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Grammar in the Grammar Stage
Grammar is the science of language usage, and English grammar as a subject teaches how to speak and write the English language correctly. I feel it is important that grammar be covered as a subject in the grammar stage, finished by the end of sixth grade, so that in the dialectic stage logic can replace grammar as a subject in the curriculum (with rhetoric replacing logic as a subject in the curriculum in the rhetoric stage.) The formal study of grammar is broken into these branches: orthography, the study of letters; etymology, the study of words; and syntax, the study of sentences. There is one other part to the study of English grammar: prosody, which is the study of the quantity of syllables, of accent, and the laws of versification. This branch deals with the writing of poetry, and I prefer to save that branch for formal poetry study in writing in the rhetoric stage. We can see already that the subject of grammar is very closely tied to the subject of writing. However, while there is some overlap, I feel the best results are had when these two subjects are studied separately in the curriculum. Each does contain material unique to it, and studying them separately ensures that each receives the thorough coverage of its principles so necessary for a solid foundation in the grammar stage. Let us look at each of the three branches of English grammar studied in the grammar stage individually.
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