Analytical Grammar-- do you like it?

[Lara in Colo]

Title says it all

 

Please give me reasons you do/don't like it

[Jean in Newcastle]

Yes.

 

It had much better sentences than Rod and Staff.

 

I like the system of parsing before diagramming.

 

I like that it takes excerpts from real books or about real people.

 

i like how it grows in complexity.

 

It really taught grammar.  

[Perogi]

Following. I plan to use it next year.

[dauphin]

I love it, theoretically. DD12 hated it, we couldn't get past the 4th unit without. tears (and not because it was too hard; if anything it was too much review for where we came from)

[Mom2OandE]

I love it for all of the reasons above. Dd 12 did not care for it at first but by unit 4 she was amazed at how well she was doing and her confidence bloomed. I can tell she is really learning.

[Lori D.]

Not a fit for us.

 

I was looking for a lite review for during high school to keep "fresh" with grammar, and thought it might work to spread it out and do 10 minutes a day 2-3x/week for DS in 9th grade. But it was worksheet overkill (each lesson had waaayyy.toooo.manyyyy.sentencessss). It also quickly became apparent that DS did not need the instruction and depth of the program, as he had learned grammar just fine in the previous years with other grammar programs.

 

The fault lay with us in trying to use AG in a way it was not designed. The program is a thorough grammar teaching program, and is not meant to be used as a "skim grammar review."

 

We switched to The Chortling Bard and did a paragraph a day 2-3x/week for the rest of high school, and that fit the bill for our high school grammar needs.

[Lara in Colo]

Alright here is my beef-- and I guess I am wrong-- but I think some of her methods are wrong-- I admit to not being a "super grammar" person but I do like rules.  I use MCT but I got a copy of AG and decided to use it because MCT (so far) hasn't been too keen on punctuation and I needed something to review before testing this year. 

 

Right away (I was using JAG) we had several issues with the  "and rule for commas" -- it was subjective at best-- "if it sounds good with an and between the words. use a comma"   the children and I spent more time arguing than working.  on the other hand, MCT had a sample sentence-- The soft, pink clouds..... and he stated that the comma after soft made the cloud soft-- take the comma out and soft is an adverb that describes pink.  This I get-- the and rule I do not.  I notice that other grammar people use this rule as well-- and MCT might later on-- but I was just interested to hear other people's opinion of AG-- and none of the reviews have an issue with the actual grammar teaching== so it must be me. 

 

Thank you for your responses

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

PS We did AG in middle school, not high school.  We did the AG puncturation review during high school just as a refresher at one point.  

[Mom22ns]

I used AG with dd who had used a couple of different grammar approaches before and just never clicked. AG worked beautifully. She understood, she remembered, and her grammar usage in writing improved. I liked all the things that Jean mentioned, but what I liked best was that dd really learned with it.