???Grammar???

Dear …..,

I have taken entirely too long to get back with you. So sorry!

Presently two of my boys are using Easy Grammar but I don’t think I would really recommend it. They don’t seem to learn too much or maybe I should say it doesn’t seem to really stick with them for some reason. Easy Grammar Plus for the older grades seemed to work pretty well for my older son because he could apply what he learned in his writing.

Shurley English we used for a short time. It is very repetitive. I didn’t stay with it long because I had heard so much about Easy Grammar that I thought I just had to try that. I can’t remember enough about it to give a valid reason why you should or shouldn’t use it.

Winston Grammar and Advanced Winston Grammar I used for one of my boys. I think it was a painless way to learn the same grammar Easy Grammar tries to teach. The only problem is there are some sentences which do not seem to fit into the pattern that they show and I would just have to say to my son that I didn’t know why it wasn’t a so-and-so part of speech. But overall I think he did learn a lot. After completing Winston Grammar and Adv. Winston Grammar he then completed Easy Grammar Plus. (I had to be sure I didn’t miss anything.)

I am going to start this program again with my daughter and maybe my son since it worked well with my oldest boy. I think they need to know what a noun, verb, adjective and adverb are but for the most part I think compostion is much more important.

The #1 suggestion I would make for writing/grammar is to have them write written narrations as they get older. This does not teach them to diagram sentences but it is for learning punctuation, spelling and writing. I’ll explain.

When they are young you want to teach them the habit of attention. So after reading to them you have them narrate back to you what they have heard (or read on their own).

A lot of textbooks give tests to find out what the child has learned or not learned, as the case may be. But there is no tests with this method. What they can narrate back to you is what they have learned – what really stuck in their minds. This is so much better than a fill-in-the-blank type of test. Learning is much more than that!

If they cannot narrate a long passage that has been read to them then have them narrate a shorter passage, a paragraph or even a sentence. Train them in the habit of attention. Oral narration also helps in speaking, helping them to express themselves. (I needed this when I was young! As a matter of fact, I still need it.)

As they get older they move into written narrations. They are doing the same thing as before but this time it’s written. If they can type their narrations that would be even better. After they get used to the written narration idea then I would get a grammar handbook like "Learning Grammar Through Writing" by Sandra M. Bell. In this book they have several sections, dealing with punctuation, spelling, style, etc. When you find a mistake in your child’s writing you find the section and the letter of the grammatical rule they’re breaking and write it above the mistake. They then look up the rule themselves and can correct it. This is SO good because they are learning grammar using their own writing style and since each time they write they tend to write the same, they learn to recognize their mistakes.

You do need to have some idea of grammar yourself for this to really work. But if you don’t you can always learn. I have learned along the way myself.

For example, I struggled with when to use see or saw. My husband knew what was right just because of how it sounded but I had written it for so long the wrong way I did not recognize my error. I finally looked it up in Easy Grammar Plus and found that if you are using a helping verb then you use seen and if not, saw. This was very helpful because now I understand. I have to tell you it was quite exciting for me to learn this! lol

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. is another good handbook for students. I see these in the used book stores quite frequently for $.25.

One other thing. If your kids read good literature then they will have their ears trained for the richness of words from which they will have a repository to draw upon when they give their written and oral narrations.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Me

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments