I do believe my homeschooling dilemmas are over in the area of English thanks to Analytical Grammar. I was given a complete set of their curriculum to try out and review and I am TOTALLY sold on this product.
Before using AG, here is the list of all the failed attempts of what we used. I am not saying any of these are bad, they just did not work for us: Bob Jones, Christian Liberty Press, Abeka, All In One English, and Intermediate Language Lessons. You can see my frustrations, right?
Last year we played around a little with Junior AG and I was intrigued, but I really wanted to see what the high school level was like. It was a breath of fresh air for us. We have been using it now for a few weeks and my kids are beginning to understand why we mark nouns as nouns, and whether or not that word is a pronoun or an adjective (which, by the way ,can be very confusing unless you really know the difference).
The thing that I really like about AG is that the book is broken down into seasons(or years). The books has three seasons, so it can be used for three years (a very good money-saving tip). In season 1, you learn about all the eight parts of speech. Each week you learn a new part of speech. The first week you are marking nouns, articles, and adjectives. The next week you are marking pronouns, plus the ones you learned last week. Each week you add a new part and build on the previous week. For ten weeks you study in this manner. Then for the rest of the year, you do review!
Another thing that I like about AG is that in the beginning when you are grading the paper, you don’t mark it wrong if it wasn’t something you were studying. Let me explain. The first week we were learning nouns, articles, and adjectives. When you are grading their paper, that is the only thing you are looking for. If they marked a verb as a noun, you don’t count that wrong. If they marked all the words correctly that were supposed to be marked, then that sentence is correct. AG states that this problem will correct itself as you progress later in the study and guess what? They are exactly right!
A third thing that I like about AG is how they teach diagramming. I can remember when I was in school how much I hated diagramming because I did not really understand how to diagram. In AG, you start with learning how to diagram prepositional phrases and then subject and verbs, and you build from there. My daughter loves to diagram sentences!
If you are looking for a great English program, let me recommend Analytical Grammar. They also have a writing program that we are going to do when Robert gets a little further into high school. Helping him learn how to write a research paper or an essay is something that will come in handy for him!
For compensation for this review, I was provided this product free of charge from Analytical Grammar.