12 yrs and up, $300.00, 14 week course (includes private tutorial time) – Prerequisite: a grasp of the basic parts of speech and their usage
[Parents: If helpful, you may request a placement quiz to determine if this course is a good fit for your child from Nicole Noster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). If they struggle with any of these concepts, we recommend taking Foundational Grammar first.]
This course is a bridge between Foundational Grammar and Intro to High School Writing, for students who are familiar with grammar basics but not quite ready for high school essays. It focuses on the more complex rules of grammar, covering clauses, phrases, and sentence structure and includes an introduction to the world of paragraph writing. Students will develop strong writing basics that will help them when they enter the high school stage of composition. This course does build upon the concepts of WISDOM's Foundational Grammar course, but it is not essential that Foundational Grammar is taken first if students already have a sufficient grasp of the basic parts of speech and their usage.
To ensure that each student understands the course as it progresses, student and tutor will have a private 15 minute tutorial once a week to review assignments together and clear up any questions the student might have. Each week there is a reading element, a new grammar concept, and a series of exercises and writing components to solidify understanding. A large part of absorbing and understanding grammatical concepts comes from seeing those concepts in action, through reading good literature, and then executing them in one's own writing.
Week 1: The 8 Parts of Speech (Part I) - Reading: "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen
- Nouns: Grammar Bytes - The Noun
- Pronouns: Grammarly - The Pronoun
- Adjectives: Grammar Bytes - The Adjective
Week 2: The 8 Parts of Speech (Part II) - Reading: "A Medieval Romance" by Mark Twain
- Verbs: Grammar Bytes - The Verb
- Adverbs: Grammar Bytes - The Adverb
Week 3: The 8 Parts of Speech (Part III) - Reading: "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Prepositions:
Grammar Bytes - The Preposition
Grammar Bytes - The Object of the Preposition
Grammar Bytes - The Prepositional Phrase - Conjunctions:
Grammar Bytes - The Coordinating Conjunction
Grammar Bytes: The Correlative Conjunction
Grammar Bytes: The Subordinating Conjunction - Interjections: Grammar Bytes - The Interjection
Week 4: Phrases and Clauses - Reading: "The Student" by Anton Checkhov
- Independent & Dependant Clauses: Grammar Bytes - The Main (Independent) Clause
Grammar Bytes - The Subordinate (Dependent) Clause - Phrases: Grammar Bytes - The Phrase
- Complete Sentences, Fragments, and Run-On Sentences: Grammar Bytes - The Fused (Run-On) Sentence
Grammar Bytes - The Appositive
Week 5: Verbs (Part I) - Reading: "The Third Ingredient" by O. Henry
Week 6: Verbs (Part II) - Reading: "The Invisible Man" by G. K. Chesterton
- Irregular Verbs: Grammar Bytes - Rules for Using Irregular Verbs
- Transitive Verbs: Grammar Bytes - The Transitive Verb
- Intransitive Verbs: Grammar Bytes - The Intransitive Verb
- Subjunctive Mood: Advanced English Grammar - The Subjunctive Mood
- Active vs. Passive Voice: Grammarly: Active vs. Passive Voice
Week 7: Review - Reading: "Jeeves Takes Charge" by P.G. Wodehouse
Week 8: The Sentence - No Reading (review)
- Two Parts of the Sentence: Grammar Bytes - The Complete Sentence
- Simple Subject, Simple Predicate: Grammar Bytes - The Subject
- Compound Subjects and Predicates: Grammar Bytes - The Compound Subject
- Reversed Subject and Predicate: What is a predicate?
- Split Predicate
Week 9: Objects - Reading: "Babette’s Feast" by Isak Dinesen, Ch. 1 - 5
- Direct Objects: Grammar Bytes - The Direct Object
- Indirect Objects: Grammar Bytes - The Indirect Object
- The Subject Complement: Grammar Bytes - The Subject Complement
- Predicate Nominative & Predicate Adjective
- Noun and Pronoun Case (Nominative, Objective, Possessive)
Week 10: The Paragraph AND Sentence Structure - Reading: "Babette’s Feast" , Ch. 6 - 12
- Simple, Compound, Complex Sentences, & Compound-Complex Sentence: The Four Types of Sentence Structure
- Parallel Structure: Grammar Bytes - Parallel Structure
- Conclusions: UNC - Conclusions
Week 11: Supporting Sentences: Facts, Examples, Definitions AND Punctuation (Part II) - Reading: "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
- The Comma: Comma Tip 1, Comma Tip 2, Comma Tip 3, Comma Tip 4, Comma Tip 5, Comma Tip 6, Comma Tip 7
- The Apostrophe: Grammar Bytes - The Apostrophe
Week 12: Supporting sentences: Arguments, Anecdotes, Analogies AND Punctuation (Part III) - Reading: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber
- The Hyphen & The Dash: Dashes & Hyphens
- The Semicolon: Grammar Bytes - The Semicolon
- The Colon: Grammarly - Colon
Week 13: Supporting sentences: Comparisons & Contrasts AND Subject-Verb Agreement - Reading: "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson
Week 14: Final Review - Reading: "The Pedestrian" by Ray Bradbury
