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Ode to my great-aunt
I refer you to this blog because I had virtually the same experience as the author - to wit, I endured a grade 7 & 8 teacher who taught and drilled her class how to diagram sentences. I hated it and thought it boring and a total waste of time, just more fuddy-duddyism on the part of our elderly teacher. Lo and behold, looking back I realize that my ability to diagram sentences, to feel their structure in my bones, is the foundation of my ability to write clear and interesting prose.
Really, this should not come as a surprise. Diagramming sentences is similar to knowing your times tables or being a good speller - a necessary pre-requisite to more advanced performance.
Just for the record, my grade 7/8 teacher also drilled us in spelling, and I am an excellent speller to this day. She didn’t have to drill us on our number facts, though, because we all knew them by grade 7. And, by the way, this teacher was my great aunt Victoria Malkin.