4 Reasons to Teach Sentence Diagramming

Let’s say the quiet part out loud: Sentence diagramming is an antiquated skill. Now let’s shout the truth: Nevertheless, it’s a useful skill! No, sentence diagramming isn’t going to turn up on the SAT or any standardized test (it’s not in the Common Core), but the results of students better understanding sentence construction will turn up in their writing.

But first, a brief history:

The origin of diagramming sentences goes back to 1877 and two professors at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In their book, Higher Lessons in English, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg made the case that students would learn better how to structure sentences if they could see them drawn as graphic structures.

After Reed and Kellogg published their book, the practice of diagramming sentences had something of a Golden Age in American schools.

"It was a purely American phenomenon," Burns Florey says. "It was invented in Brooklyn; it swept across this country like crazy and became really popular for 50 or 60 years and then began to die away."

By the 1960s, new research dumped criticism on the practice. "Diagramming sentences ... teaches nothing beyond the ability to diagram," stated the 1960 Encyclopedia of Educational Research.

In 1985, the National Council of Teachers of English declared that "repetitive grammar drills and exercises" — like diagramming sentences — are "a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing."

Despite the odds, sentence diagramming is still taught in ELA classes around the world, including by yours truly.

So, here are four reasons you should teach sentence diagramming:

1. To better understand sentence structure.

Way back in elementary school students learn the definitions of the parts of speech. Rote memorization tells them that an adverb modifies a verb, adjective or adverb, but this is abstract for many students until they see in a diagram how a verb sits on a straight line, and the adverb hangs off of that line. I have taught freshmen who struggle with the definition of a complete sentence. When I show them the simple horizontal line divided in two by a vertical line with the subject on the left side and the predicate on the right side they can clearly visualize how both sides of the line need to be occupied in order for there to be a complete sentence.

2. Attention to detail.

   
   

Sentence diagramming forces students to slow down and give their attention to the details of the sentence. There’s no rushing through the careful drawing of lines and thought regarding the placement of a subordinate clause.

Diagramming helps us to figure out usage issues. Does that pronoun go in the indirect object spot? Then we must use the objective case. Do we need that preposition in the sentence? Only if you can find a place for it in the diagram. And diagramming helps us figure out parallel structure. If you aren’t sure if parts are parallel, diagram the sentence and you will see the structure.

3. Encourages analytical thinking.

   
   

Language isn’t random, and sentence diagramming demonstrates its rationality. It feels like codebreaking. Or like surgery, peeling back layers of skin and fat to reveal hard pale bones. 

Sentence diagramming was not designed to teach the parts of speech. Rather, the diagrams help take a student’s knowledge of grammar to the next level. 

Even if students aren’t going to become computer programmers, we see the benefit of them learning basic computer coding because it teaches them logical thinking and attention to detail. If the second line of code is sloppy, line 450 isn’t going to work. Sentence diagramming works the same analytical muscles that coding does.

4. Resonates with visual learners.

   
   

Imagine in your mind the voice of the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon bloviating in front of her class. She doesn’t say a single intelligible word and everything she utters washes over her students like rain off a duck’s back. (The teacher’s name is Miss Othmar and her “voice” is made by a trombone….but I digress.)

That’s what rote definitions of the parts of speech are until they become visual for many students.

Like other graphic organizers, diagrams help visual and kinesthetic learners. Think of all the words in a sentence as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. If you take all the pieces out of the box and line them up on the table, you just see a bunch of disconnected pieces. But once you fit them together, you see the whole picture. Diagramming allows students to see the picture of the sentence.

Kitty Burns Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, says, “I like to call it a picture of language. It really does draw a picture of what language looks like."

Does sentence diagramming help every student? No one strategy is perfect for every learner, but plenty of brain research has proven the efficacy of graphic organizers. And my own experiences as a teacher have led me to believe that most students can use that help. I believe in teaching sentence diagramming so wholeheartedly that I created this lesson.

Really, can Gertrude Stein be wrong? She said, “I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.” 

Were you taught sentence diagramming in school? Do you teach it in your ELA classes? Share your experiences in the comments.

Sources:

Summers, J. (2014, August 22). A picture of language: the fading art of diagramming sentences. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/22/341898975/a-picture-of-language-the-fading-art-of-diagramming-sentences

Save the Diagrams: Why students need to learn sentence diagramming. (2020, October 18). DGP Bookstore. https://www.dgppublishing.com/blogs/dgp-blogs/save-the-diagrams-why-students-need-to-learn-sentence-diagramming