Writing and/or grammar help

[Jess4879]

Oldest is in grade 8 and some things I've been noticing in her writing:

- she lacks transitions.  Her sentences are often short and choppy sounding.

- often messes up proper tense (using present and then past tense in the same sentence, for example)

- she struggles ( a lot) to *hear* her writing.  If something is worded incorrectly she doesn't understand why.  She just says it sounds fine to her.  

We have dabbled, very little, with diagramming (two years of BJU English in elementary).  I am debating about picking it back up and wondering if it would be a helpful tool for her to "see" her errors more clearly?  I am also wondering if something like IEW would be beneficial for her.  And if so, where to start and what to buy?  I admit, I'm not a fan of it, so please sway me!  Tell me why you love it!!  In the past we've used BJU English, Writing Skills (several levels), some Bravewriter elements, and probably other things I can't recall right now...

[MerryAtHope]

Essentials in Writing (by Matthew Stephens) includes practice for changing up sentence structure and learning how to write different types of sentences.

I find the proper tense issue is something that you really have to coach and work on over time. I would teach your daughter about having everything in the same tense, and then have her do a separate editing pass on JUST that issue. Then you'll still likely have to help her identify other areas where the tense varies. 

I also find that correcting both incorrect and just plain awkward grammar/syntax is something that takes a lot of coaching. Something like Fix It Grammar might be helpful though. Sometimes it helped when I read my kids' writing aloud to them though. I would also ask questions (often to show how something could be easily misconstrued by unclear and awkward phrasing)--asking questions to help them see and hear when something is awkward can sometimes work better than just saying "this is awkward" all the time. 

Really point out when a sentence or phrase is well-done though--sometimes a student can learn as much or more from understanding what they are doing well. They're also more likely to listen if they feel encouraged and mostly successful--don't try to "fix" everything that's wrong with any one particular paper. Work on things gradually over time.

[Ellie]

3 hours ago, Jess4879 said:

Oldest is in grade 8 and some things I've been noticing in her writing:

- she lacks transitions.  Her sentences are often short and choppy sounding.

- often messes up proper tense (using present and then past tense in the same sentence, for example)

- she struggles ( a lot) to *hear* her writing.  If something is worded incorrectly she doesn't understand why.  She just says it sounds fine to her.  

We have dabbled, very little, with diagramming (two years of BJU English in elementary).  I am debating about picking it back up and wondering if it would be a helpful tool for her to "see" her errors more clearly?  I am also wondering if something like IEW would be beneficial for her.  And if so, where to start and what to buy?  I admit, I'm not a fan of it, so please sway me!  Tell me why you love it!!  In the past we've used BJU English, Writing Skills (several levels), some Bravewriter elements, and probably other things I can't recall right now...

It couldn't hurt to do some formal grammar. My preference is Easy Grammar. And I recommend doing three pages daily (with *you* making corrections after each page). You don't want to take an eternity to study only eight parts of speech, you know? :-)

Easy Writing, by the same author, provides practice in writing sentences with different sentence structure, so that the children get used to writing something other than subject-verb sentences. It is not a complete writing course; it's just a useful add-on.

Writing Strands, probably level 4, for her writing in general. It's simple but effective.