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This is a great thread. DS5 has pretty sharp language skills, but mostly because of imitation of, and corrections by, us. I want him to have technical knowledge of languages he speaks and writes, just as much as facility. I suspect that a lot of U.S. schoolchildren these days may get more rigorous instruction on syntax and grammar in foreign-language classes than in English, although I guess with immersion-style teaching that may not be true.

I am volunteering at DD public school, so we can work in the library or do reading for children from non English speaking homes. The training was fantastic. It was interesting the things this lady brought up about the lack of grammatical knowledge of children. She says you have to teach your kids (and we were talking K-5 grades) what a noun is, etc. She told us to ask the child we were reading with, what is the noun in the sentence, what is the adjective. She said kids don't know.

It was also interesting that kids today lack a lot of common vocabulary. She told us to ask them the title of the book, and they don't know title, only the "name of the book",

In the striving for creative, problem solving, we lost the basics.

Ren

Learning english is not a typical... if u have good books and excellent way of learning.. you can improve your english through the conversation with each other...

All of my grammar instruction came from foreign language classes. I was born and educated in the US and cannot remember a single grammar lesson. We did learn to edit essays and correct our mistakes in 8th grade. I thought it was fascinating that there was a whole shorthand language for "make a new paragraph here." But before that? Nothing.

I believe I could have made it all through college and through my teacher credentialing program without learning the difference between a direct and indirect object if I hadn't studied Russian.