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I can sympathize with Win Day who didn't learn any formal grammar until
German class in high school. I had formal grammar as part of my English
classes in junior high, but I didn't understand it until I took Latin in
high school. We did a variation on sentence diagramming called "kernel
charts," which were used to identify subjects, verbs, and predicates. I've
often said that if I hadn't taken high school Latin, I wouldn't be able to
write for a living today.
It took much longer for me to learn to enjoy writing. The advent of word
processing helped immensely! It also helped to realize that you tend to
enjoy writing what you like to read. I read almost exclusively non-fiction;
maybe my early teachers were pushing too much "creative" writing. If your
sons are well-read, Win, maybe you can encourage them to try writing pieces
of the same style that they like to read.
