Grammar - why do we have to teach it?

[kellylwong]

I have been through several grammar curriculums in the past few years and cannot understand why we have to diagram sentences and memorize all the different parts of grammar and how to use them.  Can't we just simply learn good writing skills from reading quality literature?  Why do we have to know that there are 9 different types of adjectives?  When my child asks me, "When am I ever going to use this?" and "Why do I have to know this?" and I can't legitimately give her an answer other than, "Because you do", why exactly are we forcing this upon our students?  She is an avid reader and writer, but hates grammar studies.  Does anyone else out there simply not teach grammar and just allow it to come naturally from quality reading and writing?

[kiwik]

I wasn't taught grammar and did mostly learn through reading. I have often wished I knew what the rule was though (same with phonics rules). It probably depends on your child. I would say though that education should not be restricted to things that will be used.

[Lynn in Caribbean]

My dc have used Abeka Language books over the years.  However, we don't do this book every year, and sometimes we take one book and spread it out over 2 years.  My dd, now a senior, did Abeka Language 5, then spread Language 7 over two years (grades 7-8), then spread Language 10 over two years (9,10).  

 

I agree that it seems kind of pointless when they are young.  I would say it is better to get the younger kids up and running with handwriting, copywork, and dictation, writing sentences, and learning how to write a coherent paragraph.  Then add in grammar.  

 

However, my dd has really used her knowledge of grammar when writing college essays (dual enrollment).  When the sentences get complicated, it helps to know how they are constructed and to really understand the grammatical basis of what you have written.  When a sentence does not sound right or doesn't convey the meaning she intended, she can figure out why.  The other advantage is that she scored a perfect 800 on her SAT writing section.  She says it was because of the grammar learned in Abeka that she did so well.  (Of course, the SAT is soon to be changing, so not sure how that will play out as an advantage...)

 

The plus for me doing all this with her, is that I now proofread all my husband's important correspondence at work - letters to the board of directors, annual reports, etc., the stuff that really needs to be perfect.  Actually, not really a plus as I am not getting paid for this :)    

 

 

[Kuovonne]

I don't think you have to teach grammar. Many people graduate high school, go to college, and have successful lives without explicit grammar instruction.

 

That said, here are the reasons why I teach grammar.

 

3) Understanding grammar aids in reading comprehension. It is easier to untangle the meaning of a long, complex sentence if you can quickly figure out the relationships between the words.

 

2) Grammar provides the reasons behind punctuation and capitalization.

 

1) When you and your student both know grammar, you have a shared vocabulary for discussing how to revise and edit writing.

 

Notice that simply teaching the parts of speech, subjects, and predicates will not accomplish any of those goals.

You need to understand clauses and phrases before explicit grammar knowledge is useful.

[Ellie]

I have been through several grammar curriculums in the past few years and cannot understand why we have to diagram sentences and memorize all the different parts of grammar and how to use them.  Can't we just simply learn good writing skills from reading quality literature?  Why do we have to know that there are 9 different types of adjectives?  When my child asks me, "When am I ever going to use this?" and "Why do I have to know this?" and I can't legitimately give her an answer other than, "Because you do", why exactly are we forcing this upon our students?  She is an avid reader and writer, but hates grammar studies.  Does anyone else out there simply not teach grammar and just allow it to come naturally from quality reading and writing?

 

I don't believe we need to teach grammar for 12 years, but I do believe a couple of years of formal grammar is helpful. If reading good literature alone was enough, more people would have better grammar, KWIM? I think there are some things we learn easily, but some things are not so apparent; a year or two of formal grammar study should help.

 

I don't believe diagramming is all that vital, however, nor that it's important to know that there are nine different kinds of adjectives. (There are? Really??). But are you sure your dd knows the correct usage of I/me, we/us, he/him, and so on? Does she know to use a possessive pronoun with a gerund? Does she understand and use correct subject/verb agreement? If not, then yes, she needs to study grammar.

 

Also, if she has an understanding of grammatical terms and whatnot, you can correct her writing by saying, "Dear, you used the subjective pronoun when you should have used the objective," which will be much clearer than "Yeah, um, this doesn't look right." :-)

[kellylwong]

Looking at Simply Grammar by Karen Andreola.  Anyone have any experience using this?  I've been reading reviews, mostly good, only complaints are the old-style language used at times.  Hmmmm.... 

[Ellie]

Looking at Simply Grammar by Karen Andreola.  Anyone have any experience using this?  I've been reading reviews, mostly good, only complaints are the old-style language used at times.  Hmmmm.... 

 

I thought Simply Grammar was simply awful. Sorry.

[kellylwong]

Really Ellie? Why?  :crying:

[Aurelia]

Maybe Analytical Grammar or Junior Analytical Grammar?

[Ellie]

Really Ellie? Why?  :crying:

 

The language was just too archaic.

 

There was a fad among homeschoolers back with this was written of promoting materials which were written in the 1800s because somehow they were supposed to be better than current materials (Harvey's Grammars and Ray's Arithmetics were reprinted around the same time, and all those nature readers CLP republished). But really, sometimes they're just..archaic. We don't talk like that any longer, and it's ok that we do not. It does not make us less educated or literate.

 

Simply Grammar falls into that category: supposedly good because of its style, when really, it's just...old.

 

And many of the illustrations are just...creepy. o_0

[kellylwong]

Going way out on a limb here:  Has anyone tried Grammaropolis?  Looks fun and engaging.

[Lucy the Valiant]

Another reason for formal grammar study (whether in one's primary language OR secondary language) is to practice the skill of decomposing larger ideas into concrete, manageable parts.

 

(And a solid English / primary grammar is an excellent foundation for a foreign / secondary language!)

 

To me, it's one of those skills that when you have it, you have it; many students are capable of quitting earlier than many curricula would suggest. :)

[Critterfixer]

I taught grammar initially because I felt it was important to know basic parts of speech. Still good for that. But I'm finding that the more I learn grammar for myself, the more I use it to teach writing. Once a week or more the boys and I will take a few sentences from literature and we parse it the white board together. We compare the number of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. I'll get stuck and have to go to the dictionary at times. Sometimes we will spend a good bit of time on a word to figure out what it is modifying. When we are done, we will sometimes take the sentence and try removing things (prepositional phrases, use stronger verbs, etc, edit for clarity, enhance with more adjectives) and see what happens.

So I think that it does have to do with strong writing.

 

Our other reason for studying grammar is for Latin. It really helps to know how case relates to the way the noun is used in the sentence.

 

I did not have much grammar myself other than basic parts of speech. It's been fun learning things that I was either not taught or never bothered to learn. Still got a long way to go, though.

 

Our current grammar text right now is Pendexter-Emerson A Practical English Grammar. Not a whole lot of diagramming (I'm not just huge on diagramming, prefer parsing) but it's been pretty good. Old, but good. I'm using this with two fifth graders.

[8filltheheart]

I am someone who believes in teaching grammar. Grammar and writing discussions go hand in hand in our homeschool. I honestly don't know how you teach strong writing skills without being able to talk to your kids about what constitutes quality sentence construction. What is the difference between a strong verb vs. a weak verb being supported by a list of adverbs? What is the difference between a passive voice sentence and an active voice? How do you know how to detect subject/verb agreement if there is a prep phrase between the 2 that wants to drive your verb to agree with it vs. the subject?

 

Grammar studied in isolated sentences in a grammar book, however, is unlikely to develop an appreciation for the connection between grammar and strong writing skills.

[Hunter]

I think part of the problem is that we teach grammar too early. We teach it before students have questions. And we teach it to students who maybe will never have these questions.

 

Grammar and phonics fascinate me. They fill in the holes of what I inferred while reading. Study of them answers my questions. I don't try and teach all that fascinates me to all of my students, especially the beginners.

[texasmama]

The group of kids is running late.

 

The group of kids are running late.

 

Which is correct? I know because I studied grammar, and I get a huge kick out of this. :D My kids study grammar formally, but I also point out which of the above sentences is correct and tell my kids why while studying other subjects.

[Ellie]

The group of kids is running late.

 

The group of kids are running late.

 

Which is correct? I know because I studied grammar, and I get a huge kick out of this. :D My kids study grammar formally, but I also point out which of the above sentences is correct and tell my kids why while studying other subjects.

 

In the U.S., we'd say the group is running late.

 

In the U.K., I'm thinking it would be the group are running late. :-)

[texasmama]

In the U.S., we'd say the group is running late.

 

In the U.K., I'm thinking it would be the group are running late. :-)

US version. :)

[Guest ruonboothb]

I would say though that education should not be restricted to things that will be used. 

[stutterfish]

Group is singular, so you should have the singular form of the verb to match. That goes for the UK, too, if you wanted to write the sentence correctly. However, if the sentence was spoken, here in the UK, nobody would care what verb form you used. :) My father was brought up in an area where local dialect meant it was quite normal to start a sentence  'We was...' 

 

There was a period in schools in the UK when teaching grammar wasn't fashionable, so I didn't learn what a verb was until I started to study a foreign language age 12. I've never found that it limited me. My essays would have been poor, even with perfect grammar, :laugh: but the lack of formal grammar restrictions did leave me free to become a very good creative writer.  I'm only starting now to find out the "whys" of what I've been doing naturally all these years. It's interesting as an adult, but I'm glad I didn't have it rammed into me at a younger age. 

 

I covered the basics of grammar with my teens in less than an hour. If they find they need to know more about grammar there are books and the internet. They are quite capable of looking things up. My youngest is following English Lessons through Literature and is learning all sorts of grammar I doubt she'll ever need. It's been quite eye-opening as to what has been missing from my life (not!)  :laugh:

[Innisfree]

We studied grammar in elementary school in a sense: we learned how to use apostrophes, form plurals, use contractions. The mechanics part is obviously necessary.

 

Much of what we did was effortless to me because I read obsessively and had never heard anything but grammatically standard English, except perhaps in a tv sitcom. Writing correctly came easily to me.

 

But then came 7th grade Spanish, and for the first time I encountered the idea that...am, are, is, was, were and will... were in some way related. 

 

Grammar as an analytical framework for language, the idea that words had these relationships and structures underlying them, hit me like a load of bricks. No one had ever used the word "conjugate" in a class before then. Thank goodness it wasn't Latin yet, and I didn't have to deal with parts of the sentence and declining nouns as well.

 

I think it's easier to start dealing with that underlying framework before hitting foreign languages, and in your own language.

 

Do we all need to know nine kinds of adjectives? probably not.

 

But the basis framework, yes.

[Hunter]

Vintage grammar books cannot all be lumped together. We have easy access to hundreds of them that span from at least the 1850's through the early 1920's. General educational philosophies changed radically during those years and individual authors had their own pet ways of teaching. Lumping all those English books together is similar to lumping the 1950's Dick and Jane books with the 2010's Spalding clones.

 

The audience the vintage books were written for was vast. Some vintage grammar were written for rural American schools and others were written for private British academies and others were written for children in the Philippines, being schooled by Western missionaries. 

 

I have read more than 100 modern English curricula and at least 100 vintage ones. They can't be lumped together, and neither modern or vintage are better than the other. Each book needs to be evaluated individually, and for how well it will fit into the rest of the curriculum.

 

Many vintage English lessons are planned in context of the rest of the curriculum. The bigger plan is often more evident if you read the rest of the textbooks published by that author and publisher. Sometimes the English lessons make no sense unless you have also read the science books or the art book or even the math books.

 

Charlotte Mason's Simply Grammar is NOT one of my favorite books, simply because its goals are not my goals. The oral work is nice if you are using a cursive-first approach, but Charlotte Mason's schools had goals that are increasingly different than mine, the higher the grade level. Simply Grammar is useful for families using the cursive-first approach that will be teaching multiple languages in later grades.

[Laura Corin]

It really depends on the child.  Some just pick things up; others do not.  My boys had very light grammar instruction, with nudges about their own writing - it doesn't work for everyone.

 

L

[rose]

I tried to skip it but discovered that it was nearly impossible to explain how to correctly place commas without at least a little knowledge of grammar. My dd like to put them everywhere and my ds never uses them. It's just not natural for them. I think that studying grammar is helping them get a feel for how the English language works so that some of those basic things, like good punctuation, can flow naturally.

 

I must say that whenever I write about grammar I get a little nervous about my post writing. I'm not the greatest writer and I'm trying to learn along with my children. I don't even know myself where to add commas all the time. I'm learning the grammar so that I can teach it to my children so that the don't fumble around as much as I do when they're adults.

[Critterfixer]

The group is late. 

My fun one is data. I inevitably want to call data singular, when it is plural, but I don't recall ever referring to a single datum.

 

And I agree with Hunter about vintage grammar books. I must have been through thirty before I hit on one that was adaptable to how I wanted to use it. 

[Hunter]

I tried to skip it but discovered that it was nearly impossible to explain how to correctly place commas without at least a little knowledge of grammar. My dd like to put them everywhere and my ds never uses them. It's just not natural for them. I think that studying grammar is helping them get a feel for how the English language works so that some of those basic things, like good punctuation, can flow naturally.

 

I must say that whenever I write about grammar I get a little nervous about my post writing. I'm not the greatest writer and I'm trying to learn along with my children. I don't even know myself where to add commas all the time. I'm learning the grammar so that I can teach it to my children so that the don't fumble around as much as I do when they're adults.

 

The more I learn about grammar, the more I realize I don't know about grammar. I heard people say that in the past and thought it was a cop-out. Unfortunately, I found out it was true.

 

There are lucky people that latched onto a series/style, or ONE way to do grammar, and used that system all the way through their schooling. They call out people like me as over dramatizing the situation. They are less affected by the overwhelming number of different ways/styles/systems, as they are freer to brush them off and ignore them; it's like water off a duck's back, to someone drilled in just one style.

 

Also, there are all sorts of advanced rules that overlap and contradict, and if you have excellent problem solving skills, it's obvious which ones to disregard and which ones to emphasize, for each sentence. I sometimes struggle to know what to do sometimes as I'm juggling several advanced rules. Never mind when I'm juggling all the advanced rules of multiple styles. I'm not as smart as some here. I can memorize rules until the cows come home, and I'm still going to struggle with the advanced rules, and they are entirely overwhelming to some students who even as adults are barely in the logic stage, never mind the rhetoric stage of thinking.

 

Also, when at a forum, sometimes I'm on a phone and tablet. Also, sometimes I just don't have time to edit. 

 

Grammar is supposed to be a tool, or maybe a hobby. It's never supposed to be something used to mock others, and stifle them. If we use enough grammar to help ourselves to be understood better, then that is the point. It's not about "right" or "wrong" or showing off.

 

I know my grammar has gotten better, but I'm more insecure than ever about it when "experts" are critiquing it. I need to get over that and not care. If I let them stifle my message, then that's wrong, not only of them, but also of me to enable and allow that.

[Critterfixer]

 

Grammar is supposed to be a tool, or maybe a hobby. It's never supposed to be something used to mock others, and stifle them. If we use enough grammar to help ourselves to be understood better, then that is the point. It's not about "right" or "wrong" or showing off.

 

I feel the same way about Logic, BTW.

[Rosie_0801]

The money I spend on linguistics classes at uni would have been better spent if I had learned grammar first. Learning a second language is also less painful if you know your own grammar. I didn't know we had classifiers in English until several years after learning to use them in Auslan.