It CAN be helpful, but it can also be just a hill of beans to other people. Like I said, I liked it in school (8th grade), but I don't remember doing it after that and I have a fairly decent grasp of grammar. Does your child understand direct objects, indirect objects, subjects, verbs, prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, etc. If she is understanding this stuff (or is in the process without too much trouble) than I would not worry at all about diagramming. Think of it like this: Some people need to draw out a picture for math word problems to SEE it clearly, others don't. It doesn't mean that the child who doesn't isn't learning math.
Well, we had a bad day with LA today. I didn't make her do the diagramming but she missed a lot of the other stuff too. She's working with adverbial and prepositional phrases and was asked to circle them and draw an arrow to the thing they were modifying. She'd either circle the wrong portion of the phrase, miss one, circle something extra, or point it to the wrong thing. Example sentence: In September 1620, the Mayfloer sailed across the Atlantic from England and arrived in America about two months later. She properly circled (In Sept. 1620) and pointed to "sailed", but the next one should have been (across the Atlantic) (from England) both also pointing to "sailed." Instead she did (across) pointing to "England" and (from England) pointing to "arrived". She then circled (two months) and pointed to "later" instead of (in America) (about two months later) both pointing to "arrived". And if you ask me, this starts to make my head spin. I have a decent--some might even say above-average--grasp of language and proper formatting, and I find the plethora of labels and lines and junk to be cluttered facts. So now I'm second guessing whether to bother with the extra CLE worksheets to fill in the gaps with diagramming. I'm thinking of calling it quits and finding something less... something. I could wait and talk to my ES on Thursday and see what she says. I just want her to enjoy LA, enjoy reading. Not drop her head on the table in frustration and shut down. If only I hadn't bought the whole stinkin year's worth of Light Units.
OK, that's why Easy Grammar has you learn prepositions first. You find them and cross them out. That leaves you with The Mayflower sailed and arrived. This, if you want to diagram this skeleton, it is easy to do. Then you can look at each prepositional phrase separately. In Sept. 1620 tells us WHEN it sailed. Both across the Atlantic and from England tells us WHERE it sailed. In America tells us WHERE it arrived, about two months later tells us WHEN it arrived. At that point, it would be fairly easy to add the prepositional phrases to your diagram (if you wanted to).
Thanks for the breakdown. I do understand the concepts. It's the scribbles all over the page, the categories upon subcategories, and the explaining that makes my head spin. It feels pointless. Never in my adult life have I ever needed to have a conversation with other adults in which we discussed prepositional phrases. As long as I know intuitively how to write sentences and what a phrase is referring to, I don't care a fig whether I can make a tree out of it. In that example, I understood perfectly why each part was circled and pointed and I could tell her "When did it sail? In 1620", etc. I can get my mind around it okay. It just feels like a waste of time drawing all these little arrows all over the place, cross this out, circle this, parentheses that. Tedious! Boring! When she reads that sentence she understands the meaning. And if she were relaying similar information, she could write a clear sentence so that others understand. (I think.) I'm just frustrated right now. LA was done independently last year and I'm stressing out trying to squeeze these explanations in to our limited one-on-one time. I'm at the point of tears right now. I'm having one of those moments when I want to throw in the towel and send her back to public school. I feel like an awful HSing mom to say this, but I keep thinking I don't have time for this! I want to dig into the Bible, History from a Christian perspective, Science with an apologetics spin, mother/daughter bonding through reading books together and sneaking away for a yogurt in the middle of the school day once in a while. Without those things, there's little point in homeschooling as far as I'm concerned. But we run out of time going over crud that is NOT going to make her productive for the Kingdom, nor more employable, nor build her understanding of God in any way. There's not going to be a quiz at the pearly gates on subject/noun identification so it is not at the top of my list. I only have so much time in a day, and so many weeks in a year, to pour my heart into hers. So I don't know how to redeem that time without letting her fall behind the expectations of public school, since she wants to do highschool with her friends. Ok, this turned in to a big ole honking vent session. I'm just so conflicted and every day I feel the loss of my time with her. But every day is full of distractions that keep me from doing the things on my heart to do with her. We haven't even begun Health, PE, or foreign language. Or Logic.
Then do it. If it's causing that much frustration, go ahead and drop it. Do the stuff you want to do first, and then the other stuff if there's time. As long as she can write a decent paragraph, I wouldn't worry about it. YOU are in charge, not any particular curriculum. If it's not going to work for you, dump it. BTW, Rachael scored very high on her ACT, and she has never diagrammed a sentence! Because I didn't use R&S with her like I did with the other two. And I've no doubt she'll make it into college anyway. Nowhere on the college aps does it ask about diagramming sentences, lol!
Jackie, I hope you won't mind me using your sentence to make a point! Diagramming might help with sentence structure, but it doesn't always uncover grammatical errors. In the sentence, it should be "Virgil wanted to know whether..." and not "Virgil wanted to know if..." Reading more literature, on the other hand, might reveal problems of this type.
Interesting, Steve, because I copied it directly out of the grammar book. I double-checked, and it DOES say IF instead of WHETHER.
Thanks, Jackie. =) I think it's just been a rough day. I've made a list of currics to take a closer look at. If anyone has anything to chime in with on these, I'm all ears: Painless Grammar, Winston Grammar, LLATL, Wordly Wise, I Laid an Egg on Aunt Ruth’s Head, Analytical Grammar We used LLATL a little bit last year but mostly we did Wordly Wise and Jensen's Format Writing. LLATL did introduce diagramming but I didn't pay much attention or grade her work. I'm not sure if their "gray" book would be any easier than CLE is or not, but she did say last year's "green" book was simpler than what we're doing now. The other option is to buy the practice sheets and see if that helps her catch up with the CLE. I'm not ruling that out after one bad day today, so I'll reevaluate when we're not feeling so frustrated.
I agree that whether sounds better, but if is a grammatically correct substitute, because it's an implied if/then situation. If he finished his homework, then __ would happen. If not, then ___ would happen. Otherwise, there was no reason for Virgil to ask the question.
I didn't mean to cause a distraction or be pernickety. Still, here's a quote from The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. "It's good practice to distinguish between ['whether' and 'if']. Use if for a conditional idea, whether for an alternative or possibility. Thus, Let me know if you'll be coming means that I want to hear from you only if you're coming. But Let me know whether you'll be coming means that I want to hear from you about your plans one way or the other." Strunk & White, I believe, are more adamant about it - for them, it's a rule and not simply good practice - but I can't find my copy of their book. Here's the example: "Virgil wanted to know if Lou Ann had finished her homework." Did Virgil want to know something if and only if Lou Ann finished her work? I don't think so. He wanted to know either way - whether she'd finished or not. All this goes to show that grammar is, to some extent, subjective. I have the gall to suggest that a textbook is wrong, but I'm sure the book's authors would find something wrong with what I've written! One thing's for sure: I'm going to have to be VERY careful when writing future posts to ensure no errors.
Oh, I've no problem with you saying the text book is wrong; I just wanted to point out that it wasn't MY mistake, lol! (Though in all honesty, I wouldn't have caught it!). I may ask my girls' former grammar teacher about it. I'd love to hear his perspective!
