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Can we talk about Analytical Grammar?


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I'm hoping to get some opinions on the following:

 

Is it is as thorough as other programs in its content? I'm thinking about Rod and Staff here, which is thorough but I think overly repetitive from year to year for my student.

 

If you have used it, did you finish it? And would you use it again? What grades did you use it in, and did you feel any further review was needed in later grades?

 

Any other suggestions? Is there a program where I could just skip up a couple of levels without skipping any basics? I don't feel like R&S is structured where I could just go up to level 8 and still get it all without missing a few things.

 

 

 

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I can't compare AG with R&S's later years because I only used R&S in elementary, but I found AG to be very thorough. It's split into three units which can be used in one year for an older child (8th grade or above) or over 3 years for all of middle school (which is how I used it with my now 15yo and will use it with dd starting next year). In the first year it covers all parts of speech and diagramming. The second unit covers different types of phrases (participal, gerund, infinitive, appositive) and different types of clauses (adjective, adverb, noun). The final unit uses that information to teach proper punctuation and then closes out with odds and ends like pronoun-antecedent agreement, subject-verb agreement, who/whom, etc. If you feel like your child needs review after they've finished the course, they do sell a high school supplement which offers review. I'm not having ds do it because the high school English course that he's doing includes grammar review. Hope that helps.

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  • 4 weeks later...

As suggested to me by a friend, we did Rod N Staff Eng but only the odd number years. Because of the repetition, we didn't have any trouble skipping the even years.

 

I also recently looked at AG and tried to compare it to R&S and Harvey's Elementary Grammar. Harvey's is the text suggested for use with Classical Writing. Our co-op will be using CW so we were debating on which grammar to use. I picked Harvey's in the end. Harvey's teaches parsing, gender, person, number, case, and declensions. And CW adds in the diagramming. I don't think either of the other two go that deep. Since we are also doing Lingva Latina, I thought it would be good to ensure we are getting the grammar down well. Also it is only about $70 for the text and the Harvey's workbooks that CW puts out for it. However that will cover about 4 years of grammar study. Add to that the grammar analysis done in the CW workbooks for those years and that is all the grammar that is needed in the upper grades.

 

I still like to do FLL for 1st and 2nd grade as it gives a great boost. After that we just use the grammar in CW Aesop (I have added in R&S Eng 3 here but not sure if I will again).

 

hth

ymmv

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I am planning to use this next year...I really like the idea of not having to spend the whole year working on grammar every. single. year.

 

 

Same here, I like the review because left to my own devices I would surely forget it but don't want to go over the eight parts of speech for 3 more years! Hopefully, our Latin study will also help in the grammar area.

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Dd used Analytical Grammar in 7th/8th grade. (We did the version where it was split out over two years.) Dd didn't always love doing it (& if she was getting the concept, I would shorten the lesson by having her do only the odd or even exercises each day), but it worked extremely well for her.

 

This year, she entered a highly-rated public high school & was in honors English. When getting some feedback on a research paper, her English teacher remarked that her vocabulary & grammar skills were outstanding. Dd has also always excelled at grammar-related questions on standardized tests. I think using Analytical Grammar definitely played a big part in her having such a strong skill base. I'm planning on doing the same thing w/ ds. (He did Jr. Analytical Grammar last year. This year, we focused on the Mechanics book w/ review/reference to his Jr. AG book when needed. Next year, his 7th grade, I'll start him in the regular Analytical Grammar book & do the two-year plan with him too.)

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