Bibliophilia: tearing English apart

Several days ago I began a loving reminiscence for this little half-shelf of books:

Other than specific works of literature and the anthologies which collected them, I’ve pretty much trashed my college textbooks. One slim little volume, sporting a stiff paper cover, has followed me around since 1982 and will be there when I die very likely: Sentence Analysis by Donald W. Emery.

June 1982 brought me the final set of courses I needed to complete my English Education degree. Who knew a graduate-level course on grammar would be the most agreeable of them? Few of my fellow classmates agreed with me. First, the class began at 7 a.m., if I recall correctly, and ran for two hours. This allowed the professor (who happened to be the chair of the English department) to teach the class in only four weeks instead of eight. After the first week we diagrammed sentences. That’s all. Each day we discussed a construct of English grammar, diagrammed five sentences that night, and began the next class discussing how they should have been diagrammed and if there might be any which were open to interpretation. Even in something as definitive as diagramming English refuses to be pinned down. In fact, the professor told us we used the sentences in the book because they had been vetted to be “diagrammable”! It would take me too long to explain why English sentences as spoken and written by its practitioners do not lend themselves to analysis. Take my word for it, at least for now.

Unfortunately, I stole a bit of my thunder on this topic a couple of years ago when I ranted about compound prepositions, foreshadowing this book even if I didn’t name it. This series, Bibliophilia, however, purports to be about a love of books, not of specific topics per se. We attempt to not delve too much into the memories evoked by the books, but rather to celebrate them and explain why such feelings rise up. In this case, it’s pride pure and simple, pride in knowing something esoteric, something only a small sliver of English speakers know. My course contained about 15 students, all but three of whom were teachers returning for some of those credits mandated by law for the recently hired or to achieve a Masters degree. Despite the fact all were English teachers/English majors, I ran rings around that class. I aced it. I aced the final. After acing it I and leaving long before the rest of the class, I waited in the lobby for them to come out. “What did you do on the last one?” they asked. I could have been smug, and said, “what I did when we diagrammed it for homework,” because all of these sentences had been discussed in class. Instead I just answered the question. The bulk of these people were older than me. My pride came with a good dose of awkward, too.

Because we’re sticking to love of books, and on this shelf, love of language, I’ll save further discussions of the diagrams for another piece of writing. One memory will illustrate my love for this slim little volume: I hope I will never forget this experience which illustrates the frustration of teaching and the uselessness of diagramming sentences. In the 8th grade English classes I taught, I decided for a year or two to use diagramming sentences for a unit. I think this had to do with a “street cred” issue I had with another English teacher and also because teaching sentence diagramming comes about as close as possible to teaching math. Many teachers of English shy away from the ‘squishy’ nature of their chosen field. One can only teach writing by having students write and giving them feedback about it. This puts them in a bind. Reading, grading, and (God forbid) giving feedback requires huge amounts of time, time which could be better spent drinking beer/wine and reading a book. Worse, it’s nearly impossible to teach literature without having students write about it. Double-whammy because now one has to grade the content as well as the expression of it. But…begin a unit on diagramming sentences, and one can kick back like the math teachers do, marking the incorrect lines, assigning points, and adding up the points for a grade on that day’s assignment.

I don’t remember this kid’s name, so we’ll call him Rick. A little kid who could be used to illustrate the late-bloomer end of the scale for 13-year-old males, Rick sat in the front row because I probably put him there. His philosophy toward English seemed to be one of ignoring it: he had a perfect record for turning in homework which barely had been started or not turning it in at all. He consistently maintained a Failing grade–until I started the diagramming unit. Suddenly English interested him. He turned in every assignment. He did okay; not the top student, but a good solid one. Deconstructing sentences grabbed him in a way that constructing them had not. And as soon as we moved on, Rick’s turned his interest off like a faucet. His writing contained few sentences and none were well-written. I saw that just because you could take a car apart and put engine parts in one corner, drive-train parts in a second corner, and boxes surrounding them for the ancillary parts which supported those systems, that didn’t mean you could put the car back together. I also realized some students were going to tune out. They just were.

That’s why this book lives on my shelf. I glance at it fondly, remembering how truly great I was in the class! Quickly thereafter come the memories of how useless this information is to all but linguists, how useless it remains to teach to 8th graders (or any other student not majoring at the college level in English linguistics), and how I likely failed to provide some students the incentives they needed to try to better their skills at writing. It’s nice knowing something well that few know how to do all. It’s nicer knowing what to do with this knowledge to help others succeed.