EPGY Writng? Seton English? (cross-post)

[Tiramisu]

I tried this on the K-8 board but didn't get any takers...

 

We need some outside accountability to motivate a reluctant, but good, 13 year-old writer to keep on task.

 

Is the EPGY writing course worth the money?

 

Can anyone comment on the Seton Reading and Grammar courses as far as writing goes?

 

Thank you!

[Faithr]

Well, I know a couple of families that swear by the Seton courses. I don't have any experience with them myself, but I will say that someone who's son got into UVA says it was Seton that taught her son to write so well.

[Begonia]

I am not familiar with the Seton courses. My 13yo dd completed two EPGY writing classes this school year and one last year. These courses are suberb, IMHO, for students who are serious about improving their writing skills. The emphasis of the EPGY writing series is on teaching the students to write clear, well-structured essays. Although it has been a sacrifice, I feel that it has been worth the money for us and we're signing her up again for next fall.

 

Possible negatives (other than the cost!): depending on the instructor, there can be a lot of careful writing, and rewriting, and critiquing (from the instructor and from the other students) involved. We've also found that some instructors are better suited to dd's temperament and learning style than others.

 

Perhaps the format itself-- a "live" class with an instructor and with other students from around the country (and around the world) would be sufficient to motivate your dd. I know that I wouldn't dare critique dd's writing assignments myself.:D

[Zoraida]

Seton is a rigorous college prep program. In the elementary reading courses, you are required to turn in 4 book analysis per year. If you have never used Seton before, these book analysis may be tough for your students since Seton wants you to follow a specific format. If the formats are not followed, the graders for Seton are extremely tough on grading these analysis. The elementary grammar course is also quite rigorous there is a lot of digramming assignments that needs to be done each week. In the 8th grade English course you begin more formal writing assignments than you do in the previous years. You do such types of papers as argumentive, persuasive, compare and contrast, and the research paper.If you are not Catholic, beware that their is a lot of Catholic contents in the grammar books.

 

As for the High School English courses - these are also quite rigorous since their high school program is considered college prep. My husband teaches English at our local University. He says that Seton's English is harder and demands more from its students than any of the English courses taught at his University. He says if a student spent all four years of high school doing Seton English than they would find college English courses a breeze to do.

 

You do not need to be enrolled full time with Seton to take advantage of their lesson plans and grading services. I have used them off and on throughout the years for their English and Religion courses and have been quite happy with them.

 

Blessings

 

Zoraida

[Sandra in FL]

which EPYG classes did your dd take? Do you mind giving a little background on what writing programs she did prior to taking the EPYG classes? Did your dd start in 7th grade? I guess, she's an advanced writer?

 

The EPGY intermediate writing level looks pretty intense - probably not suitable until 9th grade? It's hard to gauge the levels with the age levels listed. I guess that's why they're for gifted kids :-)

 

TIA,

Sandra

[Begonia]

which EPYG classes did your dd take?

 

Dd has completed EPGY's W10A, W10B, and W10C classes. In Sept she'll start the W11 series. Our current plan is to have her complete the W11 series over the course of the next two years. She likes to spread them out, and she's less likely to burn out that way. During her middle school years, we used these courses as the writing portion of her Language Arts curriculum. We used Lukeion Project's Greek and Roman Roots class for vocabulary and stumbled through AG for grammar. Next year (9th grade), we'll be using them as supplementary mini-courses taken in addition to Keystone's English 9 course. Dd is an athlete and, in order to easily qualify for NCAA eligibility, she'll be using Keystone courses in core subject areas, but that's another topic altogether! :tongue_smilie:

 

Do you mind giving a little background on what writing programs she did prior to taking the EPYG classes? Did your dd start in 7th grade? I guess, she's an advanced writer?

 

She attended a local private school until the summer when she turned 12yo. It was considered an elite, rigorous school, but I really don't think it was anywhere near as rigorous as many of the homeschools on this WTM board. :) I would not say that she was particulary "advanced" in expository writing. She loves to write fiction, but expository writing is quite another beast. She did start the EPGY classes with a fairly solid sense of sentence structure and a good grasp of vocab and spelling.

 

When she turned 12yo, we started homeschooling. Her first EPGY class W10A, taken that year, was my favourite. It focused on the traditional five paragraph essay. The kids were introduced to basic concepts that dd has used in all of her subsequent academic writing. That year she also completed two CTY writing classes, "The Process of Writing" and "Writing for an Audience." In comparing the two programs, dd found that she preferred the format of the EPGY classes, so we decided not to enroll her in any CTY classes for this school year. This year she finished W10B and W10C.

The EPGY intermediate writing level looks pretty intense - probably not suitable until 9th grade? It's hard to gauge the levels with the age levels listed. I guess that's why they're for gifted kids :-)

 

Most of the students in the W10 series were my dd's age (12-13). Many of them returned for all three sessions, so it was nice for dd to have friends in class. One girl was a year younger and seemed to struggle a little with the assignments. Several of the students in two of dd's classes were from S. Korea. Some of these foreign students were hesitant to participate by speaking into the microphone, so the U.S. kids tended to get more attention from the instructor during class time. In one of the sessions, one of the students was an adult from S.Korea who wanted to improve her English writing skills. The kids who are willing to speak up in class receive a lot more feedback in the form of group critiques.

 

One of the many reasons we chose to homeschool was that we felt the online offerings, such as EPGY and CTY were more challenging and ultimately better value for the money than private school.

 

HTH!

[Tiramisu]

My 12 yo dd sounds a lot like your dd was, a good fiction writer but with almost no experience in expository writing. It's helpful to know that she could go into her age level class and adust well.

 

What was the workload like in the classes? How much time did they have to put in each day? Was work reqired everyday?

 

Thanks again for all the helpful descriptions of the classes.

[Tiramisu]

Thank you for your comments about the Seton English program. It's good to hear that their writing instruction is so strong. My sense is I would like to try EPGY but if it doesn't work for dd or the financial burden overwhelming, then I will feel comfortable using Seton.

 

The one reservation I have about Seton is the diagramming. I would actually love to have dd diagram sentences, but I feel that she's had so much to learn with grammar this year (since she didn't learn any at public school through last year) that I've had to prioritize. Diagramming got left behind. She's learning to mark sentences in Latin so that makes up for the loss a little. I'm concerned that if she jumped into Seton midstream she would get bogged down in the diagramming. Who knows?

 

Kelli

[Tiramisu]

On the EPGY website, it states I have to submit standardized test scores for admission. However, when I contacted them to see if I could submit scores from a state test that wasn't on the approved list of tests, they said it was sufficient to send in a writing sample. That seems a little too easy. What did you have to submit for admission?

[Begonia]

What did you have to submit for admission?

 

As I recall, the admissions process for EPGY Writing was really straightforward. We sent dd's C.A.T. scores, along with a cover letter, and that was it. I followed up with a phone call, and she was in. For the EPGY Math classes, dd took the EPGY math test online. For her CTY acceptance, dd took a standardized test (I forget the name of it) in a testing center in McLean, Virginia.

[Begonia]

What was the workload like in the classes? How much time did they have to put in each day? Was work reqired everyday?

 

No, work is not required every day. In general, every week the students read one or two short lectures and reading assignments at home. The readings usually consist of short stories. In one of the classes, they read Arthur Miller's play The Crucible over the course of the term. Every week they also submit a written assignment via email to the instructor. The students must send the work in by the weekly due date, but how they schedule such work during the course of the week is up to them.

 

Early in the course, the written assignments tend to be short, paragraph-long responses to questions based on the text read for that week. Later in the course, the weekly written assignments become essay drafts and, later, more polished essays.

 

The written assignments for dd's classes were due early in the week. Every week dd made sure that her draft was finished by Friday. Over the weekend, she tweaked it and emailed it to her instructor on Monday morning.

 

I suspect that the amount of time spent on one of these courses partly depends on the level of perfectionism of the student. My dd never felt fully confident when submitting a "final" draft. But she did well, nonetheless, and has grown as a writer as a result of these classes.

[Sandra in FL]

Do you remember which instructors your dd had for each of the EPGY classes? I hope there is not much difference in quality between the instructors. The classes are soooo expensive. It seems that they now require students to finish all the classes in a sequence before going to the next level.

 

TIA,

Sandra

[Tiramisu]

I would also like to know the names of particularly good instructors. Realizing this is subjective, I should add that dd does best with when criticism is communicated very gently; she responds best to positive reinforcement. If you feel more comfortable, please PM me.

 

Thanks again for all of your comments.

 

Kelli

[love2read]

Seton's high school English courses are excellent. I'm not impressed with their lower level reading courses though. The high school English is very complete, your child will learn more than you can imagine and the discussion questions are outstanding. The feedback on the papers is very helpful, but varies depending on the grader. If you don't feel that you were given sufficient information to improve the paper, contact the person in charge of English and she will review it and may have the grader redo the essay. Every paper can be submitted twice, which amounts to about 8 papers a year that are graded. You aren't going to find excellent lesson plans, all the books, great discussion questions, tests and graded papers for $150 anywhere else. Single course prices might have gone up, but it's still worth it. I've had three teens go through Seton high school English so far and I would go back to the other programs we used before. We do Enlish 9, 10 and 11 and American Lit and World Lit.

[Tiramisu]

What impressive feedback about Seton's high school English courses! I am considering using Seton for high school because I think it would be a good fit for dd. their accreditation appeals to me, too. I've heard that you can substitute classes in many areas and, if that's true, it would be a big plus.

 

I've also toyed with the idea of using their elementary level reading classes because it seems they start laying the foundation for their high school writing with the book reports they require in the middle grades, but I can't get past the idea of using readers. I don't think my children would go for it either.

 

Thank you again for the detailed information.

 

Kelli

[Begonia]

Check your pm. :)

[Begonia]

Check your pm. ;)

[dtsmamtj]

Sorry, but what is EPGY? I am looking for online writing courses for our high school daughter.

 

Thank you.

 

T

[Begonia]

Sorry, but what is EPGY? I am looking for online writing courses for our high school daughter.

 

From the EPGY website:

 

The Education Program for Gifted Youth is an ongoing research project at Stanford University dedicated to developing computer-based multimedia courses in Mathematics, Physics, English, Computer Programming and other subjects, and making these available to students of high ability.

 

The link to the EPGY writing courses:

 

http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/english/

[Tiramisu]

I have another EPGY question... Do the students in the writing classes get enough literature for it to be considered a literature class? I wanted to do a junior great books class and am disappointed that we have a schedule conflict so I'm wondering how much literature I will need to add to our schedule next year if we do EPGY.

[Begonia]

I have another EPGY question... Do the students in the writing classes get enough literature for it to be considered a literature class? I wanted to do a junior great books class and am disappointed that we have a schedule conflict so I'm wondering how much literature I will need to add to our schedule next year if we do EPGY.

 

The EPGY courses are not intended to be surveys of literature. For two of the three classes my dd took, there was a small EPGY-provided reader consisting of several short stories and essays. For one of the courses, there was one principal text: a paperback copy of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible.

 

Here's what we did: we supplemented with lots of outside reading throughout the year (books such as Bless Me Ultima, The Catcher in the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea, etc. Good, meaty reads that dd fully enjoyed and that we discussed as a family without forcing her to write about any of them. We do not want to kill her love of reading and feel that too much literary analysis is likely to turn her off). She also completed two Mythology classes with the Lukeion Project, for which she read and analyzed works in translation by Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, and Virgil.

 

HTH.

[Tiramisu]

:) How long are the weekly virtual class meetings?

[Begonia]

:) How long are the weekly virtual class meetings?

 

They are one hour sessions. Occasionally they run over by a few minutes, depending on the instructor's schedule.

 

In addition, the students can text chat after the class. Dd really enjoys chatting with other students about music, video games, current events, etc. It's not directed chat, but sometimes the instructor does pipe in. Good fun, if you find the right mix of kids.