Why John Still Can't Read...

@maxdancona,

I will no longer answer your objections. You can not see over the wall your ego has built for you.

0 Replies

@wayne,

The proponents of the return to diagramming all use the fact that it is a visual system as their first defense.

My daughter taught herself to read at 3 and 1/2. Now, there were several elements to her instruction -- from Sesame Street to the magnetic letters on the frig to the actual letters she would write her grandmothers by having me spell out each individual word while she printed the letters to listening to stories -- and there is the fact that she was a gifted child.

However, when she transferred from the public school to the Montessori School at the beginning of third grade (to remove her from the clutches of a bully), she enthusiastically embraced the Montessori method of grammatical analysis.

And that is the point: both diagramming and the Montessori method are analytical. It is the sort of method that engineers and mathematicians would love.

What each and every negative argument being made here is based on is a personal dislike for the method, not on how well it actually worked for so many.

Diagramming has nothing to do with writing styles.

2 Replies

@aidan,

The issue is that these kids have no idea what a conjunction is and the notion of a dependent clause is foreign to them. Grammar is not necessarily instinctive unless one has high linguistic intelligence.

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

Quote:

Diagramming has nothing to do with writing styles.

It's almost always a mistake (as it is here) to make such wide, sweeping, definitive statements. The understanding of word positions and relationships can and does in some cases drive a writer's style. Diagramming can certainly lead to improved sentence construction.

1 Reply

@aidan,

You sentence, "If a child reads a lot . . ." holds the key to this problem.

I formerly lived in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston. Familial income was high and the two biggest employers of residents were Harvard and MIT. The school system was one of the top 10 in the state.

High school students were asked to read one book during the summer if they were in standard English classes and three if they were in honors. When I was in high school, we were expected to read six, no matter which track we were in.

Every August, during the week prior to the beginning of the school year, the library is crammed with parents, trying to find the required books for their kids. The local bookstore has already sold out of their copies, but only during that week.

One book? That's pathetic.

0 Replies

@plainoldme,

Quote:

So, gunga, were you taught to read with Dick and Jane?

My mother finally gave up on the dick/jane **** and bought me a stack of comic books and a dictionary and I taught myself how to read in about three weeks. I understood phonics well enough at about age six but was not able to deal with dick and jane.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Reading at a young age is fine; it's school at a young age which is problematical.

0 Replies

@plainoldme,

pom said:

Quote:

The issue is that these kids have no idea what a conjunction is and the notion of a dependent clause is foreign to them. Grammar is not necessarily instinctive unless one has high linguistic intelligence.

In my previous post, I said:

Quote:

I think understanding different parts of speech and the activity of diagramming sentences has very little to do with reading and comprehension and much more to do with writing and understanding how to compose/punctuate a sentence.

If you know what a conjuction is and its role in a sentence - you will be more likely to correctly punctuate when you write. It's also important for one to know what makes a clause dependent as opposed to independent and how punctuation differs in each of those instances-knowing the necessary components of a sentence is instrumental to being able to do that.

For any reason other than that - I think learning the parts of speech is not so important, as in speaking, grammar is instinctive.

But learning to punctuate sentences to be able to write what you want to communicate in the standard, acceptable way is NOT instinctive-it has to be learned.
And people do make immediate judgments about a person based on their written communication - for jobs and everything else.

I DO believe knowing the parts of speech and their functions within a sentence is important when writing.
I just don't believe it's as important an aid in reading comprehension - in other words, as long as the reader knows what the words mean, they can ascertain the meaning of the passage without knowing which word is the noun, verb, adjective and/or adverb, etc.

URL: http://able2know.org/topic/167844-3

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

Maybe you misunderstood my point, I'm not trying to be negative about diagraming, although I personally disliked it when I was in school.
It obviously has value, especially for the writer.
My position is that diagramming won't address the problem of why Johnny can't read. If Johnny can't read, diagramming ain't gonna do jack.

0 Replies

@Lash,

YEs, it can, but, then so could have teaching the kids some grammar to begin with. I like diagramming, however, for its help with reading. I'm worried about the level of reading comprehension I see.

I think the poet Kenneth Koch originated the idea of simply having kids write with out correcting their grammar.

I have students whose writing has never been corrected. They put commas between the subject and the predicate, which, to me, is very strange.

1 Reply

@aidan,

OK, then answer this question. Why do the text books for remedial reading and writing classes stress that the subject of a sentence is never the object of a preposition? To fix the student's reading problem. We teach some reading along with writing, although the kids take a separate reading class.

The work we do to eliminate run on sentences as well as sentence fragments is done to improve writing, not reading. A run on sentence is a style issue. The impulse to write run on sentence originates in spoken English.

Perhaps, I should invite all of you to our work area meetings where you can listen to my immediate boss in the Developmental English tell you what I have been saying here.

0 Replies

@plainoldme,

This is so funny in context with my day today at school. Eighth grade...and I was sharing writing assessments with students...lotsa problems with subject/verb agreement. First, you have to decide what the subject is...

Oy.

But, regardless of why or how we got so far behind....we are catching up. I get Koch. You want students to free-write without restrictions, when the alternative is never to write...but at SOME POINT, they deserve to be shown corrections. And taught.

So, I decided to focus on two strengths and two areas for improvement.

Great day. Smile

0 Replies

Why John Still Can't Read...

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know