Does anyone know why ALL was shelved?

[Heather in VA]

I know that about a year ago (or maybe longer) there were samples and a production date for Advanced Language Lessons. Then it was shelved. Does anyone know why or if there is a plan to bring it back?

 

Thanks

Heather

[amsunshine]

It was because SWB decided to focus on WWS for now. She felt that there were other good grammar options out there for the moment, and she felt there was a greater need for a good middle to upper level writing program. It's possible she may go back to completing ALL after WWS is done, but that won't likely be anytime soon.

[wapiti]

here

 

Advanced Language Lessons, Level 1, has hit a serious technical snag. Those of you who’ve gotten the PDF of the first 15 weeks might notice that it is over 500 pages long. If you do the math, you’ll see that the final book is now slated to be...um...1400 pages.

 

That’s not really workable. We can’t sell it for the planned price, for one thing. And for another, your children will revolt and charge our office with pitchforks.

 

We haven’t done a grammar text of this length and complexity before, so we’re finding out the snags as we go. Unfortunately, this means that, for now, we’re going to have to cancel publication of the book. The only way to get the material back into reasonable limits is to 1) revamp the text so that it’s more concise, 2) redesign the typesetting, and 3) divide the book into a student and teacher text, like FLL3 and FLL4. None of this can be done quickly. We certainly can’t make these massive changes before the publication date. And we’re a small shop here; I’m worried that if I, personally, stop and work out these snags, I won’t hit my deadline for Writing With Skill 2.

 

In the grand scheme of things, there seems to be a lot more need for Writing With Skill than for another grammar text. We’ve been recommending Rod & Staff (minus the writing exercises), A Beka (ditto), Shurley English (skip the writing and add some diagramming), and Voyages in English (skip the composition elements) for years, and these are still perfectly good options. (The recommendations are found in the third edition of The Well-Trained Mind, on page 343; note that there’s a typo in the last paragraph--the fifth-grade text is called Following the Plan, not Progressing with Courage.)

 

If you’ve done the first six weeks of ALL, you can skip the initial noun, adjective, and verb units in these other grammar resources. If you want to continue on with the first fifteen weeks, you can then transfer over into one of the other books and also skip the sentence complement, preposition, and pronoun units.

 

I apologize for this, I really do. I should have realized much earlier in the process that the format of the book would be too unwieldy. (Live and learn, I guess.) But now that we’re in this position, it seems more important to me to continue on with the writing program, on a schedule that will make it possible for us to continue on with a book per year, than to stop and focus on fixing the current problem.

 

Because of this, I don’t plan to reschedule ALL for the near future. Once the writing series is complete we’ll take another look at the possibilities; and we’ll keep you posted, of course. But in the meantime, I think you can manage fine with the available resources. (Personally, I suffered through A Beka grammar--the old, unrevised version that had you diagramming those paragraph-long sentences from the King James Bible--and I survived. And got into college.)

 

Thanks for your understanding, and for your patience.

 

:blushing:

 

SWB

[Heather in VA]

Thanks so much for the info....

 

Heather

[mirabillis]

We used their 15 week sample and LOVED it. It was a nice transition from FLL4. We've floundered a bit looking for a new alternative, but it was a nice 1/2 semester continuation until we could find our alternative