The Key to Mastery All children can master basic grammar if it is presented in an easy-to-grasp ord er, and if plenty

of practice is provided. Formal grammar is best taught in increments. Its not necessary, for example, to teach everything about nouns all at once. Term s like singular, plural, possessive, and collective can wait until the child can identify a noun. Likewise terms like tense, agreement, participle and transitiv e can be introduced after the child can pick out the verb in a sentence with con fidence. An understanding of grammar results from learning the parts of speech and the pa rts of the sentence. The Sequence for teaching the Parts of Speech There are eight traditional parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pron oun, conjunction, interjection, and preposition. The first terms to teach are noun and verb. First graders can easily learn the c oncept of naming words and doing words. Give children plenty of practice with nouns and verbs before going on to another part of speech. NOTE: As the children master the parts of speech, introduce them to the parts of the s entence. As they learn to identify nouns and verbs, they can learn to analyze sen tences into their two main parts: Subject and Predicate. analyze v. divide the sentence into its parts (The noun is analysis.) Once the child has mastered the concept of noun and verb, introduce the adjectiv e. This is the time to introduce the definite and indefinite articles. Nowadays the fashion is to call these words determiners, but teach the traditional terms. C hildren will need to know them when they come to the study of a foreign language . As the adjective is introduced, the child learns that the Subject of a sentence may contain words in addition to the noun. Now is the time to introduce the term s simple subject and complete subject. When the child understands the function of the adjective, introduce the adverb. By now the child is ready to be introduced to parsing. parse: v. identify each word in a sentence according to its part of speech ( The noun is parsing.) After the adverb, introduce the pronoun. Teach only the subject forms of the pers onal pronouns to begin with: I, you, she, he, it, we, you, and they. The object f orms can wait until you are ready to introduce prepositions. After the personal pronouns, introduce conjunctions. Tell the child that there a re many kinds of conjunction, but that youll begin with the most common: and and or. More information about conjunctions is not needed at this point. Only two parts of speech remain to be introduced: interjection and preposition.

The interjection is an easy concept to grasp. It takes very little explanation. The preposition is best presented last. In introducing the preposition, the teach er must introduce the concept of the phrase because prepositions function only a s part of a phrase. Now is the time to introduce the object forms of the persona l pronouns: me, you, him, her, it, us, you, and them. Many children have difficulty in grasping the function of the preposition. Lots o f examples and plenty of practice are needed to establish mastery. Until the student has mastered these concepts, it is counterproductive to introd uce more advanced information about the parts of speech and the parts of the sen tence. How to Analyze a Sentence Maeve Maddox Analysis is the process of identifying subjects, predicates, direct and indirect objects and the various types of clauses and phrases. The student is taught to analyze by beginning with very simple sentences. A comm on mistake in American pedagogy is to teach too much too soonespecially where gra mmar is concerned. Grammar needs to be taught in baby steps so that the student can absorb one concept before being introduced to the next one. Thought for the Day: Most elementary and secondary English textbooks contain TOO MUCH STUFF. Begin instruction in Sentence Analysis with simple two word sentences. For example, Birds fly. On a piece of notebook paper have the student write two headings separated by a neatly drawn line: SUBJECT | PREDICATE The line is to be drawn all the way down the page to leave space for plenty of e xamples. A straight line, mind. Use a ruler. Examples of first sentences to analyze: Birds fly. Dogs bark. Children laugh. Adults work. Cats pounce. You get the idea. Explain that the Subject is what youre talking about and that the Predicate is wh at is said about the Subject. With each example hammer it home with questions. Who flies? Birds. So what is birds? Subject! What do the birds do? Fly. Right! Thats the Predicate because its what is said abo ut the Subject. Do the same thing with each sentence, ring all the changes on the questions that you can think of, getting across the concept that Subject is what is being spok en of and Predicate is what is being said about the Subject. Once the learner has grasped the basic concept of Subject as topic and Predicate as what is said about the Subject, you can start adding words, but you continue to offer simple Subject/Predicate examples. Examples of second-stage sentences to analyze: The little birds sing. A strange dog barked. Two children sang. It is at this point that you teach the other part of the process: Parsing. Thats in the next post: How to Parse a Sentence How to Parse a Sentence Maeve Maddox Anyone who has a basic grasp of the eight parts of speech can easily catch on to

whatever more up to date terms are being used by a given teacher or textbook. With Parsing, as with Analyzing, baby steps are best. Begin by parsing the sente nces that the student has already analyzed. The student needs to know only two p arts of speech at this point: noun and verb. A noun is a naming word. We need nouns in order to speak about people and things: boy, hat, kite, school, computer, grandfather. The name for everything we can s ee is a noun. Some nouns refer to things we cant see, but which we can talk about : courage, honor, envy, idea. A verb is a word that enables us to talk about a noun. It may refer to an action : jump, play, work, bake, run. It may be a word like is that lets us say somethi ng about someone or something: Charlie is my brother. Alfred was King. NOTE: Keep it simple. You can introduce the terms being and feeling verbs later. At this point its enough to make it clear that although most verbs denote an action, not all verbs do. As with analysis the learner draws a form on notebook paper with headings separa ted by a line: Word | Kind The sentence to be parsed is written down the page, one word on each line: Birds fly