Knowledge of English grammar, including punctuation, is essential for effective reading and writing.  At Amanda Dixon PhD, grammar is typically taught at a much deeper level than classroom teachers have time for, as  doing so generally results in far greater improvement. Lessons are always tailored to individual students, but may include:

• the five rules for sentences e.g. start with a capital letter, have a subject and verb, make sense.
• parts of speech e.g. nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions.
• sentence parts e.g. subjects, predicates, modifiers, determiners, phrases, connectives.
• different sentence types - simple, compound, complex, complex-compound sentences.
• avoiding run-on sentences.
• sophisticated sentence structure e.g. developing an understanding of finite and non-finite clauses.
• academic writing skills e.g. parallelism, active versus passive voice, nominalisation, losing track of the subject.