How to Explain Grammatical Rules:

In general, it helps to explain many of the grammatical rules to children to help them understand why we say things the way we do.  For example, a child can easily figure out if they need to say “a” or “an” by knowing if the following word begins with a vowel or a consonant.  In order to help the child understand that, we explain that grammatical rule by saying “If the following word starts with a vowel, say “an”.  If it starts with a consonant, say “a”.

More Complex Grammatical Rules:

English is a beautiful language full of some of the most aggravating grammatical rules around.  For example, did you know that when you are describing a noun with multiple adjectives, you must categorize and then order your adjectives according to this sequence: Quantity, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, Purpose?  (For example, you would say “many, funny, big, 7-year-old, round, red, Viatnemese, latex balloons.  It would sound wrong in any other order!)  Now, that is not exactly the type of grammatical rule I would teach my Kindergartner, would you?  And frustratingly for us speech therapists, our language is full of those!

When to Teach the Rules:

For each grammatical rule that you’re teaching, you need to consider the age and cognitive level of the child along with how complex the rule actually is.  For example, most children can figure out the “a” vs. “an” rule fairly easily if they are able to understand the difference between a vowel and a consonant.  However, I wouldn’t try to teach a young child the order of adjectives.

What if a Rule is Too Complex?

If a rule is too complex for a child, then you will most likely just need to resort to modeling and correcting without really providing a reason for why.  For example, if a Kindergartner says “it’s a red, big ball”, you would say “we say ‘big, red ball’.”  Then, have the child repeat it back to you.  Ideally, the child will correct the error and learn the rule naturally, the way most children learn it, which is just by hearing it said correctly enough times.  If the child is really struggling, you can try creating a simplified version of the rule, like “the color goes last” or something along those lines.