Elementary English Composition

At Clapham School I am using this as our textbook for teaching composition. This marvelous composition course of study published in 1902 is no idle compilation. Written by Fred Newton Scott, Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan, and Joseph Villiers Denney, Professor of Rhetoric and English Language in Ohio State University, this is a textbook that has been rigorously and painstakingly planned out. EEC aims to build great writers on a solid and comprehensive foundation, beginning with overviews of oral and written composition, proceeding to description, narration, explanation and argument both oral and written.
The preface explains its unique methodology, which beautifully complements Clapham’s reliance on Charlotte Mason’s pedagogy: “the indifference of the pupils to their English composition is due in part to the isolation of written from spoken discourse. The artificial separation of two things which naturally belong together takes the heart out of both of them. Hence we find in the schools writing that is feeble and impersonal, and oratory that is flamboyant and insincere. That the simple utterances of daily desires and needs are as truly compositions as the most labored essays, that essays are best when they are the simple utterance of daily desires and needs, are lessons which pupils, if they have not already learned them, cannot learn too early in their secondary education.” Scott and Denney have laid out a plan to raise the level of all of students’ discourse, so that composition becomes for them as natural as life itself.