Sentence diagramming for Japanese students.
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Sentence diagramming for Japanese students.
I have been teaching English in Japan for nine years but have not heard of this approach being used. ..... Anybody out there??? My students (private), despite their conscientious efforts, having the best available materials and methodologies and with a good teacher (me) often are clueless regarding the structure of the English language. My own best grammar resource is the American "Understanding English Grammar" by Kolln & Funk. This superb book delightfully describes diagramming and sentence structure. Being an Englishman I did not encounter diagramming in my schooling instead I was caned into correct conjugation of verbs. Has anybody had any experience of using sentence diagramming in schools?
Ugh. Maybe your book uses it in an educational and entertaining way, but I had to do that when I was in school, and I doubt I learned much from it. I learned more about the structure of English grammar from studying French. 
(And no, we didn't use diagramming sentences to study French!) The teachers that had my kids use it were all old (my age!) teachers who probably did it because they learned it that way. I think there are better ways to teach the structure of the language. I'd rather try things putting two sentences together to make one, or putting together a sentence in which the elements are "out of order" and see if they can correct it, etc.
Personal point of view of course!
(And no, we didn't use diagramming sentences to study French!) The teachers that had my kids use it were all old (my age!) teachers who probably did it because they learned it that way. I think there are better ways to teach the structure of the language. I'd rather try things putting two sentences together to make one, or putting together a sentence in which the elements are "out of order" and see if they can correct it, etc. Personal point of view of course!
Senence diagramming
A rather depressing reply Lorikeet.
I didn't use diagramming either when I was learning French at school but Japanese is a horse of a different colour. My students often can not even
put one sentence together never mind two.
Any more offers out there?
I didn't use diagramming either when I was learning French at school but Japanese is a horse of a different colour. My students often can not even
put one sentence together never mind two.
Any more offers out there?
geordie - I teach in Japan and have been for 7 years. In my opinion the problem is not the teacher (you) and not the students. It's the system and what students think they are supposed to be doing. That's a whole can of worms and probably something you already know.
I don't diagram sentences with my students but I have been tempted to try. It might be good for simple sentences with young learners, since they don't study grammar, as we know it, until JHS.
The only problem I see (and why I haven't done it) is that it is disecting a formed sentence. They usually don't have any problem with this. The problem is with forming the sentence. Most of my students have no problem with English theory and structural understanding, but just can't do it.
The answer is to get them to speak and create. They hardly ever do this and that's why they can't. It's very slow going and they have to do the same things over and over again, even though they 'understand' it. This is a difficult hurdle. Most Japanese students want to move on and do something new even though they can't do what the teacher taught in the first part of the class, or the ones before. When I repeat an activity from an earlier class I get all kinds of hassels and have to explain that we're doing it again because they can't do it, not because they don't understand. I have to break into my speech about baseball practice and professionals running the same basic drills in practice as a little leaguer or a professional piano player practicing scales.
Again, not an outwardly encouraging response, but it's just my experience that structure isn't the problem, it's lack of usage in class. However, the answer is out there, it's just not popular.
- Mark
www.mes-english.com
I don't diagram sentences with my students but I have been tempted to try. It might be good for simple sentences with young learners, since they don't study grammar, as we know it, until JHS.
The only problem I see (and why I haven't done it) is that it is disecting a formed sentence. They usually don't have any problem with this. The problem is with forming the sentence. Most of my students have no problem with English theory and structural understanding, but just can't do it.
The answer is to get them to speak and create. They hardly ever do this and that's why they can't. It's very slow going and they have to do the same things over and over again, even though they 'understand' it. This is a difficult hurdle. Most Japanese students want to move on and do something new even though they can't do what the teacher taught in the first part of the class, or the ones before. When I repeat an activity from an earlier class I get all kinds of hassels and have to explain that we're doing it again because they can't do it, not because they don't understand. I have to break into my speech about baseball practice and professionals running the same basic drills in practice as a little leaguer or a professional piano player practicing scales.
Again, not an outwardly encouraging response, but it's just my experience that structure isn't the problem, it's lack of usage in class. However, the answer is out there, it's just not popular.
- Mark
www.mes-english.com
SEntence diagramming for Japanese students.
Thanks Mark for a thoughtful reply - and a great website you have for young learners.
My students are all adults and in small private groups. We actually spend
considerable time speaking - half the time fluency, half the time accuracy.
I understand what you mean about revision - I have had students who have been rushed through 'Headway Elementary', promoted to `Pre-Intermediate` not having a clue about the former study.
On another note have you come across 'Sentence Patterns' in the linguistic grammar area? The ten basic English sentences? As you can see I am harping on about sentence patterning again. Perhaps I should open a new thread on this.
My students are all adults and in small private groups. We actually spend
considerable time speaking - half the time fluency, half the time accuracy.
I understand what you mean about revision - I have had students who have been rushed through 'Headway Elementary', promoted to `Pre-Intermediate` not having a clue about the former study.
On another note have you come across 'Sentence Patterns' in the linguistic grammar area? The ten basic English sentences? As you can see I am harping on about sentence patterning again. Perhaps I should open a new thread on this.
Completion as a sign of progress is a real problem. It's one of those institutionalized beliefs a lot of my students have.
I should mention that I'm not against your idea of diagramming. As I said, I've been tossing the idea around in my head (of doing something like it with my adult students.) It might be interesting to try and if you set your mind to it you might come up with a way that's a little diagramming but geared toward language learners for production. It's always beneficial to have that schematic or blueprint picture of language.
There are lots of methods and no single one really has hold of the market. All of them have their place of importance; grammar, use, meaning, the book, the task ... If you think your students might gain value from diagramming, give it a shot. If it works go with it, and if it isn't working be ready to let it go.
I'm not familiar with 'sentence patterns' and I have put that on the list of things to look up. However, there are plenty of people who argue that patterns or blueprints don't work in conversation because conversation is too variable to apply patterns. It may temporarily provide assistance in speech acts but even then if the conversation breaks code, learners are lost. There's a lot of that in discourse analysis literature.
Again though, that doesn't mean students shouldn't learn sentence patterns or that they're not beneficial.
The more I read and learn, it seems it's really hard or impossible to do anything 'right' in language teaching. Although the sad news is it's very easy to do things wrong.
I should mention that I'm not against your idea of diagramming. As I said, I've been tossing the idea around in my head (of doing something like it with my adult students.) It might be interesting to try and if you set your mind to it you might come up with a way that's a little diagramming but geared toward language learners for production. It's always beneficial to have that schematic or blueprint picture of language.
There are lots of methods and no single one really has hold of the market. All of them have their place of importance; grammar, use, meaning, the book, the task ... If you think your students might gain value from diagramming, give it a shot. If it works go with it, and if it isn't working be ready to let it go.
I'm not familiar with 'sentence patterns' and I have put that on the list of things to look up. However, there are plenty of people who argue that patterns or blueprints don't work in conversation because conversation is too variable to apply patterns. It may temporarily provide assistance in speech acts but even then if the conversation breaks code, learners are lost. There's a lot of that in discourse analysis literature.
Again though, that doesn't mean students shouldn't learn sentence patterns or that they're not beneficial.
The more I read and learn, it seems it's really hard or impossible to do anything 'right' in language teaching. Although the sad news is it's very easy to do things wrong.
Re: SEntence diagramming for Japanese students.
Thanksgeordie wrote:Thanks Mark for a thoughtful reply - and a great website you have for young learners.
Sentence diagramming.
Mark if you are American (I'm not) you would have heard of ATEG. the prestigious Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar. They published "Grammar Alive" (2003). Chapter 8 deals succinctly with sentence patterns in the overview of lingusitic grammar.
I'm a little more educated, after having googled 'sentence patterns.' We're talking about the five basic patterns for English sentences, right:
S+V
S+V+C
S+V+O
S+V+O+C
S+V+O+O
What are the other 5?
S+V
S+V+C
S+V+O
S+V+O+C
S+V+O+O
What are the other 5?
Last edited by mesmark on Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sentence diagramming
Yes you have the idea and are almost half way there. The patterns also are drawn on two levels - 1. form and 2. function, and in some patterns you have to add noun phrases, adverbials and adjectivals.
I can't draw these patterns on this message but I will scan the page and email it to you if you like.
I can't draw these patterns on this message but I will scan the page and email it to you if you like.
There's a great program called Framing Your Thoughts, which is the written expression portion of Project Read (www.projectread.com). I've actually used it only for oral sentence formation practice (with ESL students and with special education students), not so much for writing, but it works for both.
The cool thing about Framing Your Thoughts is that it's a lot like old fashioned diagramming in that it names the different parts of speech so everyone knows what's what, and it uses specific sorts of lines, etc. to label each part of speech--but it is SO much more fun than diagramming, and easy enough for even little kids or kids with mental retardation to enjoy and learn from. I've found that it also helps a lot with reading comprehension at the lower levels. The program helps them know where to look in the sentence when they want to answer who/what/when/where/why questions. And of course, they learn how to say what they want to say in complete sentences, which is my main goal for using the program.
It's hard to tell from the website how wonderful the program is...
In a nutshell, you start out with two-word sentences and talk about subjects vs. predicates ["The subject is the person, place, thing, or idea that the WHOLE sentence is about"--chant accompanied by gestures]. Then when real, proper, two-word sentences are made well then you start adding on other pieces and making the sentences longer. Everything is systematic, structured, and multisensory.
Anyway, take a look. There are other ways besides dreaded diagramming to put the structure back into sentences.
Good luck,
-EH
The cool thing about Framing Your Thoughts is that it's a lot like old fashioned diagramming in that it names the different parts of speech so everyone knows what's what, and it uses specific sorts of lines, etc. to label each part of speech--but it is SO much more fun than diagramming, and easy enough for even little kids or kids with mental retardation to enjoy and learn from. I've found that it also helps a lot with reading comprehension at the lower levels. The program helps them know where to look in the sentence when they want to answer who/what/when/where/why questions. And of course, they learn how to say what they want to say in complete sentences, which is my main goal for using the program.
It's hard to tell from the website how wonderful the program is...
In a nutshell, you start out with two-word sentences and talk about subjects vs. predicates ["The subject is the person, place, thing, or idea that the WHOLE sentence is about"--chant accompanied by gestures]. Then when real, proper, two-word sentences are made well then you start adding on other pieces and making the sentences longer. Everything is systematic, structured, and multisensory.
Anyway, take a look. There are other ways besides dreaded diagramming to put the structure back into sentences.
Good luck,
-EH
A great reply EH and I will check out your recommendation as soon as I finish my morning coffee. However, I take umbrage at `dreaded diagramming`. As an Englishman, prevously not familiar with this technique, I am rather proud of having acquired this useful method and I find the U.S.A.grammar book by Kolln & Funk by far the most useful. Looking forward to more info from you EH.
Oh dear!
I hadn't meant to provoke any umbrage taking...
Am I the only one who used to dread diagramming back in middle school? Perhaps I overgeneralized from my own experience. I strongly remember completing hours upon hours of diagramming homework and still having no earthly idea of what I was doing or why I was doing it. But I suppose, if I'm being honest with myself, I should admit that others may be a bit quicker on the uptake than I...
All the best,
-EH
I hadn't meant to provoke any umbrage taking...
Am I the only one who used to dread diagramming back in middle school? Perhaps I overgeneralized from my own experience. I strongly remember completing hours upon hours of diagramming homework and still having no earthly idea of what I was doing or why I was doing it. But I suppose, if I'm being honest with myself, I should admit that others may be a bit quicker on the uptake than I...
All the best,
-EH
Although you are working with adults, I thought perhaps the following reply from Sally Olsen about grammar with primary children could be useful...
One idea is to have the parts of speech in different colours. You can make flash cards of words and have coloured chalk for writing on the board. They need a green word which might be a verb and a red word which might be a noun to put together to make a thought and then they can add blue adjectives and pink adverbs, white articles and yellow prepositions. I try to keep the noun groups in the same colour range, the verb groups in the same colour range so they know they go together. They can use coloured pencils to outline their words at the beginning or even write the words. They can put up a word wall with all the red words in one column and the green words in another. They will soon notice that the green words can be further categorized into action and state of being and might even notice that there are saying verbs, hearing verbs, and so on. Nouns or red words can be categorized into names, places, ideas and so on. They can see which red and green words can go together and make sense. They can count how many times they use a particular green word to see which verbs are more popular (usually what we call irregular verbs) and try to figure out why this is so and how they got changed so drastically from the basic pattern. You can use various shades of red to show the pattern of a regular verb. You can show them how English questions work by changing the position of the coloured words and so on. Kids love language as much as they love science, music and art if you are excited about language.
One idea is to have the parts of speech in different colours. You can make flash cards of words and have coloured chalk for writing on the board. They need a green word which might be a verb and a red word which might be a noun to put together to make a thought and then they can add blue adjectives and pink adverbs, white articles and yellow prepositions. I try to keep the noun groups in the same colour range, the verb groups in the same colour range so they know they go together. They can use coloured pencils to outline their words at the beginning or even write the words. They can put up a word wall with all the red words in one column and the green words in another. They will soon notice that the green words can be further categorized into action and state of being and might even notice that there are saying verbs, hearing verbs, and so on. Nouns or red words can be categorized into names, places, ideas and so on. They can see which red and green words can go together and make sense. They can count how many times they use a particular green word to see which verbs are more popular (usually what we call irregular verbs) and try to figure out why this is so and how they got changed so drastically from the basic pattern. You can use various shades of red to show the pattern of a regular verb. You can show them how English questions work by changing the position of the coloured words and so on. Kids love language as much as they love science, music and art if you are excited about language.