Here is a strange thing about grammar education. A student can correctly identify the subject, verb, direct object, and every modifier in a sentence, pass a quiz on participial phrases, diagram a compound-complex sentence without breaking a sweat, and still write a weak paragraph. The knowledge is there. The writing doesn’t show it.
This gap is more common than most parents realize, and it isn’t a student problem. It’s a design problem.
Grammar programs are 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 grammar programs stop at the first. They teach students to analyze sentences written by other people. They rarely teach students to build better sentences of their own.
Jonathan Rogers, who has spent his career teaching writing to college students and older, puts his finger on the real problem: for most students, the key to better writing isn’t learning new skills so much as clearing away the clutter of bad habits to get back to fundamental skills that have been there all along. Those fundamentals aren’t complicated. Most students already have them. They just can’t find them under everything else.
The best homeschool grammar curriculum for high school clears that clutter. It starts with the same grammatical structures every other program teaches, and then asks the question most programs skip: now that you understand this, how does it change the way you write?
Table of Contents
- What Good Grammar Instruction Actually Does
- Three Questions to Ask Before You Choose
- How the Major Programs Compare
- Grammar for Writers: Grammar Taught by a Writer
- What the Course Includes
- Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a short clip from Lesson 1 of Grammar for Writers. Jonathan Rogers introduces the building blocks of strong writing in under six minutes.
1. What Good Grammar Instruction Actually Does
When grammar instruction works, three things happen, and they happen quickly.
First, students 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: a nominalized verb where an action verb should be, a subject buried six words from its verb, a passive construction where an active one would hit harder. That diagnostic ability is worth more than any grammar rule they can recite.
Second, grammar rules stop being fences and start being tools. 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 rather than a requirement. Students leave the course knowing when to break the rules, not just when to follow them.
“Grammar for Writers is an excellent way to introduce or reinforce grammar for your students. 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.
Third, improvement is immediate and visible. This is the part most grammar programs never deliver. Ina Cochran, an adult writer who took the course, wrote to us mid-course:
“I was truly amazed by how quickly I was able to identify the problems in my writing and come up with the solutions to fix them. My eyes have been opened wide to one of many truths he has shared: good writing is always about precision, not embellishment.”
Ina Cochran
That kind of result doesn’t come from a program that teaches students to label. It comes from a program that teaches students to write.
2. Three Questions to Ask Before You Choose
Not every grammar curriculum is trying to do the same thing, and knowing that upfront saves a lot of frustration. Before you compare programs, ask these three questions.
Do you want grammar mastery that transfers immediately to better writing, or grammar mastery that prepares for standardized tests? Some programs are excellent at preparing students to identify parts of speech on a test. Others are built to make students better writers. These are related goals but not the same goal, and the best curriculum for one is not always the best for the other.
Is your student 14 or older, with a reading and composition foundation already in place? Grammar for Writers is built for older students who can already write a sentence and are ready to think analytically about what makes it work. It’s not a beginner program, and it doesn’t try to be.
Are you looking for a self-paced video course, or a workbook-driven program? The right format matters as much as the right content. A strong curriculum in the wrong format is a frustrating year.
3. How the Major Programs Compare
Most high school homeschool families researching grammar curriculum will encounter the same three programs. All three are worth knowing, because 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. Students read short passages containing deliberate errors, identify the problems, and correct them. It’s a manageable daily habit, and students who stick with it do become sharper at catching common mistakes in their own work.
The question worth asking is: what kind of sharpness are you after? Fix It! produces better proofreaders. Students learn to recognize what’s wrong in a sentence someone else wrote. Grammar for Writers produces better writers. Students learn to build stronger sentences of their own. If your student is in middle school and needs a light grammar habit woven into the school day, Fix It! is a reasonable choice. If your student is in high school and the goal is better writing, not just better proofreading, Grammar for Writers is the more direct route.
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.
The honest observation is that mastering a grammar system and writing better are not the same achievement. 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. Grammar for Writers makes that connection the point of every lesson. If your student loves the puzzle-like quality of diagramming and wants structural knowledge for its own sake, Analytical Grammar is excellent. If the goal is writing, Grammar for Writers will get there faster.
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 as 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. Jonathan Rogers is a working novelist, and he never lets the student forget that the point of all this is to write better sentences.
4. Grammar for Writers: Grammar Taught by a Writer
Jonathan Rogers begins his course with a claim most grammar programs never make: at its heart, good vivid language isn’t so much about conveying information as it is about rendering experience.
Think about how children learn to talk. They start with concrete nouns, things they can see and hear and touch: mama, daddy, kitty, milk. Pretty soon they add verbs. Kitty says meow. Milk spilled. Daddy is funny. The language is immediate, physical, present. It puts the listener inside the moment. Then something happens. School rewards abstraction. Students learn to express complex ideas in complex grammatical structures; abstract thought requires abstract language, and this is appropriate. The problem is that the movement toward abstraction often kills the vividness that made early language so alive. Students end up writing sentences that convey information accurately and render nothing at all.
Grammar for Writers is built to reverse that drift. Rogers’s central principle is this: actors and actions should become subjects and verbs. The grammar of a sentence should align with the action it depicts. When a student writes with actors as subjects and actions as verbs, the writing feels true to the reader. When those elements are misaligned (when actions are buried in abstract nouns and actors disappear from the sentence entirely), the prose goes flat regardless of how grammatically correct it is.
His method follows directly from that principle. The course strips sentences to their main clause first, asking the simplest possible question: who did what? From that foundation, Rogers builds back up through four modules, adding modifiers, noun equivalents, and the connective structures that join clauses together. Each layer is taught with a question attached: what does this do to the reader? By the end, students don’t just know the grammatical terms. They know what each structure does.
“Everything else in this module,” Rogers says in the course introduction, “is just a specific and technical outworking of that idea of turning actors and actions into subjects and verbs. Once you grasp and apply that idea, your writing will be transformed immediately.”
Rogers is qualified to make that promise. He is the author of the Wilderking Trilogy, The World According to Narnia, and The Terrible Speed of Mercy, widely considered one of the finest biographies of Flannery O’Connor in print. He has taught writing at the university level and through Compass Classroom. He is not a grammarian who learned to write. He is a writer who understands grammar from the inside, and the difference is audible in every lesson.
“Grammar for Writers is approachable and welcoming, not stuffy and intimidating. The lessons are manageable yet thorough. The instructor’s teaching style is appealing for homeschool parents and students alike, keeping everyone interested and engaged.”
Ashley C.
Cathy Duffy reviewed Grammar for Writers and highlighted Rogers’s distinctive approach: beginning with the bare essentials of who-did-what before building up the layers of complexity most grammar programs introduce from the start. Her full review is available at cathyduffyreviews.com.
Other reviewers have been equally direct. Jolanthe Erb 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 noted that “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.”
Here is Jonathan Rogers teaching Lesson 9: Nominalization, one of the most distinctive lessons in the course, and a good example of how he connects every grammatical concept directly to the act of writing better.
5. What the Course Includes
Grammar for Writers is a self-paced video course on the Compass Classroom platform. It includes 41 video lessons across four modules, totaling approximately 6.5 hours of instruction. Most lessons run around nine minutes, long enough to cover a concept thoroughly and short enough to keep a high schooler’s attention.
Each lesson comes with lecture notes and a quiz. All notes and quizzes are available as a 319-page PDF download; families who prefer paper can purchase a printed spiral-bound book instead. Students receive 18 months of streaming access from enrollment.
Three free sample lessons are available before you commit to anything. They’re a fair sample of how Jonathan Rogers teaches, and we recommend starting there.
“Has been very helpful for my daughter. She can FINALLY understand passive voice! Yay!! She loves the program!”
Heather B.
→ Try three free sample lessons from Grammar for Writers
This is one of the three free sample lessons available on the Compass Classroom platform. Watch as much as you like to get a feel for how Jonathan Rogers teaches.
Course Specifications
- Ages: 14 and up (or upper middle school students with a strong reading foundation)
- Credit: ½ credit High School Language Arts or Writing
- Price: $100
- Format: Streaming video, self-paced, 18 months access
- Includes: 41 video lessons, lecture notes and quizzes (PDF); printed spiral book available separately
- On the transcript: Record this course as ½ credit Language Arts or ½ credit Writing. It covers grammatical structure, sentence analysis, and applied composition: appropriate documentation for a college-prep transcript. Students who continue with Jonathan Rogers’s Creative Writing courses can combine the two for a full one-credit English year.
6. Frequently Asked Questions
What age 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. It assumes a student who can already write a basic essay and is ready to think analytically about sentence structure.
Does my student need prior grammar instruction to take this course?
No formal grammar background is required. Rogers builds from the ground up, starting with the most fundamental elements of a sentence. That said, the course moves at a high school pace and works best for students who are already confident readers.
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.
The full course is $100 with 18 months of access. 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.
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