IEW vs CW

[Marsha]

I am fairly new to incorporating writing into our homeschool. There is a lot of talk around this area that IEW is great, while I hear others say that they don't like the style in later years. What is the main difference between the two? Are there pros and cons of each?

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

I honestly don't know how to answer your question. It has been years since I looked at IEW, and that program has added so many 'bells and whistles' since I did, I honestly do not know.

It is hard to compare programs. Some programs are clearly inferior to others, but for the most part it's an issue of what you are looking for, the amount of time you can take weekly to teach it, your own level of preparation that will determine what will work well for you.

What I can tell you is what our priorities were when we began writing Classical Writing.

1. Mastery of written expression of the English language is of primary importance in an education. (It trumps everything else, even math. If you cannot express yourself clearly in English, and likewise understand what others write in English, you have not been educated properly)

2. To that end we emphasize grammar as an invaluable component to learning to write well. Grammar is not just a measuring stick for correctness, but an aid to crafting better sentences, better paragraphs, and better essays.

3. You learn to write by analyzing and imitating great writing.

4. For that reason we advocate a broad and extensive reading list of the classics.

5. We learn to write by using the methods of great writers that went before us.

6. To that end we dig into the methods of writing that were taught in antiquity and try to follow them authentically.

If your student were to use Classical Writing, plan to spend about 45 minutes per day with CW in the younger grades and more like an hour plus in the older grades.

The draw back from CW for some teachers is that they don't want to prioritize language arts as highly as we do. For others the issue is that it is a learning curve. We teach everything from the ground up, but it takes time getting used to a new method.

I think the plus from CW, as far as I have seen, is that it produces confident writers, students who have a large flexible vocabulary, who are well versed in the classicsl, and also students who don't blink when they hear a Shakespearean quote, however archaic the quote may sound. Kids who are trained by our program are trained to look at each word, each sentence, each paragraph of a piece of writing, parse it, diagram it, paraphrase it, take it apart both grammatically and logically and rhetorically.

I am sure whatever program you want to compare us to, the issue is likely not great or not great, it's more a matter of aligning with your personal goals for language arts. --- AND don't get me wrong, I realize that in our world today EVERYTHING is deadly important and we all feel guilty when we can't do it all... so you have to choose where you want to put your efforts. It may be with a program like ours, or it may be with something that requires less, or is quicker to implement, or one where the focus is more what you had envisioned. Just keep that in mind when you choose.

Lene Jaqua