Analytical Grammar - Not Enough Practice?

[abrightmom]

After completing 2 Units I am disappointed in how little practice there is. We just finished Unit 2 on Pronouns and there was so little explanation or practice. It is inadequate for DS12 (who has a strong start in grammar). It is adequate for DS13 who is building on the foundation laid by Rod & Staff. If this was our FIRST and ONLY exposure to grammar we would be lost and unprepared. 

 

Did you find AG provided enough explanation and practice? Will it build on these first 2 units and get better/go deeper? 

[fourisenough]

It seems just right for us. I usually see it criticized for having too much repetition.

[ByGrace3]

I actually thought it bordered on too much...there are a lot of sentences every day...

[SilverMoon]

The cumulative nature made it plenty for mine. They'll be marking pronouns in the next lesson too.

 

You could do odds one day and evens the next if you need to more time for it to gel.

[abrightmom]

Okay. Deep breath. Keep going. Adjust expectations. Stay the course.

 

Thanks for the input. 🙂

[Homemama2]

Personally I agree with you. My son has been using it with an online class this year and they are doing the whole book in one year. He's been doing well because he's had plenty of practice from years of Rod and Staff. But I can't imagine learning diagramming like this for the first time unless you spread the book out more. Of course every child, is different

ETA: he's on unit 8

Edited October 13, 2016 by Homemama2

[Miss Tick]

After completing 2 Units I am disappointed in how little practice there is. We just finished Unit 2 on Pronouns and there was so little explanation or practice. It is inadequate for DS12 (who has a strong start in grammar). It is adequate for DS13 who is building on the foundation laid by Rod & Staff. If this was our FIRST and ONLY exposure to grammar we would be lost and unprepared. 

 

Did you find AG provided enough explanation and practice? Will it build on these first 2 units and get better/go deeper? 

 

We are just finishing unit 9. I don't think there is enough explanation to use this without prior grammar work (as it is advertised) and too much practice. 

 

It works well for us because we did all of FLL, Sentence Family, part of Grammarland and the beta version of ALL, so we have had low-grade grammar for the past 5 1/2 years. Everything we have seen in AG has been the same or minorly different from what we have done in the past. We didn't need to memorize prepositions or helping verbs because we knew those, we just needed to make note of the differences. It was okay that the explanations are light because they are just review for us. In some cases I have had to do some research to add to the AG explanations. For instance, in the pronoun section there are a lot more pronouns listed (no big deal, if it sounds like a pronoun and you aren't sure, check the list) and they are broken into groups without any explanation of what the groups are. My group, including myself, likes these kinds of things to be defined up front to be sure that they mean what we think they mean, so I added to that discussion.

 

I found there to be way to much practice of the "plug-n-chug" variety - here is a pattern, repeat 10 times. We happily select a few to work and skip the rest.  I like that we can do that, though, and if I start to think that someone is missing a concept (looking at dd and predicate adjectives) I can go back and pull out a few more examples.

 

Are you following the three-year plan? Because if so, then perhaps you could spend an extra week on a topic as needed. I agree with you that I can't recommend this to people as a first and only grammar program.