What was your grammar education like in school?

[Ellyndria]

I keep reading about how grammar isn't taught very much these days. Assuming you went to school, either public or private, will you describe the grammar education that you had?

 

I first remember doing grammar in 3rd grade English. We had a lot of English homework that involved copying sentences out of a textbook and circling or underlining various parts of speech. I remember it taking a while, but being a somewhat satisfying, yet easy, assignment. It seemed like we did a lot of grammar that year, but perhaps it was just because it was the first I heard of it, and learned a lot. I wish I knew what textbooks we used.

 

Then, I don't remember any grammar until 7th grade, (although I figure we must have had some) when we did lots of diagramming. I liked it because it was like a puzzle. I know that diagramming helped tremendously when I wrote papers in jr. high and high school, even though I forgot how to diagram after a few years. That was the only year we did diagramming.

 

My next memory comes from my 11th grade English teacher. She taught us to write, and about MLA. I remember her harping on various things such as parallel structure. She also cleared up the whole lie/lay thing for us.

 

I was going to say more, but I'm falling asleep and can't remember what I wanted to say. Anyway, it seemed enough at the time, but it's hard to imagine having less grammar than that. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot about it too, though I'm looking forward to refreshing my memory while teaching DS.

[happi duck]

We learned mostly punctuation/mechanics. :blushing:

[ForeverFamily]

I remember learning a little bit of grammar in PS for my K-6 years(nouns, verbs, etc.). Then I was homeschooled from 7th-10th grade. The grammar books we used for homeschooling were way beyond what I had ever learned in K-6 (eventually I ended up going back to a 4th grade level book to try and fill in the gaps). It was a very frusturating feeling to be so behind in a subject. I went back to PS for 11th and 12th grade. I remember being extremely bored in my "Preparing for College" English class when the teacher was going over with the students what pronouns and adverbs were.:001_huh: I think she must have given up on teaching the students basic grammar because it only lasted for a couple of classes and was never mentioned again.

[duckens]

Elementary:

spelling

capitalization

punctuation

noun/predicate

noun/verb agreement.....I run, he runs, etc

pluralizing

homonyms (rains/reins/reigns, know/no)

word types (nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles)

helping verbs/linking verbs

writing paragraghs,

what is the main idea?

outlining (4-5th grade)

writing a simple report (5 paragraphs)

note taking

 

Middle school:

all of the above, plus

diagramming

MEMORIZING all helping verbs and linking verbs; testing was to write them from memory in a finite amount of time

MEMORIZING long lists of over a hundred prepositions; testing was to write as many as I could remember from memory in a finite amount of time.

 

High School:

Strunk and White, not that I understood its importance at the time

Papers with 3+ sources beyond encyclopedia

Footnotes

How to write the references at the end of a paper

Finding resources and magazine articles in the olden days before computer searches...using big reference books at the public library.

[nitascool]

Probably not the norm her. I went to school mostly in the failing schools of CA. I remember three grammar lessons in elementary school. The first was what a noun is in 3rd grade. The second what a verb is also in 3rd. The last was diagramming a sentence in 6th grade with all parts of speech (which I had not yet learned). There were no grammar lessons in High School. I got my first real grammar lesson in my Freshman College Basic English course.

 

Here in Ohio the kids do not learn "grammar" in elementary ps. My nephew (an average student) is in 9th grader and is just now learning the parts of speech. But he does know how to put a condom on a banana. :glare: Oh and he went to "The Best" school in the district.

 

Dh went to the same school back in the 80s and did learn grammar in 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th and all 4 years of High school. But he was in honors classes.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

I think I had an introduction to the parts of speech in elementary school, but that's all I remember learning of grammar, until 7th grade, when I went to a Christian school that used Abeka. I learned loads of grammar in that one year. Then we went to different schools, and I never had grammar instruction again. Well, except for 11th grade, when the only decent English teacher I ever had (who was actually German), tried to teach the class grammar. I got 100% on the pretest, so he sent me to the library for independent research so I wouldn't be bored. I really wish I had appreciated and taken advantage of that time.

[Jean in Newcastle]

If you mean actual grammar and not composition, I didn't learn much. We had the same nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives over and over again. I didn't start to really learn grammar until I took Latin (an elective) in high school. Then I really really learned grammar when I took Greek in seminary.

[----]

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Edited September 14, 2014 by amana

[Joker]

I went to a private, Christian school that used Abeka for 4th - 7th grade and there was a ton of grammar instruction. I was fortunate that when I switched to ps I had a great 8th grade English teacher. I didn't learn anything new in high school.

 

My dd entered ps for middle school this year and their first lesson was on common/proper nouns. She said some didn't know the material. :glare:

[Sputterduck]

I had a wonderful grammar education! I've forgotten much of it over the last 5 years or so, but it'll all come back when it's time to teach my son. :)

 

We had grammar since K in Spanish class and I think we started English grammar in 1st.

We went very in depth in 6th, 7th, and 8th. Then I went to a public school for high school. The Freshman English teacher gave all of us pretests in grammar and my friend and I, from the same elementary and junior high, both got 98%. Every single other student flunked it. I kid you not.

[Crimson Wife]

We did a lot of mechanics in 3rd & 4th grades. 6th grade English class we spent an entire semester on grammar including diagramming. I also learned quite a bit in my high school French classes. The school's French teacher had originally been an English teacher but had gotten re-assigned at some point. So his class was basically "The French Road to English Grammar" mixed with French lit.

[chepyl]

I remember a lot of writing sentences and underlining, circling, labeling, and boxing words. I remember discussions of pronouns, adverbs, etc. And I know we took a test over propositions. We had to list as many as we could remember. That was all in 6th grade.

 

I remember 1 punctuation lesson in Elementary school. We spent all of sophomore year o. The 5 paragraph essay, but we did little for grammar. I went to a private college pre school staring in 5th grade.

 

I did learn how to write a research paper. They taught an amazing method for that, and we had plenty of practice! My grammar improved when I started my master's program.

[ElizaG]

I went to well-regarded public schools in Canada and can't remember being taught any grammar at all, other than a little bit in a high school writing class. I'm quite sure that we never diagrammed sentences. I'd never heard of such a thing until we started homeschooling. At the same time, my friends and I didn't seem to have trouble with grammar. We must have picked it up from reading a lot and being around people who spoke correct English.

 

Not everyone is so fortunate, according to this article from last year.

 

---

He [an English professor at Simon Fraser University] says this has been going on now for the 20 years he's taught college and university in B.C. and Ontario—only the mistakes have changed.

 

He too blames poor — or no — grammar instruction in lower schools.

“When I went to high school in the ‘70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."

(...) "We haven't taught grammar for 30-40 years...(and it) hasn't worked.”

---

 

So it seems that I'm not just having a lapse of memory; we really weren't taught any. :001_huh:

[SunD]

Basic parts of speech, as in nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.

 

Things like verb tense and more in-depth parts of speech, and I think a little bit of diagramming, were covered in the textbook. Unfortunately we didn't actually learn it in class.

 

I understand why the teachers chose to skip it when there were 25 students in my class and (I'd estimate) 15 of them couldn't spell, capitalize, punctuate, or write legibly. There were more important things to cover in English class.

[nd293]

We did a lot of poetry and literature in school English lessons. I remember doing oral presentations and learning to precis.

 

In terms of grammar, I know we did the basic parts of speech and punctuation. I honestly don't remember learning about phrases or clauses, nor about direct or indirect objects. We never did any diagramming that I recall.

[Soror]

I don't remember much from elementary school(which is not to say much- my memory isn't great) but I do remember one year of grammar from high school. I really, really hated it, perhaps because I didn't remember anything from previous. I do remember labelling certain words but not much that was specific. I did somehow manage As but I really don't know how!

[BridgeTea]

Zero grammar instruction. Zero outlining. Zero diagramming. Very little writing instruction, and it seemed to be based on word count more than anything. This was 1960s-1970s Michigan in a school district where the teachers smoked pot with the students at lunchtime.

 

In 11th grade my family moved to Colorado, and I was placed into a College Prep English class based on all the "Language Arts" credits I had (classes titled Poetry, Science Fiction, Novels, Short Stories, British Literature, etc. Hey, at least they were encouraging us to read and discuss!) Now I was reading Dante and Chaucer (in Middle English) in my new school and having the time of my life...Until the day the teacher was calling us to the board to diagram Chaucer...I didn't even know what I didn't know, and had no way to even fake it. I sat watching students placing words on all those little tree branches, hoping and praying I wouldn't get called up. Eventually I did, of course, and had to tell the teacher I had no idea what they were doing. For some reason the teacher took it as a personal affront that an idiot like me was even placed in her class, and declared on the spot that I would spend my lunch time the rest of the semester in her office studying. (Studying what, I have no idea. I was mortified and angry at how I was treated in front of the class that day, so I'm sure I shut down) We moved again (Dad's internship was finished) and I finished highschool in a different less-than-stellar district.

 

So, no grammar lessons until now. I am learning with my girl. (Thank you, SWB!)

[seraphina]

I have been impressed with the grammar education my children have learned in their various public schools. It seems very inline with what I was taught in California. Perhaps it's just our district but there really is a strong focus on proper sentence structure. I actually worry that I am not doing enough at home but my son tells me I am. Not sure if he is telling the truth or just doesn't want me drilling him.

 

One thing I have noticed that is lacking is a focus on vocabulary acquisition. I know they pick up words as they read but there is something to be said about writing definitions and using them in a sentence. But maybe that's just me. I am also one who using vocabulary flash cards to quiz my kids at the breakfast table.

[Matryoshka]

The only explicit English grammar instruction I remember was in 7th grade - but then we did just about only grammar that year (or was it a semester?) - at any rate, I don't remember doing anything but going through the grammar text that year. No sentence diagramming, though, I distinctly remember them purposefully skipping the diagramming chapter in the book.

 

Then nothing. :tongue_smilie:

 

I got most of my grammar learning foreign languages.

Edited September 27, 2011 by matroyshka

[Heather in Neverland]

I don't remember what was taught in elementary school. But in junior high my teachers drilled grammar HARD with loads of sentence diagramming. THis was in the mid-80s.

 

When I first started teaching in 1994 they had almost stopped teaching grammar completely (going for this weird "holistic" approach that didn't work).

 

Now we are swinging back towards grammar. At my school I brought in Voyages in English for grades 1-5 and Easy Grammar for grades 6-9.

[The Girls' Mom]

I don't remember much about it, with the exception of my 10th grade English teacher. She was bent on beating proper grammar into the heads of the backwards teens of the small TN town I grew up in. Pretty much everyone hated her, but I learned more from her than in any other English class.

[LMD]

none. I really don't remember one single grammar class. I learned about nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives this year with my 1st grader. Until I read the WWE strong fundamentals book I had never seen sentence diagramming. This is not unusual, most people I know from my generation (schooled through the 90's) are the same. I got by from being a prolific reader and learning when a sentence/paragraph 'sounds' wrong...

[Cinder]

I think I learned more grammar watching Schoolhouse Rock than I did in school. Didn't diagram a sentence until I started homeschooling--hadn't even heard of diagramming until then. I had a good "ear" for what sounded right (as far as sentence structure) but I couldn't have told you why it should be that way. I really learned a bunch more about grammar (mostly parts of speech) when I took Spanish in high school.

[flyingiguana]

Noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and conjunction. Subject and predicate. Mechanics of capitalization and punctuation. That was it.

 

But I think I was always in the "advanced" class who supposedly knew how to write beyond grade level, so maybe no one thought we needed grammar.

 

In any case, I learned the rest of the grammar I know from studying French in high school.

 

I learned how to write by reading. (Although I know that plenty of other kids in my school were getting instruction on how to write when the teachers put feedback on their papers. There just wasn't anything anyone could think to tell me.)

 

My husband learned to diagram sentences, but I don't see that it does anything for him. That may be the real reason, grammar was dropped in the schools.

[LizzyBee]

I don't remember a lot of specifics in elementary school. I know we learned parts of speech, mechanics, note-taking from sources for reports, and basic outlining. In 7th and 8th grades, English was mostly grammar, and it was very R&S'ish. In 9th grade, we learned essay-writing, and although we didn't study grammar, we did get graded on grammar. In 10th grade, college prep students took College Composition, where we learned how to write a term paper - minimum 10 pages plus bibliography and footnotes. In 11th and 12th grades, we wrote term papers across the curriculum. We even had to write one for Algebra II! I went to public school in a rural, economically disadvantaged area which happens to have some of the best schools in MD.

Edited September 27, 2011 by LizzyBee

[Pretty in Pink]

I received little grammar instruction in school and none (that I recall) past elementary school. We covered the basic parts of speech and punctuation.

 

I picked up a bit more grammar in high school Spanish class.

 

I have, by far, learned more about grammar through homeschooling than I did in school. I use Winston Grammar with my eldest. We each have our own workbook and we do the lessons together.

[dangermom]

We learned nouns, verbs, adjectives, subject/predicate and some punctuation. I didn't know what an adverb was until well after college. I learned about cases in college Russian classes.

[angela in ohio]

I attended a well-funded and community-supported small town school system. We had a very rigorous education for a school with a graduating class of 225 in the middle of farm country: Latin, every scholastic competition, a full set of Honros classes, etc. My dad drove thrity minutes to work each day to move us there from the "rust belt" type town - with lousy schools - we lived in when I was 5 yo. I'm sure if we had stayed, my experience would have been different.

 

We had phonics (which was "new" at the time :lol:.) I learned math in the way described in Liping Ma's book. We did science experiments at least weekly. The one failing was history, which was American every year except one semester in high school.

 

I remember grammar from most years. I had Mrs. Berg in junior high, who was old school We recited verb conjugations for our grade, memorized definitions for parts of speech, and diagrammed sentences until our fingers fell off. I hated it at the time, but now I love her, because I know English grammar, and it has helped me in many ways. :D I ended up with a perfect English ACT score twice - not missing a single questions - because of her. :001_smile: We wrote a large research paper in eighth grade (I did mine on Eleanor Roosevelt) to prepare for high school, where we wrote several each year. In Honors English classes, we read classics and wrote weekly, and we reviewed grammar and vocabulary constantly.

[Just Robyn]

Basic punctuation is all I had until college. I am sure I would have gotten through college without ever learning it if I hadn't gone into linguistics.

[Bootsie]

Elementary:

spelling

capitalization

punctuation

noun/predicate

noun/verb agreement.....I run, he runs, etc

pluralizing

homonyms (rains/reins/reigns, know/no)

word types (nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles)

helping verbs/linking verbs

writing paragraghs,

what is the main idea?

outlining (4-5th grade)

writing a simple report (5 paragraphs)

note taking

 

Middle school:

all of the above, plus

diagramming

MEMORIZING all helping verbs and linking verbs; testing was to write them from memory in a finite amount of time

MEMORIZING long lists of over a hundred prepositions; testing was to write as many as I could remember from memory in a finite amount of time.

 

High School:

Strunk and White, not that I understood its importance at the time

Papers with 3+ sources beyond encyclopedia

Footnotes

How to write the references at the end of a paper

Finding resources and magazine articles in the olden days before computer searches...using big reference books at the public library.

 

This sounds much like what I did in school, except we continued doing grammar in High School. We did a lot of diagramming in high school and from what I can remember there was a lot of focus on dependent and independent clauses. (I went to ps in Louisiana.)

[extendedforecast]

I remember learning grammar every year from about 2nd grade through 8 th grade. Diagramming sentences started in 5th grade, I believe, and by seventh I was better at it than my English teacher. :001_huh: I used to politely raise my hand and question his placement or identification of some word. We'd go back and forth a couple of times explaining our reasoning, then he would see it my way and change his work. Once he even asked me to present a lesson to the class. I now realize that he was probably trying to show kenthat it was harder to teach than it looked. Our grammar texts at that catholic school were very similar to the R&S texts, minus the bible verses.

 

In 9th grade the class got a crash course in grammar. This was a public high school, and I guess until then the other students hadn't had a formal grammar class. We learned MLA style in 10th grade. 11th and 12th grades we wrote lots of papers. I took honors or AP English through high school, so I'm not sure what the other classes were learning.

[Daisy]

Rigorous and sustained.

[littlebug42]

I went to public schools in both Ohio and Kentucky and I had grammar every year from 3rd grade on. I diagrammed a ton of sentences. My 7th grade year, I remember that Language Arts was two periods of the day, one of which was specifically grammar.

 

The writing education was delayed compared to what most do now but I think it was better. In high school, 9th grade was spent on how to write a good paragraph. 10th grade was an essay and 11th grade a research paper. Then, 12th grade was spent specifically on literary analysis. I was extremely well prepared for college.