When do you stop teaching grammar?

[hsmom]

I know this might be a dumb question, but I see some teach it into high grades and others do not.

 

Now I know there is the grammar stage, logic, and such. So, does this effect when you stop? I saw a lady post on another board that her 8th grader was doing grammar.:001_huh: I thought that was strange, or is that just me?:confused:

 

So, when do you stop teaching grammar?

[Spock]

I know this might be a dumb question, but I see some teach it into high grades and others do not.

 

Now I know there is the grammar stage, logic, and such. So, does this effect when you stop? I saw a lady post on another board that her 8th grader was doing grammar.:001_huh: I thought that was strange, or is that just me?:confused:

 

So, when do you stop teaching grammar?

 

It depends on the child. My oldest is very English gifted. He did grammar through 6th grade, and not every year, nor all year. After that I just pointed out grammar points in his writing and speech as needed. My second is more math gifted, but had no trouble with English, so I did the same with him.

 

My third has mild dyslexia. I plan to have formal grammar with her through at least 8th grade, and possibly 9th or 10th. It will depend on how well she uses English in speech and writing.

 

My youngest will also do formal grammar through at least 8th grade, because he and his sister make grammar errors in speech and writing that their older brothers were not making at this level.

[Mom in High Heels]

Indy is only 7, but we will teach grammar the entire time we hs. One of my biggest gripes is that high school students don't seem to have any grasp of basic grammar. Have you listened to kids talk? Are they not taught word tense? I swear there are days when if I hear another person say "I seen" I'm going to go ten kinds of crazy on them.

I went to a private girls school and we did grammar all the way through 12th grade. When I got to college it was really helpful in writing essays with proper grammar. A lot of people don't see the value in being able to diagram a sentence, but really, if you do know how then you know how to fit the parts of a sentence together and it makes writing a whole lot easier. My parents both said when they were in school they had grammar all the way through along with literature. I don't know when the focus moved to just literature.

[Haiku]

One of my biggest gripes is that high school students don't seem to have any grasp of basic grammar. Have you listened to kids talk? Are they not taught word tense? I swear there are days when if I hear another person say "I seen" I'm going to go ten kinds of crazy on them.

 

 

Let me start by saying that my oldest (who is a sophomore in high school) picked up "I seen" at school and it drove me absolutely bonkers. In the end, she had to to write the sentence correctly 25 times every time she said "I seen," and it ended the problem fairly quickly.

 

That said, I don't think you can draw a direct correlation between the way kids speak and their grasp of grammar. I used to be an editor, and I can tell you plainly that my speech is often more casual than my writing. I end sentences with prepositions, I misuse the past tenses of lay and lie, etc. Writing and speech are different, and if someone talked the same way they wrote formally, it would sound very stilted.

 

I also think that how kids speak is more heavily influenced by their culture than it is by what they learn in school. Some kids will have grammar for 12 years and still speak in ways that others would consider to be grammatically incorrect because the vernacular they are raised with uses "bad grammar." Other kids will be raised in homes where six years of grammar is enough because the use of "proper" English is reinforced by their parents.

 

I started a thread about how long to teach grammar a while ago. My honest opinion is that if I haven't covered everything by 6th or 8th grade, then I haven't taught well, and I don't really see the point of continuing grammar in high school (except for periodic review of trouble spots).

 

Tara

[Ellie]

I don't believe that native speakers of English need to study grammar every.single.year for 12 years. I believe there should be a couple of good years of study, and after that, writing which is consistently evaluated and corrected for correct grammar usage.

[elegantlion]

I don't believe that native speakers of English need to study grammar every.single.year for 12 years. I believe there should be a couple of good years of study, and after that, writing which is consistently evaluated and corrected for correct grammar usage.

 

:iagree:We do Latin too. Because of that we do a complete grammar course every other year. The in between years are a light refresher. We've done that throughout elementary. Next year, 7th, will be a light year. We'll probably do a complete grammar in 8th and a refresher in 10th, or 9th and 11th, I haven't decided.

 

We have plenty of grammar handbooks and will use those for help with writing assignments.

[Guest Cheryl in SoCal]

Around 9th or 10th grade, and don't start until around 3rd grade.

[Sandy in Indy]

We do R&S English in grades 3-8 and consider our formal study of grammar completed.

[ekarl2]

Grammar, IMHO, is not something you DO, it's something you learn. You stop teaching it when it is learned and mastered. The hard part is finding a program that covers everything. Many programs barely discuss advanced grammar (phrases and clauses) much less master them.

 

Find a program that covers all of it and teaches the student to apply that knowledge of grammar to the rules of mechanics (that's the whole reason to learn grammar anyway) ... commas, agreements, who/whom, etc.

 

Once it's learned, just reinforce it periodically and hold the child accountable for that knowledge when he/she writes or speaks.

[Mom in High Heels]

Let me clarify, I don't think they should study grammar all year, every year (sorry if it came across that way), but I do think kids should have some sort of grammar every year, even if it's just a review. In my hs, about every 6 weeks or so, we did a unit of grammar. It was to reinforce what we'd learned earlier. Things like using a colon, comma, semi-colon properly; subject/verb agreement; using concrete language; proper modifier placement and usage, etc.

It may be true about the speaking and grammar, but I have many friends with kids in hs and I've proofread several of their paper. The grammar mistakes are horrible and these are not slacker kids (pretty good kids actually), they simply don't always know how to make subject and verb agree, how to properly use punctuation or keeping the narration in the same tense. This is why we will continue grammar in some form every year, even if it's just a quick review every few weeks.

[Crimson Wife]

SWB makes a case in WTM for grammar through 10th. I'm hoping to get through it prior to that.

[Momling]

I always thought about it like this...

 

Unless there is some pathological problem, every speaker of a language already has a complete grammar. Our brains already know how to make and connect words together and we don't need to 'learn' grammar.

 

But learning about language in general and learning about the conventions of written academic English particularly is something that is worthwhile long past 6th grade.

[Colleen in NS]

So, when do you stop teaching grammar?

 

I'm planning to go through to R&S grade 10, and any necessary review afterwards. I was going through my R&S 9/10 TMs the other day, and found something grammatical in there that isn't taught in the earlier grades, so it made me think there may be more of that. Since I didn't learn grammar systematically myself, I want to do this with my kids while we have the opportunity. I like the regular practice, and I find that we are learning to express ourselves better. And I happen to *like* trying to improve my speech! :D

[robsiew]

I just have youngins so I don't have a solid opinion, but I think we'll just follow WTM recommendations of through 10th grade with R&S. At that point SWB says they have all the grammar they really need.

[robsiew]

I always thought about it like this...

 

Unless there is some pathological problem, every speaker of a language already has a complete grammar. Our brains already know how to make and connect words together and we don't need to 'learn' grammar.

 

But learning about language in general and learning about the conventions of written academic English particularly is something that is worthwhile long past 6th grade.

 

Interesting thought.... I think I have to disagree though. We don't always speak properly. I notice when I write the way I speak, it's often improper grammar. Can I get my point across in writing... yes. Is it necessarily proper grammar... no.

[iammommy]

When I went to grammar/middle school, we did old school grammar every year, including sentence diagramming. I have never struggled with grammar, either in written or oral form. My son doesn't struggle with the mechanics, either. So what good will it do him to know the finer details of grammar? If a child speaks using proper grammar, and writes using proper grammar, why study it? Why is knowing something like the name of the tense important, as long as he speaks/writes properly? Just pondering, not saying we DON'T study grammar...we do. My ds does have trouble with writing, but it's not a grammar problem. It's more of an "organizing his thoughts" problem. I don't see that a detailed study of grammar will help this. Or am I missing something?

 

Nan

[Momling]

Interesting thought.... I think I have to disagree though. We don't always speak properly. I notice when I write the way I speak, it's often improper grammar. Can I get my point across in writing... yes. Is it necessarily proper grammar... no.

 

It's just a prescriptive grammarian vs a descriptive linguist kind of thing... But I wouldn't feel guilty or uneducated about your grammar! For an English speaker born in the year you were born who grew up in the area you grew up, I'd imagine you have perfectly proper grammar. Maybe it's not proper grammar for the standard English that we want our kids to be fluent in using -- that's why we try to teach our kids grammar, right? Think of it as a dialect issue.

[Ester Maria]

We studied Italian grammar every year - in some periods in was rather intense, in the other periods it was covering specific topics on a weekly or even biweekly average, but every year of studies had SOME amount of SOME formal study of the language and linguistics.

 

That way, when I graduated, not only I knew the Italian morphology and syntax very well, I also knew the principles of the Italian phonetics and phonology, a thing or two about the regional and the dialectal differences, about lexicology and semantics, as well as had an overview of the history of the Italian language. In high school we also covered some basic general linguistics, in addition to the Italian-specific topics. All of that amounted to a rather thorough theoretical and practical competence with regards to our native language - nobody expected us to become linguists, but we had to be fully literate in our native language.

 

We also had yearly grammar tests regarding classical and modern foreign languages, once the grammar was "done", with the sole purpose of making us repeat it all thoroughly at least in one session each year; and of course, higher-level topics related to the language (and some expanding on the things we knew) as opposed to literature and civilization were still a part of the studies, even if not a very frequent part.

 

What I aim to do with my children is approximately the same. They are going through an intense-grammar period right now, it will not always be that way, but some amount of the critical study of the languages they know will always be in the air - especially Italian and English (the latter one I intend to outsource rather soon as I believe a native speaker will have a better grasp of some of the nuances than I, and they study it as the "second first language").

[Colleen in NS]

So what good will it do him to know the finer details of grammar? If a child speaks using proper grammar, and writes using proper grammar, why study it? Why is knowing something like the name of the tense important, as long as he speaks/writes properly? Just pondering, not saying we DON'T study grammar...we do. My ds does have trouble with writing, but it's not a grammar problem. It's more of an "organizing his thoughts" problem. I don't see that a detailed study of grammar will help this. Or am I missing something?

 

Nan

 

The names of grammar concepts (tenses, parts of speech, parts of sentences, etc.) is very useful for discussing editing papers. It gives you a common language to use for this purpose. Knowing the finer details of grammar is useful, too, in writing.

 

I think it can also help with organizing thoughts in writing - if you are trying to communicate something, sometimes you get thoughts down on paper. But maybe then you realize your sentence is not as clear; it doesn't communicate exactly what you are trying to say. So then you analyze your sentence and realize, "Oh, it isn't clear because of this: (grammar concept). OK, now I know how to fix it/improve it." Diagraming is very useful for organizing thoughts to say exactly what you want to say. Let's see....I just learned about misplaced modifiers in sentences - WOW! Now I feel like I have another tool to use in expressing myself more clearly! Or maybe most people know this, and I had a really bad grammar education, but you can bet that I will be more aware of this in my writing from now on. So I keep going as far as I can, and teaching my kids these things while I can.

 

I think grammar study paired with good reading is conducive to more interesting, more complex writing as we go along. Which come from more complex thought processes.

[swimmermom3]

My teens (15 & 17) will spend the summer reviewing their grammar and mechanics. I will be working alongside of them. I have found that since I have done next to little or no writing over the last 14 years that my skills have deteriorated. It's hard to believe that I scored well on the AP English exam.

[kalanamak]

 

I also think that how kids speak is more heavily influenced by their culture than it is by what they learn in school. Some kids will have grammar for 12 years and still speak in ways that others would consider to be grammatically incorrect because the vernacular they are raised with uses "bad grammar."

 

And I know people who can flip in and out of good and bad grammar, like others can flip in and out of German. As long as they know how to speak properly when it comes down to it, fine. I have a hard time imagining a young adult applying for a significant job with a vocabulary of slang and casual grammar.

 

My husband uses bad grammar and pronunciation unless he is "thinking" about it. We have had numerous discussions on how our guy has only one chance to learn Standard English As a First Language. Hubby tries. We will study grammar until the parts of speech are down, and we will APPLY it regularly until kiddo is fluent in Standard English (I capitalize to stress). How long that will take, I do not know.

[Violet Crown]

I always thought about it like this...

 

Unless there is some pathological problem, every speaker of a language already has a complete grammar. Our brains already know how to make and connect words together and we don't need to 'learn' grammar.

 

But learning about language in general and learning about the conventions of written academic English particularly is something that is worthwhile long past 6th grade.

:iagree:

Dh has been studying grammar for 23 years since high school ended (1000-page dissertation on anaphora, i.e. pronouns) and is still going strong. Grammar is a common dinner-table subject.

 

That said, the traditional identifications of parts of speech and parts of a sentence we try to finish up by the end of elementary age. So everyone can join in over the soup.

[Crimson Wife]

I think it can also help with organizing thoughts in writing - if you are trying to communicate something, sometimes you get thoughts down on paper. But maybe then you realize your sentence is not as clear; it doesn't communicate exactly what you are trying to say. So then you analyze your sentence and realize, "Oh, it isn't clear because of this: (grammar concept). OK, now I know how to fix it/improve it." Diagraming is very useful for organizing thoughts to say exactly what you want to say. Let's see....I just learned about misplaced modifiers in sentences - WOW! Now I feel like I have another tool to use in expressing myself more clearly!

 

I graduated high school in '95 and my youngest brother graduated in '03. The "old school" English teachers who had taught me had retired by the time my brother went through school. I learned formal grammar including spending a whole term on sentence diagramming. Additionally, I studied 3 years of Latin. My brother experienced "whole language" English and did not take Latin. He is a big reader and is bright (scored >700 on the verbal portion of the SAT).

 

When he was a senior at a good college (not quite Ivy caliber but in the top 30), he asked me for feedback on his honors thesis. Granted, it was a rough draft so one would expect a certain number of errors. However, I was completely shocked by how much of a mess it was. Every single sentence contained at least one mistake or awkward wording. I couldn't even read it for content because I had such difficulty understanding what he was trying to say. Misplaced modifiers, errors in pronoun references, etc. I had to spend the better part of an evening giving him a crash course in sentence diagramming to explain to him why his sentences did not make sense.

 

I came away from the experience vowing that my kids would learn formal grammar including sentence diagramming.