Easy Grammar Plus Student Workbook

What Easy Grammar Plus Actually Covers

The program divides grammar into ten distinct units, each building on the last. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, sentence structure, and a few advanced topics round it out. The student workbook provides exercises for each section, and the tests at the end of every unit are cumulative. That last part matters more than people realize. If you skip review, those later tests will catch you out fast. Easy Grammar Plus Student Workbook follows a consistent pattern throughout: explain the rule, give examples, assign practice problems, then test. The teacher edition has the answer key embedded, so grading is straightforward. You mark answers, record scores, move to the next unit. Nothing fancy about it.

How the Workbook Structured

Each unit starts with an explanation of the grammatical concept, followed by model sentences showing correct usage. Then students complete exercises that reinforce the material. The exercises progress from identification tasks to correction problems to completion work. By the end of most units, you are looking at three or four pages of problems. Some units run longer than others. Verb tenses take more time than prepositions, for instance. The cumulative testing approach means unit five contains questions from units one through four mixed together. Unit eight pulls from everything before it. This design forces repetition, which helps retention but also means students who fell behind early never really catch up unless you stop and backtrack.

When It Actually Works

I used this curriculum with three different students over six years. The ones who stuck with it consistently did well on standardized grammar sections. The ones who treated it as a checkbox exercise struggled when they hit high school writing classes. There is a difference between completing workbook pages and understanding the underlying system. The color-coding system works for visual learners. Parts of speech get assigned colors in the teacher edition explanations. When students see those colors in example sentences, they can visually track how words function within a sentence. It helps with parsing complex sentences faster than rule memorization alone. For a typical week, plan on forty-five minutes to an hour per unit. Some units finish in thirty minutes. The verb section routinely takes two or three weeks depending on how much review time you build in. Budget accordingly or you will fall behind by October.

Edge Case I Ran Into

One student kept messing up the adjective clause identification questions in unit seven. The rule said adjective clauses modify nouns and start with relative pronouns like who, which, or that. He understood that. But whenever the clause appeared at the end of a sentence instead of the middle, he missed it. He would identify the noun being modified but fail to recognize the entire clause as the adjective phrase. The workaround was drawing brackets around the clause in each example sentence. Physically marking where the clause began and ended made the structure visible. He stopped missing them after about six practice problems with the bracket method. The workbook never teaches this visual parsing technique, so I had to add it myself. It took maybe fifteen minutes but saved us two weeks of repeated errors on the same question type.

Limitations Nobody Mentions

The program treats grammar as a set of fixed rules. That approach breaks down with advanced writing. Real sentences regularly bend or ignore the rules Easy Grammar Plus teaches. Students who only know the program version of grammar sometimes freeze when they encounter legitimate exceptions in college-level writing courses. The rigor drops noticeably in the later units. Units one through six are solid. Units seven through ten feel rushed. The sentence combining section in particular lacks the depth of the earlier verb work. If your student needs stronger training in compound-complex sentences, supplement with additional exercises after finishing the workbook. Another issue is pacing. The curriculum assumes a steady classroom or homeschool schedule. Interrupted schedules cause cascading problems because of the cumulative tests. Missing two weeks means falling behind on three units of material you will need to know for the next test. Recovery usually requires doubling back and reworking problems from earlier units, which eats into time meant for new content.

Advanced students who already know most of this material will find it repetitive. A placement test before starting can save two or three weeks of boring work. Skip the first four units if they score above eighty percent on a self-made quiz covering nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. Those units are foundational but not challenging for someone with prior exposure.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If the color-coding approach feels too elementary, The Language Grammar curriculum offers more sophisticated explanations without the visual aids. It moves faster and assumes more independent reading comprehension. For students who struggle with the workbook format entirely, online programs like Grammar Up provide adaptive practice that adjusts to individual weaknesses. Free alternatives exist for basic grammar review. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has reliable reference pages for every topic Easy Grammar Plus covers. They lack the structured progression and cumulative testing, but they work fine as supplements or replacement material for students who need targeted practice rather than full curriculum coverage. The program remains a reasonable choice for students who need explicit, rule-based grammar instruction. It is not ideal for students who learn grammar intuitively or need more creative writing application. Match the tool to the learner, not the other way around.