Carolyn McLellan has been helping students at Greenfield Community College get up to speed in their English skills since she started working there in 1972. When she was first hired, she was taught a special way to teach grammar and through the years she adapted the method to her own style for her students.

She has taught other courses, and even founded the dance program and the English as a second language program, but she has always taught the developmental English course, a course for students who aren't quite at the level they need to be to take college level courses. These are the students that benefit most from the method of teaching she learned. In the ‘90s, she wrote a book called "X-Word Grammar," a workbook/textbook for her class based on the teaching method she learned when she first arrived at GCC.

However, the problem has been that in the second level of English — English 101 — she always has a mix of students who have learned English with her book and other students who are a bit behind them. It has been a struggle to get them all on the same page, so to speak. "It has been a mixed class, some have taken "X-word" and some haven't. They are still messing around with fragments and know very little about punctuation," she said. Now McLellan is hoping that this will change.

Last spring she decided to take "X-word" and convert it to a book using the traditional grammar terms. What resulted is a new book for the second level course called "IC/DC/P." That stands for "independent clause," "dependent clause" and "phrase." "X-Word Grammar" teaches students how to recognize the different parts of a simple sentence and the difference between a fragment and a sentence.

Using mnemonic devices, McLellan makes grammar fun with her book. She teaches students to recognize the X-words, which are words that help you identify simple sentences by turning them into questions, and to recognize the "villain words," which are subordinating conjunctions that turn sentences and phrases into dependent clauses.

"They get a kick out of that and they remember it," she said. The new book "IC/DC/P" takes students to the next level, showing them Standard American English grammar terms and pushing their writing skills. But, it still uses a lot of the learning tricks McLellan used in her first book.

The cover photo for the new book was taken by Judy Flynn, a maintenance worker for GCC and photographer. The picture is of a tall standing tree, which represents an independent clause, with a dead tree leaning on it, representing the dependent clause, and a branch reaching out of it, representing a phrase. McLellan said both books are designed to be used in the classroom or to be used by individuals wanting to teach themselves proper grammar, or just brush up on their skills. Her first book is available at the GCC bookstore and her new book will be out at the beginning of September.