The Grammar Diva is happy to present this guest blog by Annabelle Fee of SmileTutor.
Grammar is an English word that comes from the Greek phrase grammatikē technē. This phrase means “the art of letters.” Therefore, the Greeks saw grammar as the artistic composition of letters to create meaning. Today, most scholars refer to grammar as a set of rules governing the use of words, phrases, and clauses in a particular language.
Teaching your children this “art of letters” from an early age is an excellent idea for the following reasons.
1. Grammar Enhances a Child’s Creativity
Grammar is a tool that people use to express their thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Failing to understand it impedes an individual’s ability to express himself articulately and creatively. Teaching your children grammar from an early age removes this hindrance to their creative skills. Remember, the attitudes, abilities, and mannerisms that kids will have in the future start at a young age. Therefore, encouraging creativity at an early age ignites their creative skills while failing to do so will stifle them.
2. Grammar Helps Children Decipher Meaning
Many people fail when it comes to constructing sentences or phrases that are grammatically correct. Consequently, those who cannot decipher these sentences lose their intended meaning. Teaching your children grammar helps them understand poorly constructed sentences and phrases. In other words, they would know what the person in question is trying to tell them because they know what to look for in a sentence.
3. Learning Grammar Helps Children Succeed as Adults
Firms with annual sales of $10 to $60 billion have higher English proficiency scores than firms making less than $10 billion yearly. Grammar is critical in specific business sectors such as aviation and logistics. Other industries such as engineering and consulting require strong language skills as well. These assertions suggest that learning grammar contributes to a child’s success in adulthood. Start honing language skills in your children when they are young so that they can perfect them as adults.
4. Grammar Facilitates the Building of Relationships
Some of the bonds that children will create in their childhood will last into adulthood. The longevity of these bonds depends on how strongly they were formed. Communication is critical to this formation process.
For example, disagreements arise because people misunderstand each other. That means either the sender failed to construct his or her message well or the recipient cannot decipher it correctly. Teaching children grammar helps them form sentences correctly.
Decoding these constructions will be within their realm of possibilities as well. Therefore, the conversations that you will have with them will be fruitful because misunderstandings will be few. The same case will apply to their interactions with other people.
5. Grammar Makes Communication Enjoyable
Presenting information coherently and excitingly helps people understand what you are saying. It also helps them contribute to the conversation because they know what your sentences mean. The same case applies to your children as well. People will marvel at how well they communicate when you teach them grammar. Moreover, they will find that talking to them is an enjoyable experience because the exchange of meaning in a conversation occurs flawlessly.
Teaching your kids grammar is critical for various reasons. They include enhancing their creativity, helping them understand others, and facilitating their success in adulthood. Grammar helps them build relationships and hold stimulating conversations as well. You can teach your children this “art of letters,” or you can hire someone to do it for you. Hiring a professional English tutor is an excellent idea because tutors know what to teach their students and when to do it.
Annabelle Fee is part of the Content and Community team at SmileTutor, sharing valuable content with their own community and beyond. Their passion is to match students and tutors in a wide range of subjects including languages, science, and humanities, as well as providing tutoring around exams and specific subject levels.
Please check out the website.
https://smiletutor.sg
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Grammar Diva News
Next week The Grammar Diva’s post will be about writing lists, both horizontal and vertical: punctuation, capitalization, parallelism
I am plugging along in my NaNoWriMo memoir (since I am not actually writing a novel, I am referred to as a Nano Rebel, but that’s OK. I have about 19,000 words so far, and I am trying to write 2,000 words a day, which will have me finished in plenty of time if I can keep it up!
No one has to convince me of the importance of teaching grammar to children, but how can I do it? I’m going to be taking care of my 10 year old grandson for a couple of days. His language arts skills are not great, although he is great at sports, and good at math when he concentrates. Is there a book? Some ideas of things I might do with him? I’m not there on an ongoing basis, so this would just be something we would do for “fun” together while I’m staying with him in the East Bay.
My books are not exactly fun for kids, although they are aimed at about 10-12 years old and up. I do have one that has fun things you can do with gramma, which is mostly for groups (classes), but I do have accommodations for homeschool, or one on one. However, I bet if you do an Amazon search (or even go into a local bookstore or school store) for fun grammar games or word games for kids, you could find some resources. Also, there is a website called TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers), which has tons of resources for teaching. My books are all there, but there are all kinds of resources by age and topic. Good luck with finding something!
Not everyone gets to be a Grammar Gramma!
true – I am not even a grammar gramma!
“Firms with annual sales of $10 to $60 billion have higher English proficiency scores than firms making less than $10 billion yearly.” Well, that’s compelling in a culture that values productivity and $$$… nice that it comes with all the other benefits, too.
Learning a foreign language or two also helps you understand your own language
I like your occasional spelling/grammar tidbits. Keep up the good work. I’m amazed that you find so much to share with all of us.
Thank you! It isn’t easy to keep thinking of post ideas after almost six years, but I manage with your encouragement and the help of guest posters!