THE GOODS : Making Grammar Lessons a Natural Occurrence

Now, you can learn the plural possessive form and save the rain forest.

It’s not an infomercial, it’s “Grammar Games,” a recent software release from Davidson & Associates, one of the leading education software publishers. The company, founded by former Pacific Palisades teacher Jan Davidson, vaulted to fame and fortune with “Math Blaster,” a pioneering piece of software that combined serious learning with unabashed game play.

To educators who complained Davidson was trivializing education by combining lessons and computer games, the soft-spoken Davidson simply answered that they understood neither. And since those pioneering days of educational software--the late 1980s--her concepts have been copied by dozens of publishers putting out math, reading, vocabulary, spelling and other so-called “edusoft” titles.

Davidson’s group is probably the first to tackle the relatively dry subject of grammar. The company meets this issue head-on, on Page One of the manual for “Grammar Games.”

“Well, grammar is very important, but it can also be very dull,” it reads.

To make the topic entertaining, Davidson’s group used lessons concerning punctuation, possessives, subject-verb agreement, sentence fragments and verb usage, and packaged them within games that have a rain forest theme.

Thus, “Grammar Games” is perhaps the most politically correct of edusoft titles. More important, it’s also one of the most entertaining.

The game, aimed at age 10 to adult, starts with a “diagnostic” 30-question test to determine where the student might need work. The test results are not given in detail, but because the program suggests I start on Level Two (out of a possible three) in punctuation and possessives, I presume I missed at least a couple of those questions. (This will come as no surprise to my editors--I’m just thankful the game isn’t about spelling.)

Starting in safe territory, I turned to the sentence fragment game. On the screen was a rain forest scene with trees, a meandering river and a plateau. Soon havoc broke out--a bulldozer started mowing down trees, fire destroyed part of the forest and animals cowered.

It’s up to the player to come to the rescue by judging whether statements that appear in a box at the bottom of the screen are complete sentences or fragments.

When you get one right, you are given fuel for a waiting helicopter. Amass enough fuel, and your chopper can take to the air to drop water on the fires, transport animals to the safety of the plateau and snag the bulldozer before it does more harm.

In the punctuation game, you fill in the appropriate punctuation marks in a sentence by having a toucan catch them in its beak. In the plurals and possessives game, a correct answer allows you to add on to a Rube Goldberg-style gizmo that is activated when enough parts are in place. And correct answers in the verb form game reveal colorful, hidden flowers and creatures in a scene.

The only complaint I have with “Grammar Games” is that it does not cover some of the most difficult of grammar points, such as lie versus lay.

But then again, who really cares? Or is it whom . . . ?

* Cyburbia’s Internet address is Colker@news.latimes.com.