Archive
Tag: Teaching the Language Strand
Why Johnny Can’t Spell
"Johnny could be a great writer, but his terrible spelling just gets in the way." It may be unfair, but society judges poor spellers quite harshly.…
The Ten Parts of Speech with Clear Examples
Knowing the parts of speech is key to the grammatical language of instruction. Writers need to be able to accurately identify and apply each of these…
The Most Useful Punctuation and Capitalization Rules
Proper punctuation and capitalization are marks of an educated and careful writer. Here is everything you need to know about proper punctuation and capitalization in one…
The Four Myths of Grammar Instruction
Many Americans use poor grammar because of poor teaching. The “whole language” movement of the 1980s and 1990s relegated grammatical instruction to a simple editing step…
How to Improve Your Vocabulary
Knowing common Greek and Latin prefixes, roots, and suffixes will significantly improve one’s vocabulary. In fact, over half of the words in any dictionary contain a…
How to Write Complex Sentences
Writers can increase the maturity of their writing by learning how to convert simple sentences into complex sentences. The article uses easy-to-understand language and clear examples…
How to Identify Subjects and Predicates
The complete sentence is, undoubtedly, the most important benchmark of conventional writing. Subjects and predicates are the best identifiers of the complete sentence and the best…
How to Fix Sentence Fragments
Writing in complete sentences is the essential writing skill. Even sophisticated writers sometimes struggle with sentence fragments. Learn how to identify sentence fragments in your own…