Grammar and Usage Workshop starts with the basics and includes frequent review of previous concepts. After learning the basics, students are assigned editing exercises where they look for and correct grammar and usage errors. By the end of the program, students are finding and correcting 40 types of grammar and usage errors. This not only helps students improve their writing but also helps them on the ACT and SAT. 

Another aspect of this program that makes it unusual and more effective than many other grammar courses is that I guide students (by video) through grading and correcting their own exercises; this helps them understand any mistakes they have made. If enrolled in the instructor-paced or self-paced course, these graded exercises are turned in; this helps hold students accountable for completing them. (Parents may opt out of submission of the exercises if they are sure that their student is completing and correcting them.) Then, after every few lessons (in the instructor-paced course and self-paced course) students complete a quiz that is graded by me. Students who do not demonstrate mastery (at least 85% correct) on a quiz are given feedback and are required to correct the quiz until they achieve the required 85%. If the parent chooses a writing add-on module that includes feedback, students will be asked to revise their writing until all requirements for the piece are met. I am available through email and through the comments section on assignments to help students through this process.

While some people might think of sentence diagramming as an old-fashioned teaching method, in my experience, diagramming is a very effective tool for teaching the parts of speech, the parts of the sentence, and sentence structure. Diagramming gives students a visual representation of sentence structure and helps eliminate guessing when learning to identify the parts of speech and parts of the sentence. Sentence diagramming also requires students to use analytical thinking skills. Students must analyze the sentence and understand what it really means to figure out what modifies what and which words go together as phrases and clauses.