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Give me your honest, brutal opinions on Easy Grammar Plus


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I mean does this REALLY do the job? I just put my 9th grade dd in it a few weeks ago and she loves it. Ds would like to do it now as well (7th grade). He is doing AG and I have a R&S book here as well, but the EG looks appealing to him. I have to say, I balked at it for years, but I really do like it.

 

So what's the general consensus??

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I don't know if it really does it or not. I used it in 7th-8th after pulling ds out of ps. He had not done any grammar so it was his first introduction. I was in a hurry to find something and didn't research any further. I did supplement with diagramming books since I thought it was important. He thought so to since the diagramming helped him understand better.

 

Does she like it because it is fill in the blank?

 

That wasn't very helpful, huh?

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or so she says. I think it just simplifies it to the point of making it more understandable for her. I just really wonder if there are people that agree that it is all the grammar you really need.

 

And, fwiw, I was in the diagramming camp, and we did R&S for a couple of years, and AG (which is heavy into parsing and diagramming), and I just don't know if it has made a difference for this particular child. There is part of me that finds the diagramming important, and another part (evil me) that thinks it's totally useless...

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My kids completed Easy Grammar Plus (and Daily Grams) in 8th grade. Then I put my kids in Jensen's Grammar, Jensen's Puctuation, and Format Writing. That is all I have done for grammar except reinforce concepts when studying Latin and Greek and they have done extremely well on all of their placement tests.

 

-Kanga

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I think it's a great refresher course to use in high school after one has already mastered (if one really can) grammar. I've used it with several of the kids and it just hasn't worked for teaching grammar - except that prepositional phrase trick. I still teach crossing out the prepositional phrases to determine subject/verb even if the program I'm using doesn't teach it.

 

So, I'm not satisfied that it teaches well, but it does review well.

CynthiaOK

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We used LLATL and Winston Grammar (all levels) through elementary and jr. high. So, for 8th grade we tried Easy Grammar Plus and dds whipped right through it as it was all review of what they learned in Winston.

 

We were all pretty disappointed as it was advertised as being high school level grammar and we thought we were getting a head start doing it in 8th grade. But, it was a nice, if quick, review of elementary/jr. high grammar. Honestly, there was quite a bit more grammar in the Winston Advanced level than in Easy Grammar Plus. I guess that was why we were disappointed in it.

 

But, hey, if it works for you; great! I say do what works. Many people don't like LLATL or Winston and it was wonderful for my dc.

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I just really wonder if there are people that agree that it is all the grammar you really need.
No, it's not all the grammar you really need. There's a lot more to grammar than EG teaches. If you use EG, I'd recommend also using Easy Writing, because it addresses sentence structures EG doesn't.

 

I didn't personally care for EG because there's NO application at all, and like others have said, our sons didn't retain anything after using EG.

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Oldest dd finished her grammar studies with EGPlus. Currently, she is in 1st year, 2nd semester of college, a Poli-Sci major. She's doing quite well with her huge, weekly , written work load. She made the Dean's List for her 1st semester and she is in the Honors Program. No regrets for using EGP on her but I will say this--- This dd is a natural expository writer and truthfully, I think her excellent writing skills are more a result of reading good books all her life because she never went through the years of grammar study.

 

Currently a high school senior, youngest dd completed EGP a couple years ago and learned much from it but she still needed a little more grammar practice. I had her follow that up with a year of "Voyages in English". After "Voyages" I didn't see the need of putting her through any more grammar.

 

This dd struggles more than her sister with expository writing but doesn't hesitate to research while working on a written project if she's unsure of anything. Last semester she received a B+ in English Comp at the CC. As a favorite past-time she writes fiction, poetry, songs, plays and speeches. Speech writing is the most challenging for her but she loves to write them and especially loves to compete in oratoricals. At her young age she has already been requested to speak publicly and was payed for it. Oh, and she is type 1 diabetic and bipolar so even these medical conditions don't hold her back from enjoying her writing.

 

Overall, EGP has served us well. My goal was not so much for the kids to be experts in grammar but to be able to use their skills to successfully read and write their way through life and they are. Most importantly, is to be aware of the grammar skills that each of your children need and to treat each child as an individual. What may be adequate grammar studies for one child may not be quite enough for another.

 

And yes, of course there is much more grammar you can learn above EGP. Just keep your goals in mind. :D

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...I don't feel like it "stuck". They forget everything once the lesson was done.

 

I find that to be the case with all of the EG materials. I used EG 2/3 (the pink book) & later used Daily Grams blue book (3/4 or 4/5 -- can't remember which) with EK, but she didn't retain much at all. We started using R&S and there's a HUGE difference in her retention.

 

ER used ABeka worktexts (this was before I knew about R&S) for grades 4-8 & then did a refresher course with EG+ in 11th. It was definitely "grammar lite" -- just right for a refresher or review, but DEFINITELY not enough, IMO, on its own.

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