It was the equivalent of a kid arguing that "me and her went to the store" must be right, because that's how they've always said it.
It's not just kids who argue this, BTW. And their defense is "Well, you *understood* what I meant, so what's the problem?"
Other than the fact that you sound ignorant, no problem.
I seriously fear it's a losing battle, though. More and more people figure that, as long as you can make yourself understood, grammar doesn't matter. Soon we'll have devolved into grunts and gestures.
Oh I used to love to diagram a sentence. Like disecting words. And no surprise teeth like the fetal pig.
It's like the mathy part of English.
Mixing math and English? Sounds like my marriage to an actuary.
Ooh, there was a safety pin in my desk!
It's not just kids who argue this, BTW. And their defense is "Well, you *understood* what I meant, so what's the problem?"
Oy. It's like that email thing with all the letters in the words mixed up, except for the first and last. Have you seen that? It's weirdly understandable. But does NOT mean that spelling is meaningless!
I remember diagramming sentences in middle school -- at a public school in the 80s. I don't think we spent a huge amount of time on it, but I found it interesting.
Oy. It's like that email thing with all the letters in the words mixed up, except for the first and last. Have you seen that? It's weirdly understandable. But does NOT mean that spelling is meaningless!
Yeah, I've seen it. The non-editor yokels in my office enjoy sending me things like that.
There was stuff about diagramming sentences in our grammar books. But we never did those chapters. I think some teachers did teach it, but I never had any of them.
She didn't neglect our grammer. She concentrated on it in our writing.
I support her in email. It always seemed slightly goofy to me to teach grammar as abstract theory; I learned to write by reading a lot. Like Jesse, I did learn some odd tidbits by taking Spanish, since then I couldn't rely on just knowing that something sounded right or wrong.
And here's a table that gives you the current equivalent for pre-1996 SAT scores. (My math score went down! No fair.)
I seriously fear it's a losing battle, though. More and more people figure that, as long as you can make yourself understood, grammar doesn't matter. Soon we'll have devolved into grunts and gestures.
On a slightly more optimistic note, I've found that most students are happy to learn grammar, they really just haven't been exposed to it in any structured way. I think a good teacher can teach it through writing, but most students need "rules" that they understand and can then apply. The most obvious example that I see more and more (in English) is the random comma. And when I say, there is no logic to, its placement I, mean it.
I vaguely remember diagramming sentences in junior high. I was taught by a former nun. Unfortunately some rules of grammar never quite stuck in my brain, which is why I need a Dana.
