When I learned that the public schools had no intention of teaching my children to diagram a sentence -- nor to teach them anything much about "parts of speech" either -- I took matters into my own hands and became responsible for this part of their education. Although they were a bit grumpy at the time, they have since learned that (1) one cannot talk about language without knowing the names of its parts and (2) one can more easuly acquire another language if one has a better sense of how one's own operates. And they both write wonderfully. I read so much that the grammatical rules were fairly instinctive for me and I gererally wrote (and read) more complex structures than my classmates. I enjoyed breaking the "rules" that we were being taught. Because I knew how to do it correctly I could use "because"at the beginning of a sentance, etc. ("How Nerds Rebel" the tragic story of . . .) I didn't miss the formal study of grammer until I tried to learn Spanish as an adult. When the instructor said that we were going to study the gerund I asked her what that was in English.
I need to find a 40 year old grade 8 grammer text and start over.
