¶ … Landecker (2009) examines the methods of teaching by a professor at Trinity College who teaches sentence diagramming to her students. The technique is no longer a common one in English classes, so the methods of the professor are quite unique. The students, however, show great enthusiasm for the practice and are able to break down the structure of complex sentences with skill and they do so in a competitive manner as part of the professor's overall testing of their abilities: they must partake in a competitive diagramming game in which one half of the class competes against the other half and points are deducted for sentence diagramming errors. The study indicates that the method is helpful for promoting participation and enthusiasm in the classroom but its narrative structure does not provide any indication as to whether the exercises have an effect on the students' ability to craft a well-written sentence as the professor grades the contest "only for participation in the slam" and not on actual merit (Landecker, 2009, p. 11). Nonetheless, it is clear that the students do learn the parts of learning sentence structure via diagramming is boring or impossible in today's classrooms. The professor in this study generates a great deal of excitement. Thus, this study will be used to show that diagramming is still be used to teach the basics of English grammar and that students are responding favorably to it.
The study by Sipe (2006) describes a teacher's experiences with teaching isolated grammar exercises in her writing class and how she could spend a week on something like that comma, have the students score well on the tests, yet they would continue to commit comma mistakes in their writing all the time thereafter. The study suggests that the teacher's experiences show that students need to spend time learning about different styles of writing and not just attempting to diagram sentences in futile attempts to understand the parts of speech. The teacher's…