Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Actively teach grammar or acquire by osmosis?

Do you think very bright children should be actively taught grammar or are they capable of absorbing it by osmosis?

I am debating whether to provide some grammar resources that are semi fun or at least not deadly dull and encourage DS & DD (rising 4th graders) to polish their grammar skills. They are not bad and likely above average but decidedly lagging other abilities. I guess their grammatical errors bother me a bit.

I am of two minds as to the necessity. I missed all the grammar classes in middle school because GT classes replaced the English classes and for whatever reason the school did not think we need to get grammar instructions. As a result, I would not be able to teach gramar without some kind of resource because I actually don't know a lot of the terms. I don't really know the rules but mostly I write by feel/sound.

Any recommended resources, particular for upper elementary kids?

I very strongly believe in actively teaching it--I am jealous of how well my dd11 knows her grammar--and I just think that even the smartest kid needs to actually be taught. It will also make learning other languages easier in the future. Don't know about resources--my dd's Montessori school did a great job with it until we left in March when she was in 5th grade.

I also think it should be taught. Written communication is getting more and more casual and I worry that if our kids are not reading the right materials they'll have a poor template from which to pick up grammar...

Cricket3: I agree with your other hand... I actually think you're showing exactly WHY it's important to really teach grammer, not just to pay lip service. Grammar is deadly boring and often incomprehensible if you do it wrong, but quite powerful if you do it right.

Now, we might be going a little over the top... my english speaking 3 yr old knows what case is But we've been teaching it the way we teach socially appropriate behavior. If he says "I is going" I often, but not always, reply "you should say I AM going, becaue 'am' is the second person of 'to be'" So it's just the explaination part of the usual gentle correction for errors.

As an adult, I have taught myself grammar mainly by creating little useful creoles... adding latin endings to english words so that I can decline them and similar. Despite having a decidedly better than average understanding of grammar, I feel strongly that my lack of grammar skills limits me from accomplishing many of my goals. (Including looking like a competent human being on the internet!) I just don't have as much controle over the medium of language as I feel I need.

The big three things I feel my education as a child really dropped the ball on are, history, geography, and basic language/math skills like grammar and calculation)

Oh! and there's that bit about how the generation that are kids now are likely to spend considerably MORE time than their parents communicating in written form, and are likely to use a wider range of moods in their written communication, making it more necessary to clearly differentiate texting from thesis writing

My usual 203 cents, sorry. I tend to be opinionated.

Because writing is so very important in high school, college and beyond...I think giving your kids a solid foundation in grammar will only help them. Even the best spellcheck/grammar check cannot truly know how we mean a sentence to be. If we know the rules, our creativity will be a choice and not a deficit.

I don't have any good teaching resources. I always LOVED sentence graphing (especially once it became quite complex). It felt like a nice juicy logic puzzle. My DH, on the other hand, detested it.

I would actively teach grammar, and I highly recommend Michael Clay Thompson's language arts materials if you're looking for a fun yet meaty supplement.

I think direct instruction is faster and less likely to leave gaps. My kids use EPGY through Open Enrollment, so that Language Arts and Writing (LAW) are bundled with math, and they use both. In fact, when my 6yo declares that EPGY math has become too hard, he opts to do LAW while waiting for his brain to get bigger .

My rising 5th-grader scored in the 400s on the SAT reading and writing sections without any preparation, which is fine for now but leaves room for improvement. I will encourage him to read and practice on the grammar sections of SAT prep books. Searching "SAT Grammar" on Amazon brings up some books with good reviews.

I think that I made very few grammatical errors as a kid, but I still feel like direct grammar instruction would have been hugely beneficial. I agree that the bar must have been set pretty low even in the advanced LA classes at my school.

I got an 800 on my English achievement test and have worked as a professional editor. I couldn't diagram a sentence to save my life, and my knowledge of geeky technical grammar (as in, the actual technical terms) is relatively weak. I don't think bright, verbal children need a great deal of instruction in this, though some simple reminder rules (for instance, there are some easy cheats for remembering when to use "who" and "whom," and so on) are of use. Reading widely and, more importantly, being edited ruthlessly by someone who knows what they are doing will do a great deal more to improve writing skills.

Gifted kids who are very math-heavy may be a different matter. However, even in that case, I'm not convinced that treating grammar like math instruction or like a puzzle to be solved is terribly effective--I think it's more holistic.

My DD seems to be much like me and is picking up beautiful grammar and sentence construction by osmosis. In fact, she notices errors in books and points them out to me. Be still my heart!

I've had my kids this summer write brief paragraphs daily during the week. That has helped their grammar, spelling, and handwriting alot. I think if you just get them writing more and do some spot teaching on areas that need help, that is useful.
I speak German fluently, having studied it for 5 years and then studying at a German university for a year before graduate school. I did not understand the nuances of English grammar until I really studied a foreign language.

I totally agree with this. I also very, very firmly believe that direct, intense grammar instruction in the first language is hugely beneficial to learning other languages.

Maybe my dd is a grammar geek or maybe the way she was taught was just very cool, but she enjoyed grammar work and would choose it. I still feel really inadequate in this area.

Do you feel it causes problems in your day-to-day life? If so, how? Or is it more that you feel like you have an embarrassing knowledge gap? I did eventually learn a lot of grammar terms when I took French. I never knew the terms before and I've forgotten what many of them mean. For example, I can remember the phrase "the pluperfect" without remembering what specifically it refers to. I can see how this could bother some people. It doesn't bother me, and it doesn't seem to bother the professors who pay me to edit their journal articles.

I sometimes feel that people who are obsessive zealots about technical grammar terms, sentence diagramming, etc., need to relax a little and learn to rely more on their natural ear. (I am not intending to specifically refer to anyone here. I just think that good writing is more art than science. There are rules, certainly, but there is not a formula.)

That, in a nutshell, is exactly why it should be taught. Someone who doesn't learn the lingo can't teach it to someone else. If a teacher makes an editing mistake, the student can't articulate why they had it right. Etc.

Also, it's pretty easy to fall into bad habits, and knowing the rules makes them easy to correct. For example... sometimes I'm guilty of abusing ellipses... they look kinda cool... and they convey what I'm trying to say in the manner I'm attempting to say it... but once it gets out of control, I can look back and see where I'd be just as well served with commas and periods.

I think this thread is talking about two different things, but using the term "grammar" for both of them. When I use the term grammar, I'm talking about identifying parts of speech (noun, verb, etc), parts of a sentence (subject, predicate, direct object, etc), and clauses (dependent, independent) and all the concepts that build on these basic ones.

But I think, when we talk about learning grammar by osmosis, people are actually talking about usage (subject/verb agreement, etc) and mechanics (punctuation, capitalization, etc).

So, yes, I think that one could learn usage and mechanics to a great degree by osmosis, but I don't think that one is going to learn grammar itself by osmosis.

The Language Arts and Writing (LAW) component of EPGY for the elementary grades covers grammar, and my kids use it. EPGY also has grammar courses for junior high school students, descriptions copied below. Has anyone tried them?

http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/english/secd.html
EG20 Grammar and Style of the Sentence

This is a self-paced grammar course designed to help 7th to 12th grade students understand grammar and make stylistic choices informed by their knowledge of grammar. Topics include effective subject and verb choice, active and passive voice, clause coordination and subordination, sentence fragments, comma splices and run-together sentences, and phrasal modifiers (including verbal constructions or finite verbs). The course runs over the web. We strongly recommend that students enrolled in the W10 or W11 series also take EG20 concurrently.

Completion time: 1 quarter.

Please note: The EG20 course requires the Windows operating system and will not function with the Mac OS.

EG21 Grammar and Style of the Sentence II

The second of two self-paced grammar courses, EG21 is designed to help 7th to 12th grade students both further their understanding of grammar and make informed stylistic choices in their own writing. Topics include: verb moods, tense and irregularities; pronoun case, antecedents, appositives and usage; dangling modifiers, and selected punctuation topics. The course runs over the web. We strongly recommend that students complete EG20 before enrolling in EG21.

Completion time: 1 quarter.

I suppose I could identify dependent clauses and indirect objects if I had to, but I'm rather hazy on them at this point. I would probably do pretty poorly on a "grammar terminology" test, but I could pass a challenging editing test. Really, it doesn't come up very much, even when one is an editor. If I ever feel like I need back-up because someone is being didactic about this sort of thing, I just look it up. There are some terms I do use and refer to, because they actually come up; subject-verb agreement is one. It's just useful shorthand with authors. Dependent clause...not so much.

I may not be a very good example here, since this is an area of high ability for me. But it probably is for most of us here, and for many of our kids. My husband isn't as good of an editor or writer as I am, but he's very good. He doesn't know what a dependent clause is. I can guarantee it. It doesn't matter.

OTOH, Bostonian's course sounds okay. I'm certainly in favor of anything that improves writing skills! Learning to avoid run-on sentences sounds great. I have not the slightest idea what this means, though:

Quote

phrasal modifiers (including verbal constructions or finite verbs

That is complete meaningless blahspeak to me.

I wonder if this course has an actual teacher or is multiple-choice nonsense. Really--a good teacher who edits your work is what you need.

I laughed at this. My DS8 is a natural editor too. He's been pointing out errors for a few years now. I work as an editor -- I actually asked a coworker last week "whatever happened to the Oxford comma?" -- and so I always feel a great sense of pride when DS finds errors in writing! His own writing is another matter though... he doesn't seem to care much yet. I'm hopeful that DS's school will do a good job with grammar, otherwise I'll step in at some point.

The Oxford comma is alive and well--but not in journalism, generally speaking. AP style dictates no Oxford comma. Many authors have picked this up, probably unconsciously.

Count me as another individual whose GT pullout classes left me lacking formal grammar instruction. Yes, and... yes. About the ellipses... Of course, also the sentence fragment, I suppose. And parentheses. I love me a good parenthetical aside; and really, why restrict one's self to just one. So for me personally--sometimes? Not in my case! LOL!! In my defense, I certainly do not approach formal writing with such grammar and usage. No, only e-mails and message board posts, where some unconventional applications of mechanics and punctuation serve as a surrogate for body language and tone. It's about the communication, after all.

Approximately 90% of my usage is osmotically-derived, which drove my thesis advisor bananas, as he was very much a "by-the-book" grammatical despot. It made him nuts that I had no idea what he was talking about half the time ("Ablative-- HUH??"). On the other hand, he had no perspective on when "correct" ticked right on over into "incomprehensible and therefore futile, since while grammatically punctilious, this sentence is also obscene in both length and technicality, rendering it distasteful or even repellent to the average, (perhaps even the non-average), reader." In my estimation, this is a cardinal sin as a writer.

Seriously; the man's journal article titles ROUTINELY ran four lines on the masthead and contained semicolons. I like to think that he learned a thing or two about communication skills from yours truly. I was simply too stubborn to let grammar get in the way of communication. Most people simply liked my editorial suggestions better than his, ultimately. My thesis committee members complimented me on the "clearest" introduction ever from our research group (as in "thank you so much-- now I finally understand what y'all DO in there!")-- the first that the PI had ever apparently "dispaired" of editing to HIS (rather than the student's) satisfaction. I think he may have cracked a molar when he had to listen to that particular compliment. LOL. I was just far more concerned about clarity than making myself look 'well-educated.' That's something that I learned from a family member who was an author-- never forget that you are writing to be READ and UNDERSTOOD. That trumps everything else.


Yes again. The thing is, if an individual writer's usage is excellent, then is a lack of formal grammar training really a problem? I would suggest that it is probably not. This is another of those things like spelling, I'm guessing. Some people just know when they are using passive voice or leaving modifiers dangling, and all the rules-rules-rules just serve to confuse them. With all of that said, I'm very pleased that my daughter has had the opportunity to learn intermediate and even some advanced grammar, but I don't know that I'd call it "essential" necessarily, and she seems to be in the group that found all of those rules about it all fairly perplexing.

The point about learning a second language is an interesting one.

LOL. My take on semi-colons is that they're usually a pretentious decoration. Once you understand that their primary purpose in life is to connect two independent clauses, that leads you to one inevitable question: "What's wrong with a period?"


For me, it took learning a second language to see why it mattered at all. Lots of people have already mentioned how easy it is to play by ear, but you can't do that in a second language.

Also, this illustrates how educational outcomes can be skewed by family background. You can't successfully play it by ear if your ear has been tuned to the wrong key.

Yes! A thousand times yes.

I rarely toot my own horn, but I'm a really good editor. I have helped many people get published. My goal is to make sure my clients' writing makes sense and is clear and pleasant to read. Of course, I also make sure it follows the rules of their discipline.

I don't give a good goddamn about the ablative. (But I adore semicolons. They add so much musicality and subtlety. However, I admit that you can write perfectly well without them.)

I think that clarity IS good grammer. By definition.

Jus' sayin'.

-Mich

Loving this thread. I agree that much can be just absorbed by exposure, and that you can be a great writer without being able to explain grammar rules. I was so poorly served by my lack of a basis in English grammar, though, that it made learning a second lanuguage more difficult (Spanish), and even the third (German). I taught Spanish...but sometimes not very well because I was really bad at explaining grammar. I just know that I would have loved learning it the way dd did and I would have liked (would still like) to understand WHY something sounds right or wrong.

The semicolon is for when you've reached the end of you're sentence but you want to keep talking; it has to be another sentence and another but would have just looked silly there. I see no reason to overuse the semicolon; they're to be used sparingly. I think the semicolon may be my favorite punctuation mark but I do also love the txt emoticons and the £unn¥ 3Rit!ng where you try to use numbers and symbols for letters; it's hard to say which of the three i like better. I was driving and I saw freon r134a on an autozone sign and I spent a minute trying to read it before it dawned on me.

I can't never just not say nothing so I'll just quote dad, "It's a problem when I think that what I'm trying to say is more important than how it's being heard."

Wow - thanks for the great responses! This is definitely the forum when you want to get thought provoking responses to clarify your own thoughts.

I can see why it may be preferable to provide formal instruction. At the same time, I can also see why it is not completely necessary.

I am in the "I love semi-colons" camp although I would very seldom use it in the casual context of an internet discussion forum. To me, the use of semi-colons is often a question of precision and timing; sometimes you want a pause of a certain length.

The second language sub-thread is an interesting one. However, I msut say that it is entirely possible to "play it by ear" in a second language. I am bilingual and can personally attest to the possibility of being equally ignorant (as far as grammar) in two languages. However, I do recall being taught some grammar in various foreign language courses in junior high, high school and college, but I am not fluent in any of those languages. Since foreign language instructions in school were never particularly difficult, I can't quite imagine how much easier it would have been with prior grammar instruction in English.

Thanks for the references - I will check them out.

I totally agree with the bolded. I guess as long as you aren't trying to teach it to someone else, it really doesn't matter so much. I agree about foreign language instruction in school not being very difficult...it wasn't so much learning the language as really feeling fluent. I think for me perfectionism plays a big role here...I just want to sound like a native speaker, and that isn't going to happen no matter how well I might understand the grammar--but blaming it on my lack of instruction in English grammar seemed like a good excuse I guess!

I dearly love semicolons and colons; I also am a big fan of the Oxford comma, parenthetical statements, and quotation marks. (Ellipses, not so much.)
It's extremely gratifying when the child whose papers you've been editing lo these many years (and who, four years ago, couldn't spell his way out of a box with a compass and both hands) comes to you with a joke about punctuation. Even if he did lift it from Facebook, I appreciate that he understands the humor.

You may like the book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" (2004), a humorous best-seller (!) on grammar.

Quantum2003 hit the nail on the head for me with semicolons. I like to precisely engineer the meter of my writing. I started writing very conversationally and informally for a blog I created. I improperly employed hyphens, double-spacing, a line with only one word, and a mess of other traffic violations, all for the purpose of getting the reader to hear my snarkiness. (Mind you this was intended to be a blog for Internet friends about parenting/infertility).

To my surprise, this landed me some opportunities to write for
some well-known parent / baby magazines. When I turned in my first properly-punctuated piece, my editor asked me revert back to my informal 'blog-voice'...which is when I realized how much the Internet has influenced our consumption of written material.

Oh, no, I'm a descriptavist!!!!!!!!!!

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..........

!



-Mich

I am debating whether to provide some grammar resources that are semi fun or at least not deadly dull and encourage DS & DD (rising 4th graders) to polish their grammar skills. They are not bad and likely above average but decidedly lagging other abilities. I guess their grammatical errors bother me a bit.

One thing we all enjoy is the Grammar Girl podcast. My boys are 10 and 12 and it's a good fit. I find it interesting as well, and even though most of it isn't new, I enjoy it.

I'm also rather fond of "The Elephants of Style", by Bill Walsh.