Jonathan Rogers has spent his career writing books that have to work. His Wilderking Trilogy has to hold a young reader’s attention across three novels. The Terrible Speed of Mercy, his biography of Flannery O’Connor, has to render a life that was strange and difficult and deeply Christian in a way that feels true. That kind of writing requires sentence-level precision: not grammar rules memorized for a test, but grammar understood from the inside, the way a craftsman understands his tools.
He has also spent his career teaching writing, mostly to college students and older. What he found in the classroom confirmed what he already knew from the writing desk: most students don’t need more grammar instruction. They need less clutter. The years of formal grammar study have buried the instincts they already had (the concrete nouns and precise verbs a toddler reaches for naturally) under layers of abstraction that convey information but render nothing.
Grammar for Writers is the course that came out of that observation. It goes back to the simplest question a sentence can answer: who did what? It builds everything else from there.
Table of Contents
- What Grammar for Writers Is and How It Works
- What Good Grammar Instruction Actually Does for a Student
- The Real Problem With How Grammar Is Usually Taught
- Three Questions to Ask of Any Grammar Program
- How the Major Programs Compare
- What a Lesson Looks Like in Practice
- The Learning Environment
- Frequently Asked Questions
This is Jonathan Rogers teaching the very first lesson of Grammar for Writers. Notice how quickly he moves from the grammatical concept to the question every writer actually needs to answer: who is doing what?
1. What Grammar for Writers Is and How It Works
Grammar for Writers is a high school grammar course built on a single premise: mastery of grammar should result directly and immediately in better writing. The course covers 41 lessons across four modules, totaling approximately 6.5 hours of instruction, and is designed for students 14 and older who are ready to think analytically about the sentences they write.
The four modules follow a deliberate sequence. Module 1 (The Main Line) strips every sentence to its essential core: the subject, verb, and object. Module 2 adds modifiers. Module 3 introduces noun equivalents. Module 4 covers the connective structures that join clauses into prose. Each module builds on the one before it, and the sequence matters: Rogers teaches students to strip before they build, to find the main line before adding anything back.
The course has three components, and each one does a specific job.
The video lessons are Jonathan Rogers teaching, not explaining the course, but actually teaching grammar, one concept at a time, for about nine minutes per lesson. Most homeschool video curricula run long; these don’t. Rogers is a practiced teacher who knows what a concept costs a student and doesn’t spend more time than the concept requires.
The lecture notes are a written version of each lesson: clean, readable, and formatted for students who absorb material better on the page than on screen. They are not a transcript; they are a teaching document in their own right.
The quizzes are where the course does something most grammar programs skip. Students are not asked to label structures in someone else’s sentences. They are asked to rewrite sentences, to construct new ones, to apply what Rogers just taught to their own prose choices. The quiz is where the grammar lesson becomes a writing lesson.
Together, these three components answer the question Jonathan asked when he designed the course: what would it take to make a grammar course that actually changes how a student writes?
“My eyes have been opened wide to one of many truths he has shared: good writing is always about precision, not embellishment.”
Ina Cochran, who took the course as an adult writer
→ Try three free sample lessons from Grammar for Writers
This is Lesson 9 on nominalization, one of the most useful lessons in the course. Now that you’ve read how the course is structured, watch how Rogers connects the grammatical term to the actual writing problem it solves.
2. What Good Grammar Instruction Actually Does for a Student
When grammar instruction works the way Grammar for Writers works, students gain three specific things.
They learn to diagnose their own writing. They stop depending on a teacher’s red pen to tell them something is wrong. They can read their own prose and see the problem: an action buried in a noun where a verb should be, a subject separated from its verb by six words, a passive construction where an active one would hit harder. That diagnostic ability, the ability to read your own sentences the way an editor reads them, is worth more than any grammar rule a student can recite.
Grammar rules stop being fences and start being tools. Rogers’s students leave the course knowing not just when to follow the rules but when to break them. Once a student understands why a rule exists (what it does for the reader when followed, what it costs the reader when broken), the rule becomes a choice. A student who chooses to use passive voice is a different writer than a student who falls into it.
“My favorite thing about Jonathan Rogers’s course is his encouragement to break the rules, once you have learned them, to make your writing personal.”
Lorie S.
Improvement is immediate and visible. Rogers’s course is designed so that each lesson changes the way the student writes, week by week. Most grammar programs measure progress at the end of the year. This one measures it in every quiz.
Rebecca R., whose son was skeptical going in, put it plainly: “My very wordy son actually sees the point of some of the ‘rules’ of grammar for the first time in 11th grade.”
3. The Real Problem With How Grammar Is Usually Taught
Jonathan Rogers has spent his career watching students struggle with writing, and his diagnosis of why is worth sitting with. For most students, he argues, the problem isn’t that they don’t know enough grammar. The problem is that the grammar they’ve been taught has no connection to the sentences they write.
Grammar instruction is almost universally built around identification. Students learn to name what they see: this is a prepositional phrase, this is a subordinate clause, this is a nominalization. These are real skills, and they matter. Naming a thing and using it well are different abilities, though, and most programs stop at the first. They teach students to analyze sentences written by other people. They rarely ask students to apply what they’ve learned to their own prose.
The result is a student who can pass a grammar test and write a weak paragraph in the same afternoon. The knowledge is there. The writing doesn’t show it.
4. Three Questions to Ask of Any Grammar Program
Before comparing programs, these three questions will help you evaluate what you’re actually choosing between.
Does the curriculum connect grammar to the student’s own writing? There is a meaningful difference between a curriculum that teaches students to identify structures in published sentences and one that requires them to construct and repair their own. The first produces grammatical knowledge. The second produces better writers.
Is the course calibrated for a student who already reads fluently? High school grammar is a different discipline from middle school grammar. A program designed for an eighth grader drilling prepositions is not the same thing as a program designed for a tenth grader learning to control subordination. Age range matters more than the word “grammar” in the title.
Is the format one your student will actually engage with? A workbook-based student and a video-based student will have very different experiences of the same content. The right curriculum in the wrong format is a frustrating year for everyone.
5. How the Major Programs Compare
Cathy Duffy has reviewed Grammar for Writers and recommends it because of Rogers’s distinctive approach. She notes that Rogers starts where every sentence starts: who did what. She compares this to many other grammar programs that introduce complex structures from the start. You can read her full review at cathyduffyreviews.com.
Most high school homeschool families researching grammar curriculum will encounter the same three programs. The differences between them and Grammar for Writers are real and worth understanding before you choose.
Fix It! Grammar (IEW)
Fix It! Grammar teaches grammar through daily editing across six levels, running from fourth grade through high school. Students read short passages containing deliberate errors, identify the problems, and correct them. Students who work through it do become sharper at catching common mistakes.
The question worth asking is: what kind of sharpness are you after? Fix It! produces better proofreaders: students who recognize what’s wrong in a sentence someone else wrote. Grammar for Writers produces better writers: students who build stronger sentences of their own.
Choose Fix It! Grammar if your student is in middle or high school and needs to work through grammar systematically from the ground up, or wants a light daily habit that develops error recognition over several years. Choose Grammar for Writers if your student is in high school and the goal is better writing, not just better proofreading.
Analytical Grammar
Analytical Grammar is a rigorous, carefully designed program built around sentence diagramming. Students learn to break sentences into their component parts with real precision, and classical homeschool families in particular tend to appreciate its systematic approach.
Mastering a grammar system is a different achievement than writing better, though. Analytical Grammar’s goal is fluency with the system itself, and students can become very accomplished at it without their prose improving noticeably because the course doesn’t consistently connect what they’re learning to the sentences they write.
Choose Analytical Grammar if your student loves the puzzle-like quality of diagramming and wants deep structural knowledge of English for its own sake. Choose Grammar for Writers if your student needs that structural knowledge applied directly to the act of writing.
Rod and Staff
Rod and Staff Grammar is thorough in the way that very few programs are. It’s technical, carefully sequenced, and extensively drilled. A student who completes it will have encountered essentially every grammatical category in the English language, with workbook exercises to match.
What Rod and Staff doesn’t offer is a writer’s perspective. It teaches grammar as a subject, not a tool, and the work of connecting the rules to the student’s own prose falls to the parent. That’s a real burden for families who weren’t English majors themselves. Grammar for Writers makes that connection explicit in every lesson. Rogers is a working novelist, and he never lets the student forget that the point of all this is to write better sentences.
Choose Rod and Staff if your student thrives with workbook-based, repetitive instruction and you want exhaustive grammar coverage for its own sake. Choose Grammar for Writers if you want a program where every lesson answers the question: how does this make my writing better?
6. What a Lesson Looks Like in Practice
Take Lesson 7: Passive Voice Makes Your Writing Weak. Here is the sequence a student works through.
Rogers opens by placing the concept in context: what passive voice is, why writers reach for it, and why it so often weakens the sentences it appears in. This takes about three minutes. He is not lecturing; he is teaching. The difference is that he teaches the way a writer thinks, using examples drawn from real writing rather than invented textbook sentences.
He then introduces the grammatical structure itself: how passive constructions are built, how to identify them, and why they hide the actor. This is the move most grammar programs stop at. Rogers does not stop here.
He asks: now that you can see this, what do you do about it? The lesson ends not with a definition but with a principle the student can apply to the next sentence he or she writes. The quiz requires exactly that: not “identify the passive voice in this sentence” but “rewrite this sentence in active voice and explain what changed.”
Jolanthe Erb, who reviewed the course, called it “a SOLID program for high school students. With an engaging instructor, in-depth lessons, it would be an asset to a homeschool family and a great half-credit option for high school.”
Kendra Fletcher added: “Grammar for Writers helps the student learn to analyze their own writing, which is a tremendously helpful tool for the college-bound student or the kid who is passionately writing stories and dreams of being a professional writer.”
“Grammar for Writers is approachable and welcoming, not stuffy and intimidating. The lessons are manageable yet thorough.”
Ashley C.
→ Try three free sample lessons from Grammar for Writers
This is a sample lesson from the Compass Classroom platform. After reading how a lesson works, watch the sequence Rogers follows — notice how quickly he moves from grammar concept to writing application.
7. The Learning Environment
Grammar for Writers is hosted on the Compass Classroom platform. Students receive 18 months of streaming access from enrollment, and the course is entirely self-paced: there are no live sessions, no required deadlines, and no penalty for slowing down on a difficult module.
Three free sample lessons are available before purchase. They are a fair representation of how Jonathan Rogers teaches, and we recommend starting there before committing to anything.
Each lesson comes with lecture notes and a quiz, all collected in a 319-page PDF available for download. Families who prefer working on paper can purchase a printed spiral-bound book separately.
“Has been very helpful for my daughter. She can FINALLY understand passive voice! She loves the program!”
Heather B.
The standard license covers one student. Group and co-op licenses are available on the group license page.
8. Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best homeschool grammar curriculum for high school?
The best homeschool grammar curriculum for high school is one that connects grammar mastery directly to better writing, not just to identification of grammatical structures. Grammar for Writers by Jonathan Rogers is designed specifically around that goal, taught by a published novelist who approaches grammar as a writing tool rather than a subject to be memorized.
What age and level is Grammar for Writers designed for?
The course is designed for students 14 and older, or strong upper-middle-school students with a solid reading foundation. No formal grammar background is required. Rogers builds from the ground up, starting with the most fundamental elements of a sentence. What the course does assume is a student who already reads and writes with reasonable confidence and is ready to think analytically about the sentences he or she produces.
My student already completed a grammar program. Will this just repeat the same ground?
Probably not. Most grammar programs focus on identification and classification, which is different territory from what Grammar for Writers covers. Even students who have done several years of grammar work typically find the course opens up new ways of thinking about their sentences. The starting point is familiar; the destination is different.
How long does it take to complete the course?
Most families finish in one semester, working through two or three lessons per week. The self-paced format means there’s no penalty for slowing down on a difficult module or moving quickly through concepts a student already understands well.
Does the course include writing assignments?
The quizzes require students to rewrite and construct sentences, not just label them, so there is applied writing work built into every lesson. Grammar for Writers is not, however, a full composition course. It’s focused on sentence-level grammar and how it connects to better writing. Families looking for a complete English credit typically pair it with Jonathan Rogers’s Creative Writing series.
Can we use this for a co-op or group setting?
The standard license covers one student. Group and co-op licenses are available on the group license page.
Is the course appropriate for reluctant writers?
It depends on the reluctance. If a student dislikes writing because grammar feels arbitrary and the mistakes feel random, Grammar for Writers is often a turning point: it makes the rules make sense. If the resistance runs deeper, the Creative Writing series may be the better place to start.
Ready to See How Jonathan Rogers Teaches?
If your student has already spent a year or two on grammar workbooks and isn’t writing noticeably better, I have good news: that is a solvable problem, and it doesn’t require starting over. Grammar for Writers takes what your student already knows and connects it to something he or she can actually use. Most families notice a difference in their student’s writing within the first few weeks.
We’d love for you to try three free sample lessons before you decide anything. It costs nothing, takes about thirty minutes, and gives you a real picture of how Jonathan Rogers teaches. I think you’ll like what you see.
Families building a complete one-credit English year may also want to explore Creative Writing with Jonathan Rogers, which pairs naturally with this course and is taught by the same instructor.
Specs
- Ages: 14 and up (or strong upper-middle-school students)
- Credit: ½ credit High School Language Arts or Writing
- Price: $100
- Format: Streaming video, self-paced, 18 months access
- Includes: 41 video lessons across 4 modules (~6.5 hours); lecture notes and quizzes (319-page PDF); printed spiral book available separately
- On the transcript: Record as ½ credit Language Arts or ½ credit Writing. Covers grammatical structure, sentence analysis, and applied composition: appropriate documentation for a college-prep transcript.
Jonathan Rogers, PhD studied literature at Vanderbilt University and has taught writing at the university level for many years. He is the author of the Wilderking Trilogy, The World According to Narnia, The Terrible Speed of Mercy (widely considered one of the finest biographies of Flannery O’Connor in print), and a biography of Saint Patrick. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. What makes Rogers the right person to teach grammar is not his academic background but his working life: he has spent his career doing what he teaches, writing books that require exactly the kind of sentence-level precision Grammar for Writers is built to produce.
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