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Your Questions About Grammar Made Easy: Writing a Step Above Answered
by Connie Schenkelberg
We occasionally receive questions about GME, and we thought it may help others to share the questions and answers here. If you have a question that you'd like to ask Connie Schenkelberg, the author of the text, please feel free to e-mail her. If your question is chosen to be posted, we'll remove any identifying personal information, so that it can be useful to everyone. Thank you for writing-- I find it very helpful to read through the questions and answers, because I always learn something! -Janice Campbell
First, a note from Connie:
Thank you for taking a look at Grammar Made Easy. As you examine the book, you probably have some questions. I’d like to see if I can answer them.
Charlotte Mason friendly.
The lessons in Grammar Made Easy are consistent with the recommendations of Charlotte Mason. They take 10 minutes to teach. Then there is 10 minutes of independent work (homework). Done. By breaking down the material into bite-sized pieces, students don’t become overwhelmed and subsequently frustrated.
What is the suggested age for using this book?
I wrote Grammar Made Easy for 6th and 7th graders. I learned these principles in graduate school when I worked on my Master’s degree in English. I suggest its use for students in 6th through 12th grades and for adults who need to brush up on their writing skills.
How many lessons are in Grammar Made Easy?
There are 135 lessons in the book. I encourage parents to teach grammar 4 days each week and give students a break on the 5th. If you prefer Monday – Friday lessons, then the book can be covered by the end of the third nine weeks. It’s your call.
Special features.
Each chapter begins with a page that explains the device being taught. This is followed by a list of suggested assignments. Then there are two exercises to be done with your student to reinforce the teaching. The next page contains sample diagrams. The last section of most chapters is sentence combining. Ten of the 15 chapters have five exercises in which the student is asked to take 3-5 short, choppy sentences, remove the fluff, and combine what remains without using the word and. This process is the key to success with Grammar Made Easy, as has been shown by numerous studies over the years.
How much grammar instruction do students need?
High schools don’t teach grammar. Those teachers expect students to come to them with grammar having already been taught. I suggest using this book for one year in any grade from 6th through 12th. Then you’re done with grammar instruction.
Thank you again for considering Grammar Made Easy. If you have additional questions, my email address is as follows: cschenkelberg@comcast.net.
And now to reader questions:
Q- My husband and I are looking for a grammar course that we could do with our two boys (13 and 11) at the same time. I was looking into your material and noticed in the first lesson there was no definition of a subject, verb or noun. As the material gets harder, are there definitions for the other parts of speech? How long does it take to complete a lesson? Do you recommend any daily drills that could be used with your material to help the kids retain what they are learning? Or does the questions in each lesson act as a drill for the children?
A- Traditional grammar texts define the various parts of speech, then ask students to use those definitions to find all of the *whatevers* (nouns, verbs, etc.) in a sentence or paragraph. I don't find that particularly helpful. Instead, I teach grammar from the position of a word's function in the sentence. For example, the word "running' is normally a verb; however, it can also be a noun or an adjective, as shown in the sentences below:
- Running is my favorite sport. [Used here as a noun.]
- The running man was chased by a dog. [Used here as an adjective.]
So, as a student goes throughout the book, he will learn the function or job of the various parts of speech. By approaching grammar from this perspective, he will learn how to construct better sentences and how to express himself better. -- I was a public school teacher and used this system for nearly 20 years. During that time, I found that my 6th and 7th grade students wrote like 9th graders by the end of the year. This method also improved their reading and listening skills.
When introducing a new sentence type, the lessons are intended to be taught in about 10 minutes. Homework (or independent work) to reinforce the lesson also takes about 10 minutes. Then the next day, you go over the homework. Briefly reinforce what was taught the day before, and make the next homework assignment. [I don't know if you noticed, but each chapter has a homework guide to suggest assignments and time frames for each chapter.]
By teaching and reinforcing this way, you will help your sons retain the material. Another way to assist in retention is to expect your sons to use these tools in their writing assignments for other subjects, such as science and social studies.
Q- Is there somewhere online that I can see the table of contents for Grammar Made Easy?
A- We'll be posting a PDF version of the Grammar Made Easy table of contents here very shortly. Please check back!
Q- Thank you for such a quick response. This doesn't look as though it teaches punctuation, gerunds, or verb phrases. Is this correct?
A- Thank you for the questions about Grammar Made Easy (GME).The purpose of the book is to teach the structures of the English language. There are 15 structures, and they are taught from a linguistic point of view.
Linguistic grammar looks at the function of words in a sentence, rather than the form class (or part of speech). For example,
Running is not my favorite sport. -- Running is used as a noun (specifically, a gerund) in this sentence.
Tom was running this morning. -- Running is used as a verb in this sentence.
The running boy fled down the street. -- Running is used as an adjective (participle) in this sentence.
Traditional grammar, the kind many of us learned in school, looks at the part of speech. Period. Running is a verb. The fact that it can be used in different ways becomes confusing because we've already taught the students that it's a verb.
By using the linguistic approach, we encourage our students to explore more interesting approaches to language. GME shows students how to use the 15 structures to develop dense and varied sentences. This leads greater fluidity in writing, which is always a good thing.
Now, let's talk about verb phrases. GME teaches them but probably not the way you're expecting it to. Most grammar books have exercises in which students have to underline the subject once and the verb/verb phrase twice. GME doesn't do this. Instead, we teach most of the types of verb phrases: participles, participial phrases, and verbs with their auxiliaries. The first two are structures and have their own chapters. The latter is taught along the way as we parse (identify how each word functions in the sentence) and diagram sentences.
There are two types of verb phrases that I didn't cover: the gerund and the infinitive. The gerund is simply a verb that functions as a noun. The other verb phrase is the infinitive. Both of these structures are covered in the longer version of GME, the one with the extended keys. For this version of the text, I diagrammed every single exercise in the book, which added roughly 64 pages to its length. As we encountered, these two verb phrases, I briefly explained them and showed how they are diagrammed. This version will soon be available on the sale page.
As for punctuation, GME teaches commas as they are needed in the various structures. It does not teach the other types of punctuation. By middle school, most students don't need help with end marks (periods, questions marks, and exclamation points). They do need to work on quotation marks and possessives, but I don't cover them in the book.
Sample Lesson (PDF)
If you'd like to see a sample, I've posted the first lesson as PDF download-- CLICK HERE to get it. Take a look at it, and see for yourself how easy grammar can be!
How To Get It
To order an instantly downloadable e-book copy of Grammar Made Easy for only $21.95, CLICK HERE. You save $3.00 plus shipping costs - a total savings of over eight dollars, and you can be reading your copy in just minutes!
To have Grammar Made Easy shipped to you, CLICK BELOW: The p-book (print book) version of Grammar Made Easy: Writing a Step Above is presented in a lay-flat spiral binding, and is offered at $25 plus $4.95 Priority Mail shipping.
Now... is everybody happy;-)?
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