GWTM overkill?

[lgliser]

Maybe other grammar curriculums are like this too, I don't know, but we're on lesson 52 and I'm finding myself wondering if this is just overkill. I loved FLL in 1st-4th grade, and they did well with it.

I really enjoy grammar and languages but if you can use pronouns correctly while speaking and writing, do you need to know that they are subject/object/personal, possessive, indefinite, etc? And looking ahead it seems like there are other things that also seem like overkill. I'm not trying to be flippant; I'd really love to know if this is important knowledge. Particularly for any future test like SAT, ACT... and just going to high school, which my kids might do.

Can someone talk to me about this? I'd love to hear opinions.

Edited March 4, 2019 by lgliser

[blondeviolin]

How old is your student? It is overkill for a 5th grader if you’re using it right out of FLL 4.  I’d wait until middle school to use it. 

Also, is your student doing or going to do a foreign language? Because those tenses and moods, subject and object and relative pronouns, etc. all get used in the study of language. 

[lgliser]

8 minutes ago, blondeviolin said:

How old is your student? It is overkill for a 5th grader if you’re using it right out of FLL 4.  I’d wait until middle school to use it. 

Also, is your student doing or going to do a foreign language? Because those tenses and moods, subject and object and relative pronouns, etc. all get used in the study of language. 

My kids are 6th graders. We took a year off of formal grammar in 5th grade, but we were doing Latin, which I think helped with grammar on its own! We also did an Evan Moore workbook that year, which was pretty simple.

They are doing Getting Started with Spanish this year.

Edited March 4, 2019 by lgliser

[Shelly in VA]

I haven't used GWTM, but I have homeschooled three kids through high school and college admissions at this point. (Well, technically my third doesn't graduate until June, but she's done with all the ACT/SAT type testing and she's making a college choice this spring). I do think that a strong knowledge of grammar has a significant impact on reading and writing as well as foreign language learning. Also, the mental discipline of analyzing the structure of language generally helps with critical thinking across the board.

We used Rod and Staff grammar up until the point that the PSAT/ACT/SAT were done. I don't know how that program compares to GWTM, but I do know that there was quite a bit of repetition over the years, so much so that grammar was not always met with the most cheerful of attitudes. 😏  But all of my kids did well on their testing, and my two oldest kids (one has graduated from college and the other will graduate this May) were very happy to have that strong grammar background in college.

[cintinative]

Wait until you get to the lesson on the hortative case (mood). Now that was something I had never seen before. 

To answer your question, yes, you absolutely need to know that. Certain pronouns are only used as objects.  Many times people use the wrong pronouns in writing. Also your kids will need to understand this for foreign language. 

At some point you will learn about passive versus active and it has really helped us when trying to eliminate passive voice from our writing. 

I like this curriculum but it is by no means a light version of grammar. We just restarted with the red book and are enjoying the easy lessons at the beginning.  This is exhaustive grammar. In some cases it has helped us with Latin and vice versa. 

[Violet Crown]

3 hours ago, lgliser said:

Maybe other grammar curriculums are like this too, I don't know, but we're on lesson 52 and I'm finding myself wondering if this is just overkill. I loved FLL in 1st-4th grade, and they did well with it.

I really enjoy grammar and languages but if you can use pronouns correctly while speaking and writing, do you need to know that they are subject/object/personal, possessive, indefinite, etc? And looking ahead it seems like there are other things that also seem like overkill. I'm not trying to be flippant; I'd really love to know if this is important knowledge. Particularly for any future test like SAT, ACT... and just going to high school, which my kids might do.

Can someone talk to me about this? I'd love to hear opinions.

My opinion is your opinion. We've never found a separate grammar program to be necessary. We use a Latin program that teaches English grammar as it goes, and have found that to be easily sufficient. It is useful to be able to refer to parts of the language (e.g. subordinating conjunction; personal pronoun; compound predicate) just because it's useful to know the names of anything you might want to talk about. And if you're not going to teach how English operates in the course of studying a foreign language, you should probably teach it separately. But that doesn't seem to me like a thing that has to be done every single year. Middle Girl is taking an introductory linguistics course and learned in a short time anything she missed when learning grammar via Latin.

[lgliser]

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

To answer your question, yes, you absolutely need to know that. Certain pronouns are only used as objects.  Many times people use the wrong pronouns in writing. Also your kids will need to understand this for foreign language. 

But doesn't it come naturally? Are you talking about things like, "Him is going to the store." If you speak English, you just wouldn't say that.

 

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

I like this curriculum but it is by no means a light version of grammar. We just restarted with the red book and are enjoying the easy lessons at the beginning.  This is exhaustive grammar. In some cases it has helped us with Latin and vice versa. 

Definitely not light! I guess I wish I was more confident in knowing maybe which things we could sort of gloss over and which things we need to really make sure we understand well. Like hortative. *shudder* lol

 

[RootAnn]

My eldest is a senior in high school this year, so I am not an expert. I would say that while knowledge of grammar is important, grammar overkill is not.

Eldest is a foreign language nut. She's taken some Latin (just through the first book of Henle with plenty of Memoria Press stuff before that) and several years (5 at high school level) of Spanish. She's in her second year of German and her first year of Russian. If she had her way, she'd add a couple more on top of that. There just isn't enough time in the day.

So, saying that, grammar is important when you are learning a foreign language. She certainly didn't study to the level of GWTM. She disliked Latin, but credits her study of Latin grammar to understanding German grammar without a lot of trouble. Russian has been a challenge, but not impossible.

Is it absolutely necessary to know grammar to the extent GWTM teaches it? I don't think so. Will my other kids know grammar as well as DD#1 does? Probably not. Because I think the best way to understand English grammar is to study a foreign language's grammar and then think how it applies (or not) to English. And my other kids, so far, are not the foreign language junkies that eldest is. But, everyone has to learn Latin up to a certain point in my house - and part of that is so that they grok English grammar a bit better.

YMMV.

[lgliser]

9 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

She disliked Latin, but credits her study of Latin grammar to understanding German grammar without a lot of trouble.

As much as we all enjoyed FLL, I think our 5th grade year where we were more Latin-heavy was the year we learned more grammar. Or perhaps that's just what helped it click.

[Targhee]

5 hours ago, cintinative said:

Wait until you get to the lesson on the hortative case (mood). Now that was something I had never seen before. 

😦

what?

[cintinative]

4 minutes ago, Targhee said:

😦

what?

Believe me, I felt the same way! I couldn't find anything online about it except with respect to translating other languages to English. I finally gave up and used the key to get us through the exercise. 

 

[2_girls_mommy]

20 hours ago, lgliser said:

But doesn't it come naturally? Are you talking about things like, "Him is going to the store." If you speak English, you just wouldn't say that.

 

 

I wish I  lived where you live where this is true. You obviously do not come from here.  "Him and I went to the store." is more commonly heard than He and I ever and I mean by teachers and educated people as well. 🙂 It is funny because you are right. They would never say, "Him went to the store." But they would also never say "He and I went to the store."  

So in my neck of the woods. I say, yes, it is necessary to understand which is an object and which is a subject pronoun. 

[theelfqueen]

If you have access to the Great Courses - the Grammar Bootcamp series is a great resource for you (less for the student). She talks a lot about usage issues and how they are justified and when they are/aren't open to change.... it's a really great resource, less about teaching the nuts and bolts of grammar but about thinking it through. 

[lgliser]

5 hours ago, 2_girls_mommy said:

I wish I  lived where you live where this is true. You obviously do not come from here.  "Him and I went to the store." is more commonly heard than He and I ever and I mean by teachers and educated people as well. 🙂 It is funny because you are right. They would never say, "Him went to the store." But they would also never say "He and I went to the store."  

So in my neck of the woods. I say, yes, it is necessary to understand which is an object and which is a subject pronoun. 

You know, when I typed that out I did kind of think of that! I know there are places not too far from me where people do talk like that. I do hear it from time to time, but it's definitely the exception! 

[2_girls_mommy]

13 minutes ago, lgliser said:

You know, when I typed that out I did kind of think of that! I know there are places not too far from me where people do talk like that. I do hear it from time to time, but it's definitely the exception! 

It is an uphill battle here with my daughters, as I am the only constant person in their lives that uses pronouns correctly. One of my sisters was a Spanish teacher, so her grammar is very good as she focused on grammar learning another language. But she isn't in their lives daily. The rest of my family (including a lot of successful teachers!) all use them incorrectly. My husband and his family are terrible with all grammar. And I love them anyway.  Convincing my offspring that this is important is not easy.

Family thinks I am being picky. It is a tricky thing to not insult others and to not appear snobbish. My father's mother was an old one room schoolhouse teacher from the days when grammar was really emphasized. She made him speak correctly. He made us learn properly too. But he was never popular with my family for that reason, and I am thought to be too much like him if I push it too much. So this is a real thing. 

13 minutes ago, lgliser said:

 

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by 2_girls_mommy