I always thought that was fun, even though figuring out where to put those pesky adverbs was a challenge for me. Believe it was in 7th grade way back when.

Thoreau sentences from Walden.

I think one of the sentences had over 200 words.

by Sir Walter Scott holds the record I do believe.

or perhaps it is the last chapter of Ulysses.

Though neither of those are probably grammatical sentences.

As in James Joyce's Ulysses as containing the longest sentence (4391 words). I think they said it was the last chapter. Since I have never cared for Joyce, I plead willful ignorance.

Still don't feel like I am close to fully understanding it.

But the last chapter is basically Penelope's speech to Ulysses upon his return. And is all one sentence. It's a wonderful chapter.

I have never read all of Finnigan's Wake but I remember hearing that it was all one sentence. I must be remembering that incorrectly.

Feel free to use my turn at the novel.

on checking, yes it is -- but apparently has been surpassed.

Molly's soliloquy consists of eight enormous "sentences." The concluding period following the final words of her reverie is one of only two punctuation marks in the chapter, the periods at the end of the fourth and eighth "sentences." When written this episode contained the longest "sentence" in English literature, 4,391 words expressed by Molly Bloom (it was surpassed in 2001 by Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club).[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Bloom%27s_soliloquy

understanding of WTF is THIS about!

Alas... lost in the haze cast by various pedagogical fads pertaining to language instruction that fall in and out of vogue with depressing regularity.

should be an essential part of English. It really helps a person understand the language, the various parts of speech, and so on.

Start in about fifth or sixth grade with very simple sentences. Work up to fairly complex ones by ninth or tenth grade.

Oh, and along the way, teach the difference between lie and lay, its and it's, and so on.

That's why they stopped teaching it. Most educational practices are driven by research.

I wonder just how they researched it?

I know that I have a reasonably firm grasp on English grammar and usage, and had reasonably rigorous high school English classes, including a decent amount of sentence diagramming. For years now, I've been wanting to take a really good, tough, college level English grammar class, because there's a bunch of picky little stuff that I still need to learn.

Do you, Proud2B, by any chance know if any such class is taught at the college level?

I teach elementary school.

the Modern Grammar class I had to take for my English minor was completely diagramming using Chomsky's transformational grammar.

LOVED the class.

i think there's a benefit to understanding grammar -- at least there was for me. for one thing, you can talk about the language, which helps with foreign languages and helps with understanding why there's a problem when you write something non-grammatical.

i agree, it's kind of meta, but i think it pays off later.

As far as the N=1 anecdote goes....thinking back to when I learned diagramming, I believe I didn't really get it. It was only several years later in learning a second language that it all came together for me. For all I know, my earlier exposure to diagramming set me up to do better later.

The focus has moved over the years from understanding language structure to writing. Diagramming helps us understand structure but there isn't any research to support it helping us learn to write.

bitterly that their students essentially know nothing of grammar. Don't know what a verb is. Don't know what an adjective is. They find they have to teach essentials of English grammar alongside that of the other language.

I've taken Spanish, French, German, and Italian in recent years at an excellent community college in Kansas, and I can verify that what those teachers complain about is true. The only class in which it wasn't as much of a problem was the Italian class. But three quarters of that class were older adults, 50+, who'd learned English grammar back in high school. Keep in mind that I took the Italian a decade ago.

I look at diagramming as just a visual way to represent sentence structure. I've seen research-based programs in which students use highlighters or various symbols--diagramming's easier, I think.

I teach grammar specifically and refuse to change because I'm going to get these kids in my Spanish classes and don't want to have to reteach it.

They had a bunch of strategies they had developed for writing. They involved mnemonics and rubrics. They had also done several research studies on their strategies.

But that was 20 years ago. I don't know if they are still using them.