http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255843I've been reading the homeschooling forum and, quote,
Copywork and dictation deal with the mechanics of spelling and punctuation in a whole-to-parts way and spelling books and grammar books deal with it in a parts-to-whole way. You need to do the narration and the dicatation in order to put the pieces together and apply them.
Unquote.
So they want your kid to correctly copy, by hand, beautiful sentences from literature. They think the hand will learn Grammer by habit. I took a poetic liscense there. They think the eyes and brain will get used to writing well constructed sentences by hand so that, through repetition, clumsy sentences look unnatural. This is supposed to work well if you copy many beautiful, complex sentences written by really good writers like the ones who wrote classic literature. The better the writer, the better the practice.
After you practice a sentence a day for a while they want you to dictate an equally great sentence from a classical author, slowly, several times, in segments if need be, until your child can hear the sentence the way it's written and repeat it with appropriate emphasis and pauses and then write it down.
IMO reading outloud a writer he wants to write as good as might connect the punctuation on the paper with the sound of his voice. Good writing uses audio cogs too, not just visual.
