Grammar knowledge is the foundation to good writing and speaking. Poor grammar can lead to confusion.
Poor grammar skills are not well received by employers and college professors. It is important to have proper grammar to get your point across properly in a speech, essay, or simple email.
This is why Gideon takes a direct approach to grammar to teach concepts using a separate curriculum from the reading comprehension and vocabulary. While we have always had a grammar program, we have recently updated our Level One to include better explanation pages at the front of the booklets AND videos explaining the concepts covered.
The video form of these explanations can be easily accessed through the QR code on the cover or by using the given link shown there as well. All the Grammar One videos are in a playlist on our youtube channel.
After reading through the concepts, the students then practice these throughout the booklet to gain mastery. Practice makes perfect!
As with all Gideon booklets (except math drill), all pages are graded by an instructor and corrected by the student. If the student made too many mistakes, the booklet will be repeated at some point in the future. The instructor can always offer more help if needed, but be sure to use these resources if the student needs extra help at home.
Many times the only thing the student needs to do is to reread the instructions and go a bit slower.
What are you biggest questions with grammar? Leave a comment below!
In this article from TIME, an English teacher describes her negativity towards being required to have her students memorize word roots only to discover how beneficial it was. And that they didn’t hate it! Fancy that!
In an account of her experience in English Journal, she wrote, “asking students to do rote memorization was the antithesis of what I believed in most.” Still, her department head insisted on it, so Kail went forward with the attitude, “I’ll do it, but I won’t like it.” She was sure her students wouldn’t like it, either.
Suzanne Kail’s experience is instructive. As soon as she began teaching her students the Greek and Latin origins of many English terms — that the root sta means “put in place or stand,” for example, and that cess means “to move or withdraw” — they eagerly began identifying familiar words that incorporated the roots, like “statue” and “recess.”
Kail’s students started using these terms in their writing, and many of them told her that their study of word roots helped them answer questions on the SAT and on Ohio’s state graduation exam. (Research confirms that instruction in word roots allows students to learn new vocabulary and figure out the meaning of words in context more easily.) For her part, Kail reports that she no longer sees rote memorization as “inherently evil.” Although committing the word roots to memory was a necessary first step, she notes, “the key was taking that old-school method and encouraging students to use their knowledge to practice higher-level thinking skills.”
Why memorization has gotten such a bad rap, I’ll never know as we all hear about how Michael Jordan got to legendary status doing thousands of free throws (muscle memorization). Your brain is no different. Want to get better? Practice, practice, practice. You don’t need to analyze the logic behind why 5 x 6 = 30 each and every time. After learning the concept initially, you need to just know it. 30. No finger counting. 30.
The articles continues with how memorization of math facts is crucial to higher math.
That’s also true of another old-fashioned method: drilling math facts, like the multiplication table. Although many progressive educators decry what they call “drill and kill” (kill students’ love of learning, that is), rapid mental retrieval of basic facts is a prerequisite for doing more complex, and more interesting, kinds of math. The only way to achieve this “automaticity,” so far as anyone has been able to determine, is to practice. And practice. Indeed, many experts who have observed the wide gap between the math scores of American and Chinese students on international tests attribute the Asian students’ advantage to their schools‘ relentless focus on memorizing math facts. Failure to do so can effectively close off the higher realms of mathematics: A study published in the journal Math Cognitionfound that most errors made by students working on complex math problems were due to a lack of automaticity in basic math facts.
If you want to see an example all the skills needed to solve complex fractions and algebra equations, click HERE to download Gideon’s: Why Master Lower Levels.
Textspeak has become popular among young and old alike. The speed at which you can respond with simple shortcuts like PLMK (please let me know) mimics a quick conversation. In case you aren’t up on all the acronymns, here’s a reference to help you decipher tricky ones. However, unlike an older generation who used full spelling and proper grammar for years before texting, the young are using this language in formal writing as well.
Middle school students who frequently use “tech-speak”—omitting letters to shorten words and using homophone symbols, such as @ for “at” or 2nite for “tonight”—performed worse on a test of basic grammar, according to a new study in New Media & Society.
While you might think that this is just a fun, quick way to send a message, the problem is that the new language isn’t turned off when proper grammar is needed.
“People get creative in terms of trying to express a lot. The economy of expression forces us to take shortcuts with our expression. We know people are texting in a hurry, they are on mobile devices, and so they are making these compromises,” Mr. Sundar said. “It’s not surprising that grammar is taking a back seat in that context. What is worrisome is it somehow seems to transfer over to their offline grammar skills. They are not code-switching offline.”
Some companies are starting to give grammar tests since this doesn’t seem to be a basic skill anymore, and good grammar in writing gives credibility as it shows attention to details. See HERE. With more and more personal and professional writing being posted on the internet for the world to see (and judge!), you would think people would be more concerned, not less! JMO (Just My Opinion) What do you think about textspeak? Acceptable or terrible? Let us know in the comments!
If you would like more information on the Gideon Grammar Program, click HERE.
