English Grammar: Our Mother Tongue

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word used grammar--“Let there be light.” Grammar was present both at Creation and when Moses wrote down the story of it. Grammar is with us when we read it, preach it, hear it, and translate it. God gave us life through His breath and Adam’s first job was to give names. For salvation and eternal life, we hear and believe the “good spell”--the Gospel, the good news of Christ. We are people of the Word and people of grammar.

Someone I admire remarked that people may consider themselves carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores, but everyone is a verbivore!. There’s something godlike about language. While animals can and do communicate, the complexity of human language is something that really sets us apart as creatures in God’s image.

In the anti-culture that many of us live in today, the foundations of language are being destroyed, all the way down to the very pronouns we use. Our philosophers have chipped away at the concept of meaning itself, pulling Babel down on our heads. In our day, learning and using good grammar is a radical act in a culture that has rejected rules.

This is a one-year course in basic grammar that will give students the foundation to continue successfully in more advanced courses at Kepler and elsewhere. We’ll follow the structure of the text, Our Mother Tongue. Depending on the class’s needs and wishes, we will supplement with a variety of exercises, readings, and activities that will help your student gain a firm grasp on English grammar. We will cover a lot of ground, but this course is not absolutely exhaustive. Grammar is a tool of dominion, and when students master it reasonably well, it’s time to work on other things with it.

You’ll want to take this course if any of the following are true:

• You’ve been learning grammar all your life but don’t see why it really matters.
• You’ve never studied English grammar formally (or not much).
• You want a refresher course in grammar.
• You think that sometimes, understanding what you read is hard.
• You plan to study a foreign language.
• You have trouble saying anything without the word “like.”

Course Objectives

In this course, we will:

1. Cultivate a love of language and its Creator by studying English grammar and why it exists,
2. Learn the nuts and bolts of how our language works through instruction, memorization, and practice. We’ll cover the following:
   • Parts of speech
   • Syntax: the components of a sentence and different kinds of sentences
   • Properties of nouns and pronouns
   • Properties of verbs
   • Verbals
   • Properties of modifiers
   • Punctuation and text formatting
3. Analyze sentences logically through diagramming,
4. Detect and correct improper or ambiguous uses of language,
5. Explore the delightfulness of words in poems, puns, and riddles as well as in challenging and beautiful passages by great authors, including the Bible,
6. Touch on the history of English and the etymology of grammatical terms,
7. Articulate differences and similarities between English grammar and that of other languages,
8. Use knowledge of grammar to better understand poetry, especially metrical Psalms and hymns that are sung in many churches,
9. Formulate a theology of grammar and seek to fit it into each student’s God-given task in the world.

Students will work through the OMT textbook and exercises at home, self-correcting as they go. In addition, students will work through "Daily Gram" exercises that encourage mastery of the material through regular review and sentence-level writing practice. Students will routinely use sentence diagramming as a unique tool for visualizing sentence structure (and learn to really enjoy diagramming too). Lastly, students will read through a large collection of hymns, metrical Psalms, and carols, searching for specific grammatical structures and seeking to understand the complex grammar used in poetry.

Grades will be based on homework and unit tests. Students will prepare by reading a chapter and doing the exercises outside of class. In class, I will check understanding and review the content, lead more advanced practice, and go over parts of the students’ work. As the year progresses, students will do more of the explaining and teaching.

Texts

• Our Mother Tongue, by Nancy Wilson. ISBN-13: 9781947644557
• 180 Daily Teaching Lessons, Grade 9 (student workbook): ISBN 13: 9780936981598