Introducing the New CLAA English Grammar Program

The Classical Liberal Arts Academy is pleased to announce the publication of a complete English Grammar program: three courses that carry a student from his first lessons in language, at age seven or eight, to the threshold of English Composition and of Latin. Like our Modern Arithmetic program, which many families have asked us to extend to other subjects, the English Grammar program restores the content and arrangement of the best schoolbooks ever published, while presenting that content in a form modern students can actually use: complete prose lessons, written to be read and understood. WHY A NEW GRAMMAR PROGRAM? Modern English programs suffer from two opposite diseases. Most modern curricula have abandoned grammar altogether, replacing it with vague "language arts" activities from which a student learns neither the parts of speech nor the structure of a sentence. The older books, on the other hand — the great grammars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — contain everything a student needs, arranged by masters of the art, but they were written as manuals for trained teachers: terse rules, bare outlines, and exercises that assumed a schoolmaster standing by to explain everything. A modern parent who buys a reprint of an old grammar quickly finds that the book cannot teach itself. Our solution is the same one we applied in Arithmetic. We have taken the excellent arrangement and content of the classical sources and composed entirely new lessons upon them — simple prose lessons, in paragraph form, in which everything is explained plainly and at whatever length plainness requires. In the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, the textbook is the teacher. A parent does not need any knowledge of grammar to lead a child through these courses; the parent and child simply read the lesson together, and the lesson does the teaching. THE SOURCES The program is built on three of the finest grammars in the English tradition. English Grammar I and English Grammar II are founded on the works of Thomas W. Harvey, whose graded grammars were studied by millions of American schoolchildren and represent the mature fruit of the golden age of American schoolbooks. English Grammar III is founded on Thomas Kerchever Arnold's English Grammar for Classical Schools, a work written expressly to prepare students for the study of the classical languages. These books supply the arrangement, the definitions, the rules, and the doctrine. The lessons themselves are newly written for our students, with dated examples replaced and modern needs supplied. THE CLASSICAL ORDER The program follows the order of the art of grammar itself, the order kept by the classical grammarians for two thousand years: first the letters and syllables, then the words — the eight parts of speech, each studied with its properties — and only then the sentence, constructed from the parts of speech the student has already mastered. Sentences are built from words, and so words are learned before sentences. This is the order of every Latin grammar the student will ever open, and a student formed by this program will find, when he begins Latin, that he already thinks in its categories. ONE SYSTEM, THREE CIRCLES Like the Baltimore Catechism, and like our Arithmetic program, the English Grammar program is concentric. Each course covers the whole art of grammar at a depth suited to its students, and each course contains and deepens the one before it. A child in English Grammar I memorizes "A noun is a name." That same student, years later in English Grammar III, will study the substantive with its cases and their relations — and he will still be standing on the sentence he learned at seven. Nothing is ever unlearned or replaced; the same doctrine grows richer at every level. The three courses use one terminology, one order, and one method, so that a family may run the whole program as a single system — and may run it side by side with our Arithmetic courses, level for level. THE THREE COURSES 1. ELA-051 ENGLISH GRAMMAR I (GRADES 2-4) ELA-051 English Grammar I gives the young student the whole of grammar in small compass: the letters and syllables, the eight parts of speech with their simplest properties, the four kinds of sentences, the parts of the sentence, and the first arts of writing — dictating every rule in language a child can read aloud with his mother and understand. The course ends with the child writing real compositions of his own: descriptions, little stories, and a friendly letter, checked by his own knowledge of grammar. Part 1 — Language and Its Words ELA-051 Lesson 001 - Objects and Words ELA-051 Lesson 002 - Spoken and Written Language ELA-051 Lesson 003 - The Letters: Vowels and Consonants ELA-051 Lesson 004 - Syllables: Words Broken into Parts ELA-051 Lesson 005 - What Grammar Teaches ELA-051 Lesson 006 - Words Do Different Work ELA-051 Lesson 007 - The Eight Parts of Speech Part 2 — The Noun ELA-051 Lesson 008 - The Noun: A Name ELA-051 Lesson 009 - Common Nouns and Proper Nouns ELA-051 Lesson 010 - One and More Than One ELA-051 Lesson 011 - Plurals That Change Their Form ELA-051 Lesson 012 - Names for Males and Females ELA-051 Lesson 013 - Abbreviations: Names Made Short Part 3 — The Adjective ELA-051 Lesson 014 - The Adjective ELA-051 Lesson 015 - The Articles: A, An, and The ELA-051 Lesson 016 - Adjectives That Point and Count ELA-051 Lesson 017 - Comparing Adjectives ELA-051 Lesson 018 - Cautions: Using Adjectives Well Part 4 — The Pronoun ELA-051 Lesson 019 - The Pronoun: In Place of a Name ELA-051 Lesson 020 - Person: Speaking, Spoken To, Spoken Of ELA-051 Lesson 021 - Personal Pronouns ELA-051 Lesson 022 - Possessive Pronouns ELA-051 Lesson 023 - Pronouns That Ask ELA-051 Lesson 024 - Cautions: Pronouns Used Rightly Part 5 — The Verb ELA-051 Lesson 025 - The Verb ELA-051 Lesson 026 - Verbs of Action and Verbs of Being ELA-051 Lesson 027 - The Tenses: Past, Present, and Future ELA-051 Lesson 028 - Verbs That Change Their Form ELA-051 Lesson 029 - Contractions ELA-051 Lesson 030 - Words Made from Verbs: The Participle ELA-051 Lesson 031 - Cautions: The Right Form of the Verb Part 6 — The Adverb ELA-051 Lesson 032 - The Adverb ELA-051 Lesson 033 - Adverbs of Time, Place, and Manner ELA-051 Lesson 034 - Cautions: Adverbs, Not Adjectives Part 7 — The Preposition ELA-051 Lesson 035 - The Preposition ELA-051 Lesson 036 - Cautions: Little Words Used Rightly Part 8 — The Conjunction and the Interjection ELA-051 Lesson 037 - The Conjunction ELA-051 Lesson 038 - The Interjection ELA-051 Lesson 039 - The Eight Parts of Speech Together Part 9 — The Sentence and Its Kinds ELA-051 Lesson 040 - The Sentence ELA-051 Lesson 041 - Sentences That Tell and Sentences That Ask ELA-051 Lesson 042 - Sentences That Command and Sentences That Exclaim ELA-051 Lesson 043 - Writing Sentences Well ELA-051 Lesson 044 - Quotation Marks ELA-051 Lesson 045 - Making Sentences Part 10 — Building Sentences ELA-051 Lesson 046 - The Two Parts of a Sentence ELA-051 Lesson 047 - The Subject ELA-051 Lesson 048 - The Predicate ELA-051 Lesson 049 - The Object of a Verb ELA-051 Lesson 050 - How Nouns Are Used: Case ELA-051 Lesson 051 - Words That Modify: The Adjective Element ELA-051 Lesson 052 - Words That Modify: The Adverbial Element ELA-051 Lesson 053 - The Phrase ELA-051 Lesson 054 - Phrases That Describe ELA-051 Lesson 055 - Putting Modifiers in Their Place ELA-051 Lesson 056 - Appositives: Another Name Beside ELA-051 Lesson 057 - Compound Elements: Two Joined by And ELA-051 Lesson 058 - The Clause and the Relative Pronoun ELA-051 Lesson 059 - Compound Sentences ELA-051 Lesson 060 - Complex Sentences ELA-051 Lesson 061 - Taking Sentences Apart Part 11 — Writing Well ELA-051 Lesson 062 - Composition: Telling What We See ELA-051 Lesson 063 - Composition: Writing a Little Story ELA-051 Lesson 064 - Composition: Describing an Animal ELA-051 Lesson 065 - The Marks We Write With ELA-051 Lesson 066 - Capital Letters ELA-051 Lesson 067 - Writing a Friendly Letter ELA-051 Lesson 068 - Grammar Put to Work: A Composition of Our Own 2. ELA-151 ENGLISH GRAMMAR II (GRADES 4-6) ELA-151 English Grammar II is the complete grammar of the English language in its four classical parts: Orthography, the study of sounds, letters, and syllables; Etymology, the eight parts of speech with their full properties, declensions, and conjugations, each mastered through the discipline of parsing; Syntax, the analysis of sentences and the rules of correct construction; and Prosody, the study of poetic feet, verse, and scanning. A student who completes this course knows English grammar — not fragments of it, but the whole art. ELA-151 ENGLISH GRAMMAR II (GRADES 4-6) Part 1 — Grammar and Its Four Parts ELA-151 Lesson 001 - Language, Words, and Grammar ELA-151 Lesson 002 - The Four Parts of Grammar: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, Prosody Part 2 — Sounds and Letters ELA-151 Lesson 003 - The Elementary Sounds ELA-151 Lesson 004 - Vocals ELA-151 Lesson 005 - Subvocals and Aspirates ELA-151 Lesson 006 - The Letters and the Sounds They Stand For ELA-151 Lesson 007 - Diphthongs, Digraphs, and Trigraphs ELA-151 Lesson 008 - Double Consonants and Substitutes ELA-151 Lesson 009 - The Forms of the Letters Part 3 — Writing the Language ELA-151 Lesson 010 - Capital Letters ELA-151 Lesson 011 - More Rules for Capitals; Italics and Small Capitals ELA-151 Lesson 012 - Syllables ELA-151 Lesson 013 - Words: Primitive and Derivative, Simple and Compound ELA-151 Lesson 014 - Spelling Well Part 4 — The Parts of Speech ELA-151 Lesson 015 - How Words Are Classified ELA-151 Lesson 016 - The Eight Parts of Speech Part 5 — The Noun ELA-151 Lesson 017 - The Noun ELA-151 Lesson 018 - The Classes of Nouns ELA-151 Lesson 019 - Gender ELA-151 Lesson 020 - Person ELA-151 Lesson 021 - Number ELA-151 Lesson 022 - Plurals Regular and Irregular ELA-151 Lesson 023 - Case ELA-151 Lesson 024 - The Possessive Case ELA-151 Lesson 025 - Declension of Nouns ELA-151 Lesson 026 - Parsing the Noun Part 6 — The Adjective ELA-151 Lesson 027 - The Adjective ELA-151 Lesson 028 - Descriptive Adjectives ELA-151 Lesson 029 - Definitive Adjectives and the Articles ELA-151 Lesson 030 - Pronominal and Numeral Adjectives ELA-151 Lesson 031 - Comparison of Adjectives ELA-151 Lesson 032 - Parsing the Adjective; Cautions Part 7 — The Pronoun ELA-151 Lesson 033 - The Pronoun ELA-151 Lesson 034 - Personal Pronouns ELA-151 Lesson 035 - Personal Pronouns Declined ELA-151 Lesson 036 - Possessive Pronouns ELA-151 Lesson 037 - Relative Pronouns ELA-151 Lesson 038 - Interrogative Pronouns ELA-151 Lesson 039 - Parsing the Pronoun; Cautions Part 8 — The Verb ELA-151 Lesson 040 - The Verb ELA-151 Lesson 041 - Transitive and Intransitive Verbs ELA-151 Lesson 042 - Voice: Active and Passive ELA-151 Lesson 043 - The Participles ELA-151 Lesson 044 - The Auxiliaries ELA-151 Lesson 045 - The Modes ELA-151 Lesson 046 - The Tenses ELA-151 Lesson 047 - The Signs of the Tenses ELA-151 Lesson 048 - Person and Number of the Verb ELA-151 Lesson 049 - Conjugation: The Verb To Be ELA-151 Lesson 050 - Conjugation of a Regular Verb ELA-151 Lesson 051 - The Forms of the Verb: Common, Progressive, Emphatic ELA-151 Lesson 052 - The Irregular Verbs ELA-151 Lesson 053 - Defective, Redundant, and Unipersonal Verbs ELA-151 Lesson 054 - Parsing the Verb; Cautions Part 9 — The Adverb ELA-151 Lesson 055 - The Adverb ELA-151 Lesson 056 - Classes of Adverbs ELA-151 Lesson 057 - Comparison of Adverbs ELA-151 Lesson 058 - Parsing the Adverb; Cautions Part 10 — The Preposition ELA-151 Lesson 059 - The Preposition ELA-151 Lesson 060 - The Prepositions in Use ELA-151 Lesson 061 - Parsing the Preposition; Cautions Part 11 — The Conjunction ELA-151 Lesson 062 - The Conjunction ELA-151 Lesson 063 - Coordinate and Subordinate Conjunctions ELA-151 Lesson 064 - Parsing the Conjunction; Cautions Part 12 — The Interjection, and the Eight Together ELA-151 Lesson 065 - The Interjection ELA-151 Lesson 066 - The Eight Parts of Speech Together Part 13 — The Sentence and Its Classes ELA-151 Lesson 067 - The Sentence ELA-151 Lesson 068 - Sentences Classified by Use ELA-151 Lesson 069 - Sentences Classified by Form Part 14 — The Elements of the Sentence ELA-151 Lesson 070 - The Elements of a Sentence ELA-151 Lesson 071 - The Principal Elements: Subject and Predicate ELA-151 Lesson 072 - The Arrangement of the Principal Elements ELA-151 Lesson 073 - The Objective Element ELA-151 Lesson 074 - The Adjective Element ELA-151 Lesson 075 - The Adverbial Element ELA-151 Lesson 076 - The Attendant Element ELA-151 Lesson 077 - Analysis with Models Part 15 — Phrases and Clauses ELA-151 Lesson 078 - Simple Elements ELA-151 Lesson 079 - Complex Elements ELA-151 Lesson 080 - Compound Elements ELA-151 Lesson 081 - Phrases Classified ELA-151 Lesson 082 - Clauses Classified Part 16 — Ellipsis and Abridgment ELA-151 Lesson 083 - Contracted Sentences: Ellipsis ELA-151 Lesson 084 - Ellipsis Continued ELA-151 Lesson 085 - Abridgment Part 17 — Analysis ELA-151 Lesson 086 - Directions for Analysis ELA-151 Lesson 087 - Analysis Practiced: Simple and Complex Sentences ELA-151 Lesson 088 - Analysis Practiced: Compound Sentences Part 18 — The Rules of Syntax ELA-151 Lesson 089 - The Rule of the Subject-Nominative ELA-151 Lesson 090 - The Rule of the Predicate-Nominative ELA-151 Lesson 091 - The Rule of the Possessive Case ELA-151 Lesson 092 - The Rule of Apposition ELA-151 Lesson 093 - The Nominative Absolute ELA-151 Lesson 094 - The Rule of the Objective Case ELA-151 Lesson 095 - The Rules for Pronouns ELA-151 Lesson 096 - The Rules for Adjectives and Participles ELA-151 Lesson 097 - The Rules for Verbs ELA-151 Lesson 098 - The Rules for Infinitives ELA-151 Lesson 099 - The Rules for Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections Part 19 — Figures of Language ELA-151 Lesson 100 - Figures of Etymology ELA-151 Lesson 101 - Figures of Syntax ELA-151 Lesson 102 - Figures of Rhetoric Part 20 — Punctuation ELA-151 Lesson 103 - The Comma ELA-151 Lesson 104 - The Comma Continued ELA-151 Lesson 105 - The Semicolon and the Colon ELA-151 Lesson 106 - The Period, Interrogation, and Exclamation Points ELA-151 Lesson 107 - The Dash, Curves, and Brackets ELA-151 Lesson 108 - Other Marks Part 21 — Prosody ELA-151 Lesson 109 - Prosody: Quantity and Accent ELA-151 Lesson 110 - Poetic Feet ELA-151 Lesson 111 - The Kinds of Verse ELA-151 Lesson 112 - Iambic and Trochaic Measures ELA-151 Lesson 113 - Anapestic, Dactylic, and Amphibrach Measures ELA-151 Lesson 114 - Mixed Verse, Poetic License, and Scanning ELA-151 Lesson 115 - The Whole Grammar Reviewed 3. ELA-251 ENGLISH GRAMMAR III (GRADES 6-8) ELA-251 English Grammar III crowns the program with the grammar of the classical schools. Here the student studies English in the very categories of Latin: the cases and their relations, the moods and voices of the verb, the derivation of English words from Latin and Greek, and the analysis of complex sentences into their principal and accessory parts. The course ends with a study found in no modern program: exercises in the improvement of prose style, in which the student corrects and reshapes the sentences of real English authors. English Grammar III opens two doors at once — the door to English Composition, and the door to Latin. ELA-251 ENGLISH GRAMMAR III (GRADES 6-8) Part 1 — The Letters and the Parts of Speech ELA-251 Lesson 001 - The Letters and Their Sounds ELA-251 Lesson 002 - The Division of the Letters ELA-251 Lesson 003 - The Parts of Speech ELA-251 Lesson 004 - Accidence: The Changes of Words Part 2 — The Substantive ELA-251 Lesson 005 - The Substantive ELA-251 Lesson 006 - The Divisions of Substantives ELA-251 Lesson 007 - Number: The Formation of the Plural ELA-251 Lesson 008 - Difficult and Foreign Plurals ELA-251 Lesson 009 - The Cases ELA-251 Lesson 010 - The Formation of the Genitive ELA-251 Lesson 011 - The Gender of Nouns ELA-251 Lesson 012 - Parsing the Substantive Part 3 — The Adjective ELA-251 Lesson 013 - The Adjective ELA-251 Lesson 014 - The Comparison of Adjectives ELA-251 Lesson 015 - Irregular Comparison ELA-251 Lesson 016 - Parsing the Adjective Part 4 — The Pronoun and Its Allies ELA-251 Lesson 017 - The Pronoun ELA-251 Lesson 018 - Personal Pronouns and Their Declension ELA-251 Lesson 019 - Demonstrative Pronouns ELA-251 Lesson 020 - Relative Pronouns ELA-251 Lesson 021 - Interrogative and Reciprocal Pronouns ELA-251 Lesson 022 - The Numerals ELA-251 Lesson 023 - Indefinite and Definite Numerals ELA-251 Lesson 024 - Parsing the Pronoun Part 5 — The Verb ELA-251 Lesson 025 - The Division of Verbs ELA-251 Lesson 026 - The Tenses ELA-251 Lesson 027 - The Persons and the Personal Forms ELA-251 Lesson 028 - The Participles ELA-251 Lesson 029 - The Auxiliary Verbs: Am, Have, Do ELA-251 Lesson 030 - The Forms for Present Time ELA-251 Lesson 031 - The Forms for Past Time ELA-251 Lesson 032 - The Forms for Future Time ELA-251 Lesson 033 - The Moods of a Verb ELA-251 Lesson 034 - The Imperative and the Infinitive ELA-251 Lesson 035 - The Compound Participles ELA-251 Lesson 036 - The Voices; the Passive Voice ELA-251 Lesson 037 - The Participial Substantives ELA-251 Lesson 038 - The Verbs of Mood and the Subjunctive Forms ELA-251 Lesson 039 - The Tables of the English Verb ELA-251 Lesson 040 - Parsing the Verb Part 6 — The Particles ELA-251 Lesson 041 - The Particles ELA-251 Lesson 042 - Adverbs; Correlative Adverbs ELA-251 Lesson 043 - Prepositions ELA-251 Lesson 044 - Conjunctions ELA-251 Lesson 045 - The Interjection; Parsing the Particles Part 7 — Word-Formation ELA-251 Lesson 046 - The Irregular Verbs: The Modern Form ELA-251 Lesson 047 - The Irregular Verbs: The Ancient Form ELA-251 Lesson 048 - Gender and the Plurals of Foreign Nouns ELA-251 Lesson 049 - Derivation: Prefixes ELA-251 Lesson 050 - Derivation: Terminations ELA-251 Lesson 051 - Words from the Latin ELA-251 Lesson 052 - Words from the Greek Part 8 — Syntax: The Three Combinations ELA-251 Lesson 053 - Syntax and the Sentence ELA-251 Lesson 054 - The Predicative Combination ELA-251 Lesson 055 - Simple Interrogative Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 056 - The Attributive Combination ELA-251 Lesson 057 - The Genitive Combination: Of ELA-251 Lesson 058 - The Objective Combination ELA-251 Lesson 059 - The Infinitive Mood in Syntax ELA-251 Lesson 060 - Copulative and Apposition Verbs ELA-251 Lesson 061 - The Dative Relations: To and For ELA-251 Lesson 062 - The Ablative Relations: By and With; Space and Time Part 9 — Syntax: Accessory Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 063 - The Sentence Complete; Compound Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 064 - Substantive Accessory Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 065 - Adjective Accessory Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 066 - Adverbial Accessory Sentences of Time ELA-251 Lesson 067 - Accessory Sentences of Comparison ELA-251 Lesson 068 - Accessory Sentences of Cause and Condition ELA-251 Lesson 069 - The Adversative Relation ELA-251 Lesson 070 - Purpose and Consequence: That ELA-251 Lesson 071 - Dependent Interrogative Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 072 - The Participles in Syntax Part 10 — Punctuation ELA-251 Lesson 073 - The Comma ELA-251 Lesson 074 - The Colon and Semicolon ELA-251 Lesson 075 - Interrogation, Admiration, and Parenthesis ELA-251 Lesson 076 - Punctuation Practiced Part 11 — Parsing and Analysis ELA-251 Lesson 077 - Review by Question: The Accidence ELA-251 Lesson 078 - Review by Question: The Syntax ELA-251 Lesson 079 - The Models of Parsing ELA-251 Lesson 080 - Exercises on the Accidence ELA-251 Lesson 081 - Exercises on the Syntax ELA-251 Lesson 082 - Complete Parsing and Analysis Part 12 — The Improvement of Style ELA-251 Lesson 083 - The Study of Style ELA-251 Lesson 084 - The Method of Correction ELA-251 Lesson 085 - Superfluous Words ELA-251 Lesson 086 - Combining and Dividing Sentences ELA-251 Lesson 087 - Changing the Connection ELA-251 Lesson 088 - Exercises in Style: First Series ELA-251 Lesson 089 - Exercises in Style: Second Series ELA-251 Lesson 090 - Style Perfected: The Door to Composition MEMORIZATION AND MASTERY As in all CLAA courses, every lesson assigns Memory Work: fixed definitions and rules to be memorized word for word and recited. The definitions a student learns in English Grammar I are the permanent possession of his mind; he will recite them, build on them, and reason from them through every level of the program. This is how grammar was always taught, and it is why men educated in the old way could speak and write with a precision that has become rare. Students demonstrate mastery of every lesson through the Academy's assessments before moving forward, so that the whole structure stands on knowledge actually possessed, not merely covered. ENROLLMENT OPEN IN FALL 2026 These new courses have been completely written and will be open for enrollment in the Fall of 2026 on the new CLAA site. For information on moving to the new site and enrolling in these courses, please contact us. God bless your studies, Mr. William C. Michael, O.P. Headmaster Classical Liberal Arts Academy