But teaching English syntax isn't *supposed* to help with teaching German grammar :confused: - it's supposed to give you a better understanding of how *English* works. (Just as teaching German syntax wouldn't be much help with teaching English grammar - but would be rather useful in learning how *German* works.) You know, it's odd. In all the "can you teach English grammar through Latin" threads, the majority vote is "no", b/c people think it is important to study English-specific aspects of English grammar. But here people prefer the traditional route b/c they don't find English-specific grammar to be very worthwhile. Funny :tongue_smilie:.

:iagree: Although, I disagree a little that linguistics isn't accessible to an educated layperson. I freely admit that I'm only getting started, but I've had no problem with introductory texts, at least, and I've no reason to think that I'll hit insurmountable problems as I move on. Sure, it requires thinking - not quite bedtime reading :tongue_smilie: - but so does lots of things ;).

I agree with this. And I readily admit I'm only just delving into what linguists see as the foundation - it very well may be, at its core, effectively meaning-based for all I know. But in the introductions of my beginning linguistics texts, they seem to make a big deal about grammar *not* being about meaning (semantics, I think), but about structure (morphology, syntax, and such). I'm just starting to try to sort it all out - maybe in a few years I'll have scratched the surface a bit and have a (somewhat) more informed opinion :tongue_smilie:.

I'm just in the beginning of learning all this - where is seems so wonderful and fascinating, but you can't actually *do* much, yet :tongue_smilie:. But I do know that structural grammar does define things by their role in the sentence - that actually, in English at least, seems to be more of a primary definition than inflection - it's just that they want to define that role in such a way that, for example, you can use those definitions to explain the role of the nonsense words in Jabberwocky, which function as part of a perfectly grammatical sentence, despite being made-up. *Why* do you see it as a grammatical sentence? What markers, of the words and their placement, enable a native English speaker to naturally "get" the sentence, despite the nonsense words?

See, the more I study grammar and foreign languages, the more I realize just how shockingly similar all the different languages are (to me, anyway, it seems amazing that all languages basically want to communicate the same sorts of things and tend to do so in the same sorts of ways; maybe it shouldn't - we're all human, after all ;) - but it does; it seems to me that different languages should be *different*, not effectively variations on a theme; and yes, I'm very fascinated by transformational grammar :tongue_smilie:). So, since grammar seems to me to be so very similar at the core in all languages, I really like highlighting all the different ways different languages do things - that Latin does nouns like this, and English does nouns like this, and Greek does them like this, and discussing how that affects how people use the language and the different sorts of shades of meaning that one gets in the different languages. Otherwise, what's the point in studying multiple languages, if not to get a feel for the differences? I mean, I certainly want to make sure the fundamental similarities don't get lost in the field of surface details (and I've started studying linguistics in an effort to have a common way of talking about language), but the structural grammar emphasis on taking each language on its own merits, describing it in the way best suited to *that* language, really resonates with me. Anyway, random musings from another grammar geek, though a novice one :tongue_smilie:.

To me the real key to making learning English through Latin work is doing translations - lots and lots of them, working up to a very high level, with lots of attention to sentence structure and word choice, trying to get the *best* translation, not just a "correct" translation. Learning how to best convey the style and meaning of a Latin sentence in English would involve learning English grammar and rhetoric (at least if you wanted to learn to do so systematically ;)). But I think most people stop Latin way too early to get the full benefit.

I didn't see it as being accused of being dumbed down so much as being a completely different way of teaching grammar. And the "traditional method" of teaching grammar was being accused of being an inaccurate model in many respects, not that it "dumbed things down". It doesn't matter how well MCT teaches traditional grammar, if you don't like the traditional model in the first place, kwim?

I waver on this a lot (all theoretically, mind - see ages of my dc :tongue_smilie:). On the one hand, *all* the grammar I learned was in my Latin class, and certainly if you learn to translate at a high enough level, you will hit everything in English grammar (as ever, assuming a teacher who knows English grammar). But, otoh, English is not just Latin-lite, grammar-wise - and it seems that a lot of the people advocating learning English grammar through Latin only (and usually they emphasize *Latin*, not just any foreign language) have the traditional view of English grammar - that you can successfully describe English grammar using Latin categories. Thus the English grammar books that insist that English has six, and only six, verbs tenses, that just so happen to correspond to the six Latin verb tenses (even though this means that English has several options for some of the tenses), and the insistence making all classes of English words somehow fit into the classic eight parts of speech. Because for a long time people had the assumption that Latin grammar was the ideal, and they described other languages in terms of Latin grammar, no matter how much shoehorning was required. But in the 20th century people started studying languages on their own terms, which was a welcome development imho - and I want to teach English grammar as *English*, not as "English in terms of Latin". English is its own language, and doesn't really bear much resemblance to Latin, structurally speaking. And while that doesn't mean that you couldn't teach English grammar through Latin anyway, part of me feels that English deserves its own formal grammar focus, that it doesn't deserve being slighted just because its our native language :tongue_smilie:. And that it would be useful and nice to grammatically analyze examples of English literature, not just English translations of Latin literature. (Which you could do as part of composition, of course. But for some reason I'm more drawn to doing WWE-style composition work in all our languages as a major component of learning them, thus having our subjects as English, Latin, and Greek (and math), instead of Latin, Greek, and composition. I waver a lot, there, on the best method of organizing. Ok, that got a bit far afield :tongue_smilie:.)

To me it depends on your grammar goals and whether you've reached them by high school. I'm planning on following SWB's progression, which has you finishing up the "learning to diagram sentences"/technical-grammar-analysis part of grammar study by high school. But you don't stop there - in high school you extend it by learning about all the rhetorical effects of all those different ways to write a sentence that you learned in the logic years. So you still "study grammar", and you still diagram sentences, but as part of a larger study of rhetoric, instead of as an end in itself.

Fascinating :). I've a college freshman English grammar text that teaches structural grammar that I really like that isn't too difficult - I've been planning on simplifying it and teaching it to my dc, though that's just in the planning stages :tongue_smilie:. Anyway, it's Understanding English Grammar, by Martha Kolln & Robert Funk. There are a zillion editions; I've the sixth, b/c it was the cheapest recent one I found on Amazon ;) (the current edition prices are outrageous).

I'm not an expert, but I've really liked what I've seen of structural grammar, have Latin/English/Greek books based on structural grammar, so I'll take a stab at it: The big thing with structural grammar, afaik, is that you have definitions of parts of speech and sentence structure and such that only depend on the form of the word, not the meaning. This depends a lot of times on the sort of prefixes/suffixes that are characteristic of a particular word class, plus their characteristic place in a sentence. So my book has nouns defined not as a person/place/thing/idea, but as one of the four form classes (others are verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), whose members can fill the headword slot in the noun phrase; most nouns can be inflected for plural and possessive (boy, boys, boy's, boys'); nouns have characteristic derivational endings, such as -tion (action, compensation), -ment (contentment), and -ness (happiness); nouns can also function as adjectivals and adverbials (The *neighbor* children went *home*). That actually sounds a lot more complex than it really is :tongue_smilie:. But the idea is that you should be able to analyze a sentence based just on its form - that you don't have to understand the meanings of each of the individual words to analyze it grammatically. Also, there's a strong descriptive influence, in that you are figuring out how a particular dialect works, which is perfectly grammatical in its own system by definition, without getting into whether a given dialect is "better" than others.

My understanding is that Familia Romana covers all the grammar, and Roma Aeterna gives more practice plus a bridge to classical authors. However, you can start some of the easier authors after FR. Finishing FR is equivalent to finishing Wheelock's or CLC or another full grammar program.

Interesting. I agree strongly that programming a computer to do your calculation is a wonderful test of understanding. My honors calc prof has us do just that for our end-of-semester project, and I've toyed with including that in our hs. And I think playing and experimenting with computer models to build intuitive understanding would be a great living math addition. But I've two issues with wholesale adopting this approach to the *exclusion* of more "traditional" approaches. One is whether there is something about the physical process of calculating and problem-solving by hand that is a critical component in developing understanding - something that a jump straight to computers and a strictly visual or mental approach would miss (like how mastering drafting by hand seems to be a necessary step to being able to visualize what you want to draw/make, and people who learned drafting largely/exclusively by computer are, on the whole, not as good at drafting as people who learned it by hand). I don't know the answer to this - but it wouldn't surprise me if there was something to it, and I'd definitely watch out for it. Maybe kids can go from learning to do something with physical manipulatives to mental arithmetic to programming a computer to do that calculation without an intermediate step (and skipping the physical experiences, whether formal or informal, for a computer-only approach would be a *huge* mistake imo) - but I wouldn't *assume* that without proof. I'd definitely at least teach hand calculation in *some* topics in order to make a comparison, and I'd be pretty alert to the possibility of issues. My second issue is more a matter of philosophy. Even if you can successfully use a tool with no understanding of *how* it works, only that it does, I'm not sure I consider it a good thing. Using his example wrt driving, it's true that, while I don't understand a thing about how cars work, I am able to successfully drive - *if* everything is working (which I can only judge by whether it runs or not, completely missing any other signs of potential problems) and *if* conditions are within my realm of experience. But as soon as things aren't magically perfect, I'm screwed. I've no idea why I do the things I do - only because someone I trust told me so - and I've no ability to even start trying to solve any problem, let along the perception needed to notice little problems before they are big problems. I never used to care, but now I see my lack of understanding as a real detriment. His point was that it is better for large swathes of people to be able to *use* a tool than it is for moderate amounts of people to *understand* a tool without everyone else completely in the dark. And maybe that is true, in that there are going to be people who will never be able to understand something, no matter what, so at least they can *use* it - and that's better than nothing. But you still lose something by only being able to use a tool without understanding how it does what it does - and his approach seems to limit understanding to a very small number of people, far less than would have understood under the old approach. And it is at odds with his programming angle - where he is advocating kids effectively build their own tools, and is something I completely support. Certainly we have to specialize at some point, and almost everyone uses tools they could never build all the time. But some things are fundamental and *need* to be understood, imo. I'm not sure where to draw the line - but needing a nice ready-made model to be able to calculate what life insurance policy is the best under certain conditions, instead of being given a computer and and making one's own model, is definitely crossing it.

WRT testing, would her having plenty of traces of gluten, but not eating "normally" be likely to tell us anything, as the other thread seemed to indicate that traces weren't enough to trip the blood test. And I *really* don't want to give her stuff that I might then have to take away, kwim? I am inclined to do gf right for 90 days, and see if her gas/constipation issues improve (or if other stuff I never realized was a problem improves), and give her something gluten-y at the end and see what happens. That seem like it might give the most definitive results in terms of what we should be doing (as we really don't have a lot of money for doctor visits and tests, especially with new baby coming).

This is interesting, as the white flour in my diet *did* cause her problems, and they improved when I cut it out. So whatever that was, not a gluten thing, then. Hmmm. Though her doc did ask whether *I* was gf, since we were nursing - really doesn't matter? And I do know that gf has to be 100% gf to count, so the fact she seems mostly ok as-is either means she *isn't* ok, or it's not a gluten thing. Which is what I wanted testing to confirm - I thought it was better than it apparently is.

True that - mostly just gf enough that she wasn't having any obvious issues. You think the blood test *is* worth doing, even imperfect as it is? The impression I'm getting is that a false positive is unlikely, but false negatives abound, yes? Which would mean that if she was positive, I could be pretty certain about it? Probably need to bite the bullet and go for it. Gah, and that means *I'll* have to go strict gf, as she is still nursing. Fun, fun, as I'm pg and having enough problems getting enough food, but whatever, I'll manage. The only real symptoms she has are gas and constipation, both of which are always present to one degree or another (which probably points to what I've always kinda known, that we just have her issues "under control" in the sense of mostly not causing big problems, but they are probably lurking all the time :glare:). And the bolded part is the main reason I've not just chucked the whole thing entirely and seen what happened. It would *not* be pretty is I had to take things away again.

Her doc knows we are gf with her and offered testing, which we had declined at the time, though she said that dd2 certainly doesn't have any growth issues. She does have circles under her eyes, as does her sister, but I'm pretty sure that is environmental, not food-related. She has chronic constipation, but the diarrhea she had as a 12mo to certain foods has disappeared. I'd agree that she either is or isn't, but - and maybe you can dispute this - I'd read that 20% or so of celiac sufferers have no obvious physical symptoms. That they *are* suffering intestinal damage, but that there's no obvious symptoms thereof. And *that's* what I'm worried about, why I just don't go with letting her eat the stuff that doesn't seem to cause problems, and keep her off the stuff that does, and call it a day - why I wanted to get her tested in the first place, 'till I was reading that the tests aren't all that definitive :glare:. Maybe I should just go with strict gf for 90 days and see what happens - if her constipation and gas improves, stays the same, or what - if, as you say, that really is the best measure of a gluten intolerance.

Yeah, but when you do that, you're effectively getting into algebra, which is really just generalized arithmetic. And, then you've all sorts of places to go :thumbup:. But it's not the same as sticking with arithmetic as it's generally conceived of in America, either.

Oh, I know she'd be nutritionally fine. But, and maybe this is just whining, it's just that a strict gf diet is *hard* in American society, and it's doubly hard to maintain it with a little kid who just doesn't understand that she can't have what everyone else has. And since she *can*, apparently, eat some gluten with no obvious ill effects (when she's sneaked ww bread), I'm having a hard time with the motivation for avoiding *all* gluten, not just the gluten that causes her problems. I used to think it didn't matter, cause the treatment was the same - gf diet. But there's a *huge* difference b/w *mostly* gf and *completely* gf - and her physical symptoms just *do not* support her needing a completely gf diet. But since people are always talking about the hidden damage, I didn't want to assume that if she *seemed* fine, she *was* fine. And I thought that the celiac blood test would give me that answer - whether gluten would cause her damage even if she seemed fine. But apparently there *is* no foolproof way to find out if gluten will do her harm :glare:, even an invasive-sounding GI test. So now what? Does she have to be completely gf for the rest of her life on nothing more than a paranoid suspicion of her mother's, that is *not* backed up by observable physical symptoms :glare:? I need something more than that!!!

So dd2 has been sensitive to gluten/wheat? from birth (along with other stuff) - caused horrible, horrible gas, green poops, etc. At the time I didn't see it as a gluten sensitivity so much as white flour/sugar (along with tomatoes, chocolate, peanut butter, garlic, and a few others I forget), so I just cut out everything but ww. As this *also* has the side effect of reducing how much gluten I eat.... Anyway, once I cut out all the above stuff at 4.5mo, she finally had yellow poop again and her gas was better. And then at 6mo her gas improved again (probably b/c of something about the stomach lining doind something at that age :tongue_smilie:). But we when started solids, she reacted badly to Cheerios, rice chex, corn chex, and oatmeal (explosive diarrhea, though now at two she can eat rice chex) and *really* badly to anything with wheat (painful gas). So we wondered about celiac and cut out gluten. But we aren't *perfect* - I know she ends up with trace amounts, which doesn't seem to do much other than *maybe* contribute to extra gas and constipation (a chronic issue with her :glare:). Plus she sneaks some at times (gets into the ww bread, which doesn't *seem* to bother her at all :confused:). And she certainly hasn't had any growth issues or anything. But my mom has gluten sensitivity, though she only avoids ww (which causes obvious, immediate issues). So we thought we'd test, so we'd know how careful we had to be, and if we could go by her observable physical symptoms in giving her stuff with gluten or if we had to avoid it, period. (B/c this is kind of a huge deal to do if we don't *have* to, kwim?) But in reading the other thread, it sounds like testing is a *huge* deal, and isn't even all that accurate in the first place :confused:. So now what? I don't want to hurt dd, but at the same time I don't want her to have to give up all this stuff for nothing, kwim? So far she's been ok so long as we have a gf substitute for everything we are eating at home. But outside the house is an issue - when she was littler we just let her pig out on what gf junk they had that she liked (chips and fries, mostly). But now that she isn't nursing nearly as much, she *needs* to eat more balanced at each meal and it's going to be a *big deal* - again, I just want to *know* that it's necessary, kwim? But apparently that's not an option :glare:. Really?:confused:

Looking at CW, I'd say the type of analysis you're looking for starts fully at Diogenes; Aesop/Homer are more looking at mechanics, and learning multiple ways to express something at the word/sentence/paragraph/whole-thing levels (including outlining to get a feel for types of organization and develop beginning lit analysis skills) - the beginning/foundational levels of what you are looking for. I know that CW has an Older Beginners program that takes 7th+ through Aesop and Homer in 22 weeks. Classical Composition *might* do something similar, in that it is a progym program, too, but I don't know all that much about it.

My understanding is that Classical Writing does this, especially at the upper levels. Also, I *think* that SWB's high school writing lecture goes in this direction (based on her essay about writing instruction in WWE). Most books on rhetoric should go this route as well - that's what rhetoric *is*, after all ;).

:iagree: My mom did that for me one year when I was in college (Hershey Kisses) - I loved it!

We've been trying to sell for over a year - we moved out of state for a *much* better job for dh. The only serious offer fell through b/c the buyer couldn't get a loan. Probably should see about renting it - right now we are just paying on two houses :glare: (but we *can*, so that's a plus :)). Very discouraging, esp since we are totally underwater, looking for a short sale, and watching the appraised value drop like a rock (taxes aren't too bad, though - always a silver lining ;)). It's worth less now, all nice and fixed up, than it was when the owner prior to us bought it as a serious fixer-upper :glare:. Mostly I just don't think about it, actually - it's just too depressing.

Maybe I read too much older writing, then ;). At any rate, an intuitive sense of grammar only took me so far on the the multiple choice writing section on the PSAT (I was part of the first group to go through it) - killed my chances of making National Merit Semifinalist :glare: (one lousy point! Still bugs me a bit :tongue_smilie:). I'd thought I'd be fine, since I had a good sense of what sounds right - but I was wrong. A lot of the questions were very tricky when all you had to go on was "does it sound right?" - I would have done much better if I'd had some actual conscious grammar knowledge to fall back on.