Since many students receive a lot of grammar instruction in middle school, it can be tempting to think you don’t have to cover many grammar for advanced students.
This week’s post is a guest post by Missy Davis from The English Teacher Vault. Missy has over a decade of experience teaching High School English. And she is the Grammar Queen. 👸🏻 Follow Missy on Instagram.
However, the reality is that most students enter high school with gaps in their understanding of grammar, mechanics, and style. Also, Pre-AP and honors students will have a lot of writing in their high school years. So why not give them the tools to succeed with a solid foundation of language? An understanding of grammar and style is critical in students becoming strong writers.
While there are a pretty decent number of grammar concepts your advanced students need, these three are at the top of the list.
1.) Advanced students need an understanding of modifiers like adjectives and adverbs.
What they are:
Adjectives modify nouns while adverbs can modify many different parts of speech including verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
Why students need to know it:
Students need to be able to use modifiers well in their writing. And they need to be able to distinguish between adverbs and adjectives. This distinction comes up often on standardized tests including the PSAT and SAT and occasionally on the AP Literature exam.
More importantly, if students know the difference between adjectives and adverbs, they will use them well in their own writing. They will avoid faulty parallel structure, dangling modifiers, and wordiness.
How it helps their writing
By using adjectives and adverbs well, students have a tool that they can use to craft more interesting sentences.
Consider this, when students have a strong grasp of adjectives they may try starting a sentence with one of these modifiers. This can change the rhythm of his paragraph creating more fluency. Starting a sentence with an adjective or even 2-3 adjectives in a row creates a really cool cadence that isn’t achieved in a simple subject/verb/direct object sentence formation.
Take a look at this sentence by George Orwell from the book 1984:
“Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind.”
Notice how beginning the sentence with two adjectives draws the reader into the scene because those adjectives grab the reader’s attention.
Grammar for Advanced Students: How To Teach It
Teaching adjectives can be pretty straightforward because they modify nouns, but teaching adverbs becomes a little trickier.
For both, I suggest giving your students brief, but clear direct instruction about what adjectives and adverbs are. Give them a handout for reference or guided notes. Then, and here is the crucial part, show them great mentor sentences that utilize the concept of well-placed adjectives (such as using adjectives as sentence openers). After they observe a few powerful mentor sentences, give them structured practice so they start incorporating this technique in their own writing. Sentence frames work great for this.
Last, give them time and space to practice this concept in their writing. Give students intriguing writing prompts. Have them free write focusing on crafting only one or two of their sentences. I’ve got a bunch of free-write ideas you can check out in my blog post “10 Short Writing Topics For Teens That Build Better Writers.”
Another fun and simple way to help the concept stick is to have your students grab the book you’re studying as a class. Then, have them find a few sentences with well-placed adjectives or adverbs.
Have students read these sentences out loud. Or make a class list of some intriguing modifiers they could start to use in their own writing.
2.) Advanced students need an understanding of clauses
Friends, I love clauses. I do. It’s such a critical piece of the whole writing thing. And a sentence with multiple clauses can take my breath away.
What they are: Independent clauses are made up of a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a complete sentence. Dependent or subordinate clauses have a subject and a verb, but they can not stand alone as a complete sentence. They often begin with a subordinating conjunction.
There are more clauses like absolute clauses and more distinctions like adverbial and noun clauses. But for now I’m going to just focus on independent and dependent clauses.
Why Students Need To Know It
When students have a grasp of clauses it’ll help their writing in all of these ways:
- Avoid run-ons and comma splices
- Become more fluent writers
- Be able to move into stylistic concepts like parallel structure
Clauses are vital for students to become better writers. So even if it takes a few lessons to get there–it’s worth your time.
Grammar for Advanced Students: How To Teach it
Similar to teaching parts of speech, teaching clauses requires some direct instruction and possibly reference notes that students can come back to. For instance, it’s helpful for students to have some familiarity with subordinate conjunctions. This can help them recognize subordinate clauses, but I don’t think that it’s crucial that students memorize every subordinate clause. Instead, give them a reference sheet for these.
After giving them the needed direct instruction, again, showcase mentor sentences that use multiple clauses. Let them observe, discuss, and then imitate these sentences so that they can get a feel for what it means to start a sentence with a dependent clause or use 2, 3, or even 4 clauses in a sentence. Let them talk it out. You can provide guiding questions such as: “When would it be good to use several clauses in a sentence?” or “What are the drawbacks of using multiple clauses in a single sentence?”
Once students understand clauses, you can immediately teach the concept of sentence types which is a concept they definitely need to become more fluent writers.
I’ve created a mini-unit on clauses and sentence types that includes a hands-on game, writing prompts, and a quiz that you can check out. It includes over 50 mentor sentences for you and your students to work with. Check it out HERE.
3.) Advanced students need to recognize and use parallel structure
Let’s talk about some beautiful sentences. Parallel structure can completely transform a sentence.
What it is: When words, phrases, and clauses are written in the same form or tense, they are parallel in structure.
Why Students need to know it: Parallel structure pops up on a lot of standardized tests. If a sentence is not written in parallel structure, it can still be grammatically correct, however, sentences become more clear when they are written with parallel structure.
More important than performing on a test is that when students write using parallel structure, they truly have a great tool that can set their writing apart.
How it helps their writing:
When a writer uses parallel structure it allows for clarity, fluency, and can even create a rhythm in the writing. I go into much more detail in this blog post “How To Tackle Boring Sentences: Teach Parallel Structure.”
Grammar for Advanced Students: How to teach it:
Teaching parallel structure does not require as much direct instruction as some other grammar and writing concepts. One thing that can be helpful for teaching it is to show students examples and non examples. Then have them come to the conclusion of what makes one parallel and the other not parallel. For instance, here are two sentences, one is written in parallel structure, and one is not written in parallel structure. Ask students what they notice.
After this, show students a few great mentor sentences that utilize the parallel structure form and have students imitate these sentences using sentence frames.
It can also be fun to show them famous quotes from writing and speeches that use parallel structure.
Writing using parallel structure is something that students might not be able to do on the spot. Instead, have students go back over a previous writing assignment and have them transform a sentence or two into a sentence using parallel structure.
I’ve created a mini-unit that walks you through how to teach parallel structure with parts of speech, phrases, and clauses that you can grab HERE. It includes a handful of mentor sentences, sentence frames, and writing prompts to help students work with the concept in a scaffolded way.
Teaching Grammar for Advanced Students
Although this list isn’t comprehensive to what your advanced students need to know in terms of grammar and style. It’s a start, and by focusing on these 3 concepts. You’ll get a feel for whether or not your students have gaps in their understanding of grammar.
I’ve put together a complete year long curriculum designed for 9th and 10th grade students. It focuses on the most important aspects of grammar with a focus on creating better student writers. It’s almost no prep for you, and even includes instructional videos if you’re a little rusty on some of the grammar concepts yourself. You can check it all out HERE.
If you teach grammar in the context of great literature with lots of writing practice, your advanced students will have the tools they need to be strong writers.
Related Articles
Common App Essay Formatting, Grammar & Style Guide (collegeessayguy.com)
Why Teaching Greek and Latin Roots Gets Better Results
Resources From This Blog Post
Full-Year Grammar Curriculum for 9th and 10th Grade
Parallel Structure Mini Bundle
Clauses Mini Bundle
Teaching Well-Placed Adjectives Lesson
