowing parts of speech or much about grammar in general.

 

Then I talked to a friend with a son the same age as my kids (3rd grade) and she said they really don't teach grammar at his public school.  She also said that she didn't remember diagramming sentences at all in school, or much of any grammar she may have learned.  And she's a smart gal and speaks well and could compose a nice letter or report or whatever. 

 

I really don't remember diagramming sentences either.  I do remember learning parts of speech and things like predicates, subjects, direct objects.... I remember learning them in high school.  But apparently my friend really didn't learn this much in high school, or she has just forgotten. 

 

Anyway, I guess my question is how much time and effort do you put into grammar and why?  I feel like I should know the why.... I've read TWTM but I probably need to go back again and refresh.  But at the risk of sounding really ignorant, why is it important to be able to do things like name parts of a sentence?  If we can compose something that sounds good, isn't that enough?

[Faithr]

I personally don't see the reason to learn grammar year after year, but I do think we should all know the basic mechanics of our own language.  I do think knowing grammar make you smarter and more eloquent in that language.  Some people, who read good books and are surrounded by people who speak well, can naturally absorb the grammar they need.  But if you truly want to be literate, I think knowing the structural patterns and rules is a good idea. Also, if you are trying to learn Latin or any other language, an understanding of grammar really helps.  

[Ellie]

I have talked to a few people lately about grammar.  My kids' tennis coach is a high school English teacher and he was glad we were teaching grammar.  (We use FLL).  He said that most students come to his class not knowing parts of speech or much about grammar in general.

 

Then I talked to a friend with a son the same age as my kids (3rd grade) and she said they really don't teach grammar at his public school.  She also said that she didn't remember diagramming sentences at all in school, or much of any grammar she may have learned.  And she's a smart gal and speaks well and could compose a nice letter or report or whatever. 

 

I really don't remember diagramming sentences either.  I do remember learning parts of speech and things like predicates, subjects, direct objects.... I remember learning them in high school.  But apparently my friend really didn't learn this much in high school, or she has just forgotten. 

 

Anyway, I guess my question is how much time and effort do you put into grammar and why?  I feel like I should know the why.... I've read TWTM but I probably need to go back again and refresh.  But at the risk of sounding really ignorant, why is it important to be able to do things like name parts of a sentence?  If we can compose something that sounds good, isn't that enough?

 

I don't believe it's necessary for native speakers of English to study their own grammar for 12 years. I also don't think diagramming is a necessary element (although we diagrammed in our senior year of high school).

 

However, I absolutely believe that it is necessary to do some explicit instruction, and to require good grammar, all the time, from the beginning, when our children are first learning to speak (which means our own grammar must be good).

 

If nothing else, when our children know the names of the parts of speech, it's easier to have discussions about why something is well written and why it is not. "Dear, you used the objective pronoun here instead of the subjective." "Dear, you need a plural verb because the antecedent is plural." "Dear, an appositive phrase must be set off by commas." Otherwise you have discussions such as, "Um, this word doesn't look right; it should be this other one."

[Carrie12345]

In our house, it's mostly panning out like this:

 

Learning grammar in elementary

Diagramming and random practice in middle grades

Expectation to use that knowledge for writing and editing in high school

 

My oldest loved diagramming as much as I do, and I still ask him for help if I'm having trouble with something.

[Ms.Ivy]

You might be interested in reading The War Against Grammar by David Mulroy. He is a classics professor who in his book details the history of grammar instruction and its impact on culture and language. He discusses why English teachers in the US haven't taught grammar and how this has impacted SAT scores and reading comprehension. It's a short read, about 118 pages, but gold IMHO.

 

One compelling example of grammar's importance for reading was an experiment he conducted with his college students in his mythology class. He gave them the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence (without telling them where the sentence came from) and asked them to summarize it. First off, none of the 61 students knew the source of the sentence, but that's another issue. Only 25 students understood the sentence. It wasn't a vocabulary issue. They used lots of big words in their paraphrases. The problem was that the students couldn't figure out which clause modified what. They couldn't identify a subject and a predicate.

 

Diagramming is an easy way to line up the modifiers with the words they modify, and helps train readers to quickly identify the simple subject and simple predicate. All ability to understand sentences and thoughts come down to this basic skill. Grammar connects language and logic.

 

Mulroy points out that the two goals of grammar are to understand the literature of the past and to produce eloquence in present communication. He gives historical examples of how the study of grammar, motivated by a desire to understand ancient literature, created in turn a "golden age" of literature. This happened in Greece, India, England, and in Islamic cultures.

 

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading the book. It gave me solid reasons to get behind grammar instruction, including diagramming.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Ms.Ivy

[Faithr]

Diagramming really helps with subordinate clauses.  Our founding fathers all studied Latin and based their sentence structure on the classics which used tons of subordinate clauses.  That's my theory!  I think diagramming is crucial to getting the idea of how all the pieces of a complex sentence fit together.

[Kiara.I]

Some people, who read good books and are surrounded by people who speak well, can naturally absorb the grammar they need. 

 

This is getting harder to do.  The published books are getting worse and worse.  So the risk becomes that the child who does absorb grammar through seeing/hearing it used will absorb incorrect grammar.

 

The reality is that readers will not read *only* good books.  There's still the risk of them reading the newspaper, or hearing the news...and there goes their grammar.

[Faithr]

Even if you do give them a good education and they read the best books, they still can get into bad habits.  My son went away to college and now has the habit of saying things like, "Me and so and so did . . . ."   What!  You don't start a sentence with ME!  I hang my head in despair over that one.