Have you ever been taught grammar?

[XemaSab]

:shrug:

[blue sky at night]

1. I would say it is becoming a lost art.........

and that sucks.

[Deja Q]

62. Well, if it were profitable then more people would study it.

But then, who said it's about the quality of something that brings in the profits? It's quantity. And image.

Companies claim Americans are unable to read (or count), but the number of "imported products" that prove the people making them couldn't even count to two unless they had a topless dancer in front of them speaks volumes about the LIES being spread. Basic math is necessary, even for manufacturing. ((one misaligned bird cage is plenty of evidence to cite, never mind the logo being imprinted BACKWARDS on it...)) As for literary skills, they're not wanted since the bookcase I bought was based on pictures and icons (which weren't that good either) and the limited amount of English it incorporated was barely readable.

So, no, language skills are NOT profitable. At least in "the new normal"(tm).

[timeforpeace]

128. WERE you ever taught grammar?

[lamp_shade]

2. Interesting poll. I think I'll bookmark this and check back later.

[Cerridwen]

3. Oh, yeah. I also learned to diagram sentences.

I'm not sure how much I could remember now. I'm still "illiterate" as to many parts of speech; as proven by two semesters of college Spanish during which I couldn't quite track what word was which tense.

[Brigid]

59. I remember that!

I also remember that a lot of my classmates hated it (can't say I enjoyed it myself) but it's effective. I'll bet they still remember the parts of speech from doing that.

[Horse with no Name]

105. I enjoyed diagramming sentences

What a nerd!

[HillWilliam]

68. We diagrammed sentences from fifth through twelfth grades

I'm 52 and a product of the NC school system (when NC had one). My English teachers were nothing if not relentless. When I left high school I was plenty fluent in English ( :D ) and I was natively comfortable in French and Spanish. My 'riffmatick, not so much. I never quite survived "new math". It took years and lots of study on my own to figure out algebra and basic geometry.

It's a pity that the very people who bellow about making English the national language" know so very little about it. They can't construct a complete sentence and they can barely spell "cat".

[CrispyQ]

126. I tried to diagram a Sarah Palin sentence last fall.

I had to be sedated for two weeks! }(

I loved diagramming sentences. It was like doing a puzzle.

[Okie4Obama]

4. I even learned how to diagram sentences!

I'm thirty-three.

[XemaSab]

5. What grade?

And was your teacher teaching what the other teachers at that grade level were teaching? :shrug:

[Okie4Obama]

26. Second and third grades.

I went to a small elementary school in Tyler, Texas, that was pretty ethnically diverse now that I think about it. Since two teachers taught it to me, I am pretty sure it was standard in that school. I did read about two levels above grade, but all the kids were taught to diagram sentences. When we moved to Denton, Texas, the next year, I didn't hear a teacher mention diagramming sentences until my senior year in an AP English class. I LOVED diagramming sentences, I think kids should be exposed to it more often and have it presented as a puzzle and a fun challenge. We'd have races to see who could diagram the fastest.

[XemaSab]

29. Cool!

I might have been exposed to more grammar if both my first and second grade teachers hadn't left to have babies in the middle of the year. :shrug:

[Zix]

71. I never did it myself until I left school. It seems like such an obvious way to teach.

[Horse with no Name]

104. I went to high school in that area

I learned to diagram sentences in 3rd grade in another state.
It was new material in Texas to High School Juniors.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. They tried to teach me that too.

Now I regularly compose one-word sentences with an arbitrary "z" at the end. Lolz!

[ProdigalJunkMail]

17. we learned how to diagram sentences as well

10th grade if i remember correctly...

sP

[ohheckyeah]

22. I was just thinking about that.

We had to diagram the preamble to the Constitution.

[Okie4Obama]

27. That is awesome.

My boss wants me to do a little presentation on diagramming sentences to his upper-division class on film. Now I have a great idea to use.

[ohheckyeah]

35. I couldn't do it today

but it has been awhile. :-)

[ProdigalJunkMail]

38. refresher...not going to speak for accuracy of the site but...

http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/basicdiagrams.htm

sP

[ohheckyeah]

90. Thanks for the link n/t

[tishaLA]

46. I did too. And it used to frustrate me to no end

I thought you had to be a genius to figure it out.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Of course. It's called "reading".

[XemaSab]

10. Next poll:

Have you ever been taught punctuation? :hide:

[BlooInBloo]

11. Me fail english? That's unpossible!

[intheflow]

89. Best part of this reply is

you edited it to get the English this bad! :rofl:

[BlooInBloo]

93. Nah - it's a direct Simpsons quote, from the toon in the pic...

I think I just found a better pic than the first one, or something.

[intheflow]

100. I knew it was a direct Simpson's Quote,

but I thought you had perhaps typo'd the bad quote, then went back and edited it. But inserting a better picture is a fine edit, too! :)

[gkhouston]

I see you're not going to waste time asking whether DUers have learned manners. n/t

[pipi_k]

80. I was taught grammar but not manners, so...

basically, I'm a relatively well-spoken savage.


:7

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. Isn't "You lie!" bad grammar?

[Blue-Jay]

12. No.

It's rude, but the grammar is sound. Noun-verb.

You dig?

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. I dig. I'd probably yell "You are a liar!"

[busybl]

74. or You sir are a liar.

[Liberal_in_LA]

109. that's very polite

[timtom]

70. Imperative mood, if I recall...

[BlooInBloo]

73. Heh. It *could* be used so, I suppose, but it practically never is...

It's just a loud indicative, as the typical use goes.

[timtom]

112. Boy!! Do I feel stupid.

I knew that. But I wasn't thinking. And, I had to think hard to remember "imperative mood," too. All I could come up with was "vocative case." (Which would be wrong, as well.)

I think I was thinking, "You! Lie!"

[BlooInBloo]

125. :) I never learned a language with cases, so it could be that in some languages...

a "loud indicative", as I called it, would be declined differently from a "normal" indicative. I don't know.

[ZombieHorde]

9. I have only been taught a little grammar. I am taking a tech writing

in college, but only half of the class time is spent on grammar. I wish my university had an intense course on grammar.

[MarjorieG]

14. We learned long before we are able to remember, by some classes and by listening. The real

awareness of structure and what to call it by way of learning a foreign, romance language.

[proud patriot]

15. I just turned 40 in May .. But I remember lots of Grammar in

Grammar School

[ProdigalJunkMail]

16. i learned more grammar in my foreign language classes

than i did in any english class...

sP

[Parker CA]

18. Yep, definitely. nt.

[BlooInBloo]

23. Even just one foreign language adds a whole new dimension to one's native language...

Not unlike learning complex analysis.

[XemaSab]

25. Exactly

I had a real problem in Latin before I sorted out basic parts of speech. x(

[ProdigalJunkMail]

34. out little ones are learning latin now...

at 4 and 6 ... it is fun to hear them spouting grammatical rules. it is also fun to hear them rattling off the seven wonders of the world, greek and roman gods, the five kingdoms of living things and all that fun stuff! stuff i didn't learn until high school...well, maybe a little earlier!

sP

[BlooInBloo]

48. Classics kids = the smartest kids.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

63. almost the name of the program they are in! n/t

[BlooInBloo]

66. hahahaha!

[gkhouston]

19. Where's the "Robb dingbat is" option? n/t

[Peregrine]

20. Florida's FCAT writing test

Doesn't use grammar as part of the score and spelling doesn't count.

[Peregrine]

21. Florida's FCAT writing test

Doesn't use grammar as part of the score and spelling doesn't count.

[treestar]

24. My school did not teach grammar in English

Not one bit. What I know, I know because I took a foreign language. In those classes, we learned about grammar incident to learning the foreign language.

[LuvNewcastle]

28. They didn't teach grammar much

when I was in school (I'm 40). I've learned most of what I know about grammar from reading. Unfortunately, I was reading Joel Chandler Harris books.

[frogmarch]

30. 60+ years old and

I was taught lots of grammar. English grammar. English is my first, and essentially, only, language. I don't know six (going on seven) languages.

[Phentex]

31. My mother was an English teacher!

However, I do not type online in the way I might write a formal paper. Like, whatever.

[Libertas1776]

32. The public schools, in general,

are failing our children. I was fortunate enough to be sent to Catholic grade school (not fortunate because of the Catholicism, mind you :crazy: ) but rather the education. I was taught all about grammar and grammatical structure to the point of ad nauseum. We had actual textbooks and workbooks dedicated to grammar. I remember looking at the homework of a friend who went to public school, and all he had was a couple of work sheets. I used to have to bring home a shit load of books for homework. In fact, his mother would get mad at me when I helped him too much it was so easy for me. When I went to public high school, lets just say I was ahead of the curb.

That's why I get so pissed when I hear about taxpayer money being funded to "charter schools" instead of into the public schools where they are so desperately needed.

[Okie4Obama]

39. My daughter brings home worksheet after worksheet.

She's in first grade, and they are already teaching them how to take standardized tests. Plus, the worksheets she does bring home use weird, nonsense phrase to explain the parts of a sentence. I don't understand why they don't just call them the subject and the predicate, instead of setting the kids up for future confusion. I can't afford private school now, so I am forced to supplement her education myself. I think standardized tests are the second-worst plague brought upon public schools, right after underfunding.

[Libertas1776]

43. Sadly, that's the way

it is now. The only reason, it seems, that kids go to school nowadays is to simply pass standardized tests practically from the minute they step out of kindergarten. No matter if they actually expand their intellectual breadth for their own betterment or not, all that matters is that the statistics on standardized tests are in the green so the school officials and politicians can pose for a photo op.

[gkhouston]

53. We bought our daughter the Schoolhouse Rock 30th anniversary DVD a while back

and she's loving it. We just got it for fun, but I'd forgotten how much real information they have crammed into the songs. They're not afraid to sing about subjects and predicates. :-)

[Brigid]

67. *Sings*

Conjunction junction, what's your function? :)

[BlooInBloo]

79. That's the BEST!

[Blue_In_AK]

33. Sentence diagramming was one of my favorite things

in school -- seriously.

[ohheckyeah]

37. Do you remember how to do it?

I don't remember all the particulars.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

41. there's a link in post #38... n/t

[Blue_In_AK]

64. I think if I were hard-pressed to do it,

I could, but I haven't been required to use that part of my brain since about 1958. :rofl:

[patrice]

36. 8 years of Grammar, 4 years of Sentence Diagramming.

The rules are not as arbitrary as people assume they are. Yes, there are exceptions to the rules, but that does not make the rules meaningless. The rules are rational and, hence, functional. The logic of English can be acquired consciously from overt instruction in Grammar or unconsciously from wide and varied reading. Without that logic, one is at a disadvantage in the use of the language and even when the rules and conventions are violated by the likes of a great author like, say, Cormac McCarthy, those violations are not constructed without any regard for the under-lying logic of the language.

[XemaSab]

40. I know a lot about grammar just from reading

but I'm in a class now where you have to have facility with participles and predicates, and it's going horribly. :(

[snagglepuss]

86. Like you I learnt grammar from reading. If my sentences are fairly short, my

grammar is fine but more complex sentences can pose problems. I have been teaching myself grammar for years but its difficult to learn as an adult. I now know all the parts of speech but often I still can't identify sentence fragments.

And I am continually stunned by how much basic grammar I wasn't taught. I was stunned to discover there were such things as verbal nouns (gerunds); I can't believe that during all my years in school I had never heard that term. Nor had I heard about adverbial phrases or even prepositional phrases. I was really surprised to learn that there are certain set structures like "not only ...but also".

One thing that isn't mentioned when people bemoan lack of grammar education is that reading comprehension is severely compromised. When I was in university for instance reading William James was a struggle because of his complicated compound sentences. Often I would just stare at a sentence to determine what it might be about or what a certain pronoun might refer to. I never thought of looking at a sentence in terms of identifying the subject and the predicate. Its mind boggling how I managed.

I am convinced that power point is popular because it requires only the barest grammatical skills to compose such a sentence and to understand it.

Anyway I feel for you and hope all goes well however I am perplexed and really very curious to know why you need facility with participles and predicates? Why specifically with those two things?





:freak:

[XemaSab]

101. Like I said, I am taking a grammar class

and there's a lot of stuff I've heard of, but never dealt with before. :shrug:

[snagglepuss]

108. Well the one thing I've aced its participles. So if you ever have a question

participles think snagglepuss. If that doesn't feel you with confidence use google, its a great grammar resource for instance, within seconds I found a terrific explanation about participles - everything you need to know on one page.

http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/participle.htm

[XemaSab]

115. Thanks for the link!

:bounce:

[patrice]

110. Reading IS the best thing.

I can't imagine that class you're taking, how tough it must be to be "going horribly," you always seem so irrepressible, so indomitable.

[XemaSab]

116. I got 72% on the last assignment

I guess I am bummed because I expected to do well in the class. :(

[quiller4]

56. His first wife was an English teacher and Cormac certainly

studied grammar in Tennessee grade schools in the 1950s

[Sheltiemama]

42. Plus

My father was a journalist, and my mother was a teacher. To say I was taught grammar is an understatement.

[krispos42]

44. "I am under the age of 40 and I remember being taught lots of grammar"

I just didn't understand any of it! Or very little, at any rate.


And as a result, very little of it stuck. I am now in a situation where I know *when* something is wrong, but not necessarily able to explain it.


I'm a grammar dunce. Hell, until about a year ago I thought it was spelled "grammer"!



This also explains why I sucked in Spanish. At least in English the verb forms don't change nearly as much.

[endless october]

45. under 40, and i was taught lots of grammar.

my mom is an English teacher. I received ample instruction beginning about the time i could form a sentence.

it annoyed me when i was younger, but now i'm grateful for it.

i do tend to use the more relaxed "journalistic" rules in my posts (not to mention lax capitalization, lol.) i can proof the hell out of a paper, though. that skill has saved me tons of time.

[Catshrink]

47. I've always been pissed at Chomsky for this.

Just had to say it again...

Over 40 and was taught "transformational grammar" in 6-8th grades as part of an experimental program. I don't know why the group of students was chosen and had no idea what was being done to me until the end of the 9th grade. One day our teacher said, "I feel guilty because you haven't been taught traditional gammar so we're going to spend X number of days on it just so you get a sense of what you've missed." Bless her for trying. We had learned the basic parts of speech but the structure stuff was way different. It took me many years and a lot of determination to overcome this.

Noam Chomsky was the researcher.

[BlooInBloo]

49. Convince me you know what TGG's actually are?

As opposed to something that some education major *called* a TGG?

[Catshrink]

52. Don't know that I can...

The school and teacher called the grammar I was taught "transformational grammar." I honestly don't remember a heck of a lot of it. Probably for the best.

[BlooInBloo]

54. Roger that.

[patrice]

72. I can't imagine what practical use TG would have outside of Linguistics or Cognitive Science.

Perhaps they thought they were preparing you to become bi-, or multi-, lingual . . . ?

[BlooInBloo]

88. Me neither. That's why I suspect he or she was shown something somewhat different...

and dimmer people were just using that name.

[timtom]

111. When I first went to Berkeley in 1968

I declared myself to be a linguistics major. I had a nineteenth-century view of linguistics (as comparative linguistics). One of my basic core requirement classes was about phonemes and phonology. The TA, however was teach Chomsky's transformational grammar. All I came away from that class with was

np | vp

(I caught the flu and had to drop out that quarter.)

[BlooInBloo]

118. Heh. There's a bit more to TGG's than that.

[timtom]

120. Which is why I switched to Rhetoric and German.

[Catshrink]

123. See my post #122

http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/groups/CL/volk/SyntaxVorl/Chomsky.html

Ugh. I vaguely recognize it and prefer not to remember. Damn you Chomsky!

[Catshrink]

122. Sounds familiar..

you all got me curious about TG so I looked it up. This website explains it and it looks vaguely famililar.

http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/groups/CL/volk/SyntaxVorl/Chomsky.html

I was in junior high school -- it's been a long time. All I know is that I had to relearn "real" grammar so I could function in HS, college, and grad school. I was pissed that they did this to me.

[knitter4democracy]

102. I had to learn that in my college grammar class.

I prefer to use sentence string grammar when I teach it.

[asjr]

50. A good teacher is worth her weight in gold.

I remember accidentally overhearing a teacher talking with a friend and she said something grammatically wrong and I cringed and hoped my child was not going to be in her class. Learning grammar is not being snobbish. I had an eighth grade English teacher who pronounced Buenos Aires as Bewnos Airs.

[Greyhound]

51. Grammar (along with vocabulary) was one of the biggies until 7th grade or so. n/t

[quiller4]

55. I went to Catholic school in the 50s and 60s. I was taught grammar

and can still diagram even complex sentences without difficulty. People look at my handwriting and ask not if but where the nuns taught me.

[Brigid]

57. Yes, I learned grammar.

I was an English major in college, but I learned grammar back in elementary, junior high, and high school, which is just as it should be. People don't seem to learn it correctly anymore, or just don't care. Most write like lolcats these days. Too much text messaging, I guess.

[michreject]

58. Fuck yeah!!

Over 40.

[Scout]

60. i was taught grammar in English class in the 8th grade...

but i didn't retain a lot of it. i learned more about the parts of speech and grammar when i began to study a foreign language, Spanish!

i read a lot and could sometimes determine what was or wasn't correct usage because it "sounded right" ... but i couldn't have told you why it was correct or not.

ETA: oh, i voted "over 40 and taught some grammar"

[Hekate]

61. Pounded into my head by my mom at home and by teachers in school...

My mom -- the most important language teacher a kid can have, imo -- corrected me until the day she died. Bit annoying, really, when you're in your 50's, but absolutely essential from ages 1 through 18.

The last grammar unit in English that I had was in 10th grade, and I was glad that was over because I found it kind of boring. I mostly aced it though because -- thanks to mom -- I had all the patterns in my head already. Diagramming sentences was pretty easy.

My husband still loves grammar. English is his second language after French, but beyond that he grew up to be a computer programmer and systems analyst. Knowing logic and grammar are essential to learning programming languages.

I think my kids grew up to be able to speak and write literately because I taught them to speak the same way my mom taught me.

Hekate

[omega minimo]

65. Yup

How can they NOT teach grammar? :shrug:

[NNN0LHI]

69. I have taken grammar classes in school but ...

... sometimes(usually for effect) I write like I talk rather than writing grammatically correct. I throw in a Chicago accent, dialect and all.

Don

[Quantess]

75. Youngsters who have poor grammar probably learned it at home,

and they probably think it is correct.

I remember trying to convince a high school student that "It's for my brother and I" is not correct. "It's for my brother and me" is correct, because you would never say "it's for I". She absolutely refused to even consider that she was wrong.

A classmate in the 5th grade argued vehemently with a teacher who said brung is not correct; brought is. Her mom always said brung, so mom must be right. :eyes:

[Control-Z]

99. The one

that makes me really cringe (usually during an eyewitness news report) - "I seen"

I was getting out of my truck when I seen it happen...

I seen her pull out the gun...

[bvar22]

76. Over 40...lots of grammar.

Anyone remember diagramming sentences?

Anyone not know what that is?

[rug]

77. When I went it was called grammar school, not elemenary school.

[nadinbrzezinski]

78. I was taught lots of ENGLISH Grammar, yes

different than American Grammar. But then again I learned English (Queen's English) as a second language.

Oh and I hated my Spanish Grammar classes too.

Funny thing, when going to college in the US my sentence construction tends to be longer and more complex... it is that Queen's English Grammar. It was funny though. One of my teachers was from the UK, and he said it was refreshing to see that somebody in his class knew the fine but critical differences between Queens English and American English.

Trust me on this, goes beyond spelling harbour... instead of harbor.

Oh and on edit, I HATED diagramming sentences, don't care what language.

[noel711]

81. I WAS taught, and HAVE taught lots of grammar.....

sadly, its viewed as a waste in education today.
I was struck by how many DUers under 30 have no
experience with grammar..
another obvious difference in the generations.

Learning grammar is helpful in writing correctly,
BUT it's essential when learning other languages.

Maybe that should be a poll:

How many languages have you studied?
How many do you speak?

[rug]

85. I take issue with your ellipses.

:mad:

[intheflow]

97. .

:spray:

[bridgit]

82. ^5

:kick:

[Odin2005]

83. I am 23 and was taught grammar in school.

Not that I give a damn what is considered "correct" in the formal language when I am in casual conversation.

[flvegan]

84. My mother was an english teacher.

I also had grammar and phonics in grade school. I had higher levels of grammar in junior high.

[Mrs. Overall]

87. I didn't truly learn English grammar until I took a Latin class.

[struggle4progress]

91. To be truth is told, the grammars less necessarily than you might thought was: are always

easy understand peoples if trying, as shown here I you. :P

[AsahinaKimi]

92. My mom was an English teacher.

She taught my Dad English as he came directly from Osaka, Japan. He did the bad thing.. he fell in love with his teacher. I have no complaints! I am here because of that!

[marmar]

94. Under 40....yes.....and I love grammar.....Sentence diagrams get me all excited!!!!

..... When I hear 20-somethings, a even fellow GenXers, use "like" 20 times in one sentence it drives me to madness. :mad:

"....And I was like, and then he was like" AHHHHHHHH! :crazy:

[greendog]

95. Over 40. Taught lots. Remember some.

[Generic Brad]

96. I was taughted advanced grammar

That was before I became a rebel.

[intheflow]

98. This is quite possibly the most non-political one-sided poll

I've ever seen in GD. Fascinating!



FWIW, I'm over 40 and remember a lot of grammar through fourth or fifth grade, but by the time I was a junior in high school, the teachers were all going nuts trying to get most of us students to remember basic sentence structure and punctuation. I never had any problem remembering, but I was a real bookworm throughout school (still am), and that probably helped me along better than others.

[knitter4democracy]

103. Was taught all through school, was taught in college, have taught it since.

I loved my Traditional and Modern Grammars class in college. It was easier after having studied Spanish for so long, but it was lots and lots of fun.

[DireStrike]

106. 25 here, very little grammar. Until I took it in college.

A few teachers took a stab at it in high school, I think. Maybe it was junior high.

[Horse with no Name]

107. I always had a problem with dangling participants...uhhh participles.

But I got that worked out in college!:blush:

[aikoaiko]

113. Yes, I remember Ms. Carrick trying to beat it into my brain. I wish I paid attention.

[davidpdx]

114. Option 3, the funny thing is I teach English

Though I rarely teach grammar. Sometimes explaining grammar in depth becomes difficult as I don't remember all the fine points.

[Nikia]

117. I was taught grammar in elementary school and junior high

In those grades, we had a separate reading class. In high school, English class focused more on literature and grammar was not taught.

[LeftishBrit]

119. Other; I studied foreign languages at school...

including Latin (I must have been one of the last generation for which that was common in British schools); and I was taught a lot of grammar in connection with studying these languages. However, I do not remember studying grammar formally in English lessons.

[blondeatlast]

121. I'm sensing a trend here. nt

[Mari333]

124. I am a gwamma. does that count?

[timeforpeace]

127. Yes.

[depakid]

129. In 4 languages

English, Latin, French & Spanish.

Unfortunately, my Spanish has become more like "Spanglish" these days... need some immersion time in Mexico or Spain to get it back.

[blueworld]

130. What a scream! Me & the ol' ball & chain were talking about it this morning!

And - mind you - we grew up in New Joisey! The nuns at my skool used to beat the crap out of us for poor grammar, unaxeptabul spelling and rottin punkshuashun!

Seriously, when I hear "nukular" or "forMIDable" etc. I get frantic. Thanks for a great pole:)

[Rex]

131. Oh shit! I don't know witch won to pick!

I have been always thought grammer is important to are childrens' future,

EDIT - did you mean good grammar?

[Undercurrent]

132. I'm over 60, and yes. I was taught grammar.

In the schools I attended students had English class every year. We were required to diagram sentences from the 5th grade on. We also had spelling bees and tests, and written and oral grammar tests on a regular basis. We had to write essays, read (real) books, and were assigned written and oral book reports. We even had daily penmanship exercises from the first grade through the 5th.

This was in tiny rural public schools. And I do mean tiny. My first school was a one room schoolhouse that served first through 8th grades.

I'm a diagnosed dyslexic, yet the common teaching practices of the 1950's gave me passable written communication skills.