Poor grammar

It is a dilemma isn’t it? First though, I would never never have the computer correct anything they spell. In fact, I embarrassed myself badly by having it turned off a few months ago. I’m working on a degree online, and I submitted a paper that didn’t do as well as usual. The comments were that I should have corrected the mistakes that my computer had underlined for me. Apparently, when I submitted my paper, the corrections showed up for the instructor; but they had not been on my screen! I couldn’t have felt more stupid. How lazy he must have thought I was!

Anyway, does your son do copywork? My kids were asking me today why they do that. We haven’t done that much of it, but I think I see improvements since we started. Just make sure it is good quality and correctly written literature or whatever they copy from. We don’t do poetry or scripture because sometimes those have strange punctuation, spelling, capitalization, or they aren’t complete sentences.

I’m not sure formal grammar would address the problems you’re talking about. I guess at some point a grammar program might tell him standed is not a word, but you could probably just correct it as it comes up for now like you do already. Do you let it slide sometimes, or just say the correct word to him every time? It’s tiresome, I know. I have a 10 year old that sounds like your son. The writing is a major chore, spelling is very creative and punctuation–forget it. He’d rather draw.

I don’t think I’ve been any help. Maybe someone else will have an idea for you.

Sounds so much like my son. My husband gave 2 of our kids the weak writing gene and it missed 2 of them. My husband struggles with feeling like he can’t write. He thinks he could get better jobs etc. So I really want to help my 2 that have a hard time. I wish I knew what to do exactly. The 2 other kids are amazing writers, and I don’t even think I taught them that much.

Unfortunately, people will judge intelligence by the ability to write. Although, I have to say, my oldest son has tutored English at college; and he says no one can write. Even things we would get from that college would be poorly written. He said once he wanted to tutor the whole world! He usually didn’t help the others fix their papers; they just had to start over most of the time.

I do think that a lot of reading will help. My young son doesn’t seem to spell when he writes, but he knows when a word is spelled correctly when he sees it. It’s like a disconnect between his brain and hand. Maybe I’ll have him look more carefully over his writing. I’m not sure that’ll help, because when he reads it aloud to me he doesn’t see the problem.

Oh, sometimes I have typed out my girls’ writing for them to go over. I typed it exactly as they wrote it. They were able to see the mistakes more easily, because it was like reading a book with mistakes. I had forgotten all about that. Maybe it’s worth a try for you too. I’ll be doing that today for my son–thanks for helping me remember it.

I would just keep plugging along. I guess if you know he has a reason for having some of the troubles he has, you can emphasize he strengths and lovingly work on his weaknesses. I guess that’s what we all need to do with all our kids anyway huh?

Best of luck.