Saturday, February 7, 2015

Blog 3 Pages 75-79 Diagramming Sentences

            Throughout my schooling, I have never worked with diagramming or experienced anything similar to it first hand. To be honest I did not even know there was a visual component to grammar such as diagramming. I had the same teacher all four years of high school and my teacher herself did not explain grammar in anyway similar to diagramming. [Reflexive pronoun to show emphasis. I wanted to emphasize the matter in which I had the same teacher for a long period of time and diagramming was never brought to my attention] I think it is really interesting there is a format for reading and writing grammar in order to improve accuracy.

            Diagramming looks very confusing to me. There are so many different symbols that are meant to identify the different components of grammar. I am sure once I am more informed about what symbol goes with which function of grammar it will make more sense. Although for now, I am confused. Ultimately, I began to learn sentence structuring with grammar very easily when we did the sentence building in class on Tuesday February 3rd. I tend to learn better when I am experiencing the learning first hand. Instead of just being given a pattern or equation and myself learning the information straight off of a piece of paper. [Reflexive pronoun to show emphasis. I wanted to bring emphasis to my frustration with being given something and being expected to learn it almost immediately] I have never been a student who excelled in math. Equations always overwhelmed me. I was never a comfortable, confident, strong student in regards to math, which is why I am sort of fearful of learning the ropes of diagramming. [List without final and. I wanted to list the qualities in which I lacked in regards to mathematics] It looks quite like math to me!

            I am expecting to struggle with diagramming once we begin learning and discussing it in class. Although, I did not struggle with the exercise we did in class recently. The interactive way in which we went about constructing sentences was extremely beneficial to my learning. Having the ability to be an active learner in the process really clicked with my brain and the way I learn and process information. I do believe once I begin to learn and understand components of diagramming, I will see how it could be beneficial to have symbols representing the different concepts of grammar. Diagramming seems to have a specific technique in which it follows, which could be extremely helpful for someone who struggles when it comes to constructing proper sentences.


            Overall, I am very apprehensive about diagramming. I am very willing to try and experiment with it, just like I have been with all of the components of grammar we have learned this semester.  Diagramming definitely has some shortcomings in regards to learning the functions and everything through a specific systeminstead of interactively.  It does provide room for success for students learning grammar because it may be helpful to follow a precise format when constructing sentences. It could prove to be a very helpful resource in the long run. Diagramming is something I have never been introduced to, but am totally willing to experiment with in order to improver my grammar skills.

2 comments:

  1. I very much enjoyed your blog because of the similar feelings that we shared. I have also never seen sentence diagramming in any shape or form before either. However having the same teacher for all four years of high school might have been a factor in that as well. Since teachers tend to stay with the same teaching style no matter what they are teaching it would be logical for him not to introduce something he had never used in a previous class. I was also quite confusing and I will most likely not use it when I become a teacher. However as you stated this or another concept similar to it could help students who are having trouble making complete proper sentences. Another place that you can use a dash to add information is "To be honest I didn't even know there was a visual component to grammar--such as diagramming".
    This new sentence allows you add the information of exactly what a possible visual component of grammar could be to a person.

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  2. I enjoyed reading your blog and understand how you feel. I never really learned sentence diagramming exactly like this but in a similar way and felt it was very confusing at first but was not too bad once you get used to it. It has been a while since I have actually thought about grammar so specifically since I am so used to just writing without thinking about sentence structure or grammar in general. I agree with Josie on how it might of been affect even more by having the same teacher for four years. It's true that teacher have the same teaching style and will have a hard time changing especially if they have been teaching for a long time.
    "I was never a comfortable, confident, strong student in regards to math, which is why I am sort of fearful of learning the ropes of diagramming." I like this sentence cause you used a list. You could also have used a dash and change up the ending of the sentence to put a little more emphasis or make them both two different sentences and add a semi-colon to add the sentences together.

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