Than

[Baker, John]

        Actually, I miss diagramming sentences too, but it was my observation that it was only a partially effective pedagogical tool, because a significant portion of the students had trouble making an intuitive connection between written language and schematic diagrams.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of James A. Landau
Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 2:04 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Than


I miss diagramming sentences.  It made for clear explanations of a lot of
complicated grammatical situations.  Specifically, for me diagramming made the
entire who-whom business clear.  Granted it is a prescriptivist tool, but it was
a nice tool.

Diagramming, unfortunately in my opinion, has gone out of fashion.  My kids
were never taught it.  Their middle school English teacher agrees with me that
it is a loss, but he can't change fashion all by himself.

    - Jim Landau