Shurley English

Shurley English is a K-8 grammar program built around jingles, Question-and-Answer flow, and old-school sentence diagramming, and it is either the most effective grammar program on the homeschool market or the most exhausting, depending on whether a family has the will to run its daily oral drill.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Traditional grammar / oral drill / subject specialist
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (faith-neutral content; founder identifies as Christian)
Grades	K-8 (Levels 1-8)
Formats	Print teacher/student sets; audio jingle recordings; optional video course
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No
Established	1991 by Brenda Shurley
Website	shurley.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Systematic grammar instruction with diagramming rare elsewhere in modern elementary programs
Ease of teaching	3	Scripted and legible, but daily oral component requires parent presence
Content quality	4	Thorough sentence analysis and writing instruction; composition component light relative to grammar
Flexibility	3	Standalone language-arts spine; pairs adequately with separate spelling and literature programs
Value for money	4	Complete kits at reasonable prices relative to competitors; kits reusable across siblings
Worldview scope	5	Faith-neutral content usable across every homeschool worldview
Visual/design	2	Workbook-plain aesthetic; function first
Support resources	4	Active publisher support, training videos, convention presence, reusable audio jingles

Who the publisher is

Shurley English was founded by Brenda Shurley, a classroom teacher in Arkansas who developed the jingle-and-diagramming method in the 1980s after concluding that conventional grammar instruction was failing her students. The first edition of The Shurley Method was published in 1991 through her family business, Shurley Instructional Materials. The program expanded through the 1990s and 2000s into a full K-8 sequence, was widely adopted in Christian schools, classical co-ops, and private schools across the American South, and entered the homeschool market as a parallel channel. The business remains family-owned and operated out of Cabot, Arkansas.

Scale is documentable through the publisher's institutional footprint. Shurley English is used in hundreds of private Christian schools and public-school gifted programs across the United States, which is unusual for a homeschool-channel publisher; most homeschool programs do not sell into the classroom market meaningfully. This institutional reach means that a family using Shurley in the homeschool is using the same material a Shurley-adopted school is using, with a teacher's manual that reproduces what a classroom teacher would say.

Content-wise, Shurley is faith-neutral. The jingles, the Question-and-Answer flow, the diagramming exercises, and the writing samples do not reference Scripture, church history, or any theological content. The program does include American-patriotic and moral-virtue themes in its reading passages, which is typical for grammar programs written for classroom use. Shurley works equally well in Catholic schools, Evangelical schools, classical Christian academies, and secular homeschools.

The core pedagogy

Shurley's method has three moving parts, and all three must run together for the program to work. Part one is the jingle: a short memorized rhyme or song that defines a part of speech, phrase type, or grammatical concept. "A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea..." is the jingle used in every Shurley classroom. Students learn dozens of jingles across eight levels; the jingles are not decorative but serve as a reference library the student carries in memory.

Part two is the Question and Answer flow. Shurley's signature mechanic and the reason the program is often described as "sentence surgery." The teacher presents a sentence, "The tall boy ran quickly.", and the student answers a prescribed series of questions aloud: Who ran quickly? The boy, subject noun. What is being said about the boy? The boy ran, verb. Ran how? Quickly, adverb. By the end of the oral flow, every word in the sentence has been classified by function. The student then diagrams the sentence using Reed-Kellogg-style diagramming, the classical line-diagramming system that mostly disappeared from American schools after the 1970s. Shurley is one of the few mainstream programs that still teaches it.

Part three is composition. Each Shurley level includes a writing sequence that applies the grammar skills to paragraph and multi-paragraph writing, working through narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive forms. The composition strand is adequate but lighter in weight than the grammar strand; families who want a grammar-plus-rhetoric program often pair Shurley with IEW Structure & Style or Classical Academic Press Writing & Rhetoric.

Signature mechanics: (1) Jingles as memory pegs anchoring every grammatical concept. (2) Oral Q&A flow that requires the student to analyze every word in every sentence out loud. (3) Sentence diagramming from Level 2 onward. (4) Cumulative review, each level reviews and extends the prior; a Level 4 student is still drilling Level 1 jingles. (5) Classroom-to-home consistency, the homeschool kit reproduces the classroom teacher experience almost exactly.

A day in the life

A fourth-grader using Shurley Level 4 starts language arts at about 9:30 for roughly 45 minutes. The parent reads the scripted teacher manual aloud; the child joins in on the jingle recitation (5 minutes); the parent presents two or three sentences for Q&A flow and diagramming (15-20 minutes, fully verbal); the child completes a workbook page covering the day's concept (15 minutes); a short writing prompt or editing exercise closes the session (5-10 minutes). The parent is actively present for the entire block. A second child at a different level runs in a separate session. Shurley does not combine well across grade levels.

A seventh-grader using Shurley Level 7 runs similarly but longer. The jingle bank is larger, the sentences being analyzed are compound and complex, and the diagramming covers subordinate clauses and verbals. The writing component shifts toward five-paragraph essays and basic research paragraphs. A Level 7 student typically spends 50 to 60 minutes per day on language arts through Shurley, with the parent's role reduced to sentence presentation and writing conferences rather than full Q&A leadership.

The program assumes a parent who can be present and vocal for the daily session. Shurley does not self-run. The publisher sells an audio jingle CD and, for some levels, a video instructional component that reduces parent load for the grammar portions, families using the video option describe a meaningful difference in teaching energy.

What they do exceptionally well

Grammar fluency. Students who complete Shurley Levels 1 through 6 can identify every word's part of speech and function in a sentence, diagram the sentence, and explain the relationship between clauses. This is not a common outcome in American elementary education; most adults cannot do what a Shurley Level 6 student can do. For families whose long-term aim is strong writing or classical language study (Latin especially benefits), this grammar foundation is difficult to overvalue.

Retention through the jingles. The jingles are a surprisingly durable pedagogical device. Adults who completed Shurley in elementary school report remembering the jingles years later and using them to explain grammar to their own children. The method's bet, that rhythmic rote memory produces retrieval, is borne out in practice more reliably than most homeschool parents expect.

Publisher reliability. Shurley Instructional Materials answers the phone, sells direct, provides training videos, and maintains convention presence. For a specialty grammar publisher operating from Arkansas, this level of customer support is rare and valued by long-term users.

What they do poorly

Parent time cost. The oral Q&A flow is non-negotiable to the method and is non-trivial in daily time. Families with multiple elementary students using Shurley simultaneously describe the program as the most time-intensive element of their school day. The audio-and-video options help; they do not eliminate the cost.

Thin composition strand. The writing portion of Shurley is adequate for the paragraph level but does not carry a student into strong expository, persuasive, or research writing above Level 6. Families using Shurley as their only language-arts program through middle school commonly need to add a dedicated writing curriculum, IEW, Essentials in Writing, or Writing with Skill, from about sixth grade on.

No high school continuation. Shurley ends at Level 8. Families wanting the same systematic grammar-and-diagramming approach for ninth through twelfth grade must transition to Analytical Grammar, Our Mother Tongue, or a classical rhetoric program. The transition is workable but not seamless.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Shurley English if: you want systematic grammar instruction with traditional sentence diagramming; you are willing to run a daily oral drill with your child; you value a faith-neutral program usable across secular, Catholic, Protestant, classical, and traditional homeschools; you are preparing a child for Latin study or for serious academic writing; your child thrives with rhythm, rhyme, and oral memorization.

• Skip Shurley English if: you cannot sustain 45 to 60 minutes of parent-led oral instruction daily; you prefer an inductive or literature-based approach to language arts; your child resists rote memorization and oral recitation; you want an integrated reading-writing-grammar program such as The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts or All About Learning Press; you are homeschooling through high school and want a single language-arts publisher from K through 12.

Cost honest assessment

A complete Shurley Level 4 Homeschool Kit, teacher's manual, student workbook, jingle audio, and Test Book, runs approximately $85 to $100 as of April 2026 from the publisher's site. Replacement student workbooks for a second or third sibling run approximately $35 each. The teacher manual and audio are reusable across siblings, which materially changes the per-child cost for larger families.

Compared to Analytical Grammar (approximately $95 for a complete grade-seven-and-up kit), Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts (approximately $150 to $200 per level when complete), and Rod and Staff English (approximately $25 to $40 per grade, textbook-only), Shurley sits in the middle of the grammar-program market. Per-year cost is lower than most integrated language-arts programs because grammar is Shurley's only subject, spelling, literature, and reading are purchased separately.

A realistic all-in family budget for two elementary students using Shurley plus a separate spelling and literature program runs $200 to $350 per year.

ESA eligibility notes

Shurley English appears on most state ESA marketplaces that fund print curriculum, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students marketplace, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship program, and Utah's Utah Fits All. Because Shurley content is faith-neutral, it clears most states' religious-content filters without complication. Families in states that restrict religious curriculum but permit faith-neutral Christian-school-aligned publishers should find Shurley approvable; the publisher's institutional sales channel has kept direct vendor paperwork current with most state marketplaces.

Alternatives

• Analytical Grammar, a family would choose Analytical Grammar over Shurley because Analytical Grammar compresses the full diagramming sequence into grades 7 through 9 in a high-intensity format, freeing up elementary years for literature and composition rather than daily grammar drill.
• Rod and Staff English, a Mennonite or plain-community family would choose Rod and Staff over Shurley because Rod and Staff teaches the same classical grammar content through textbook independent work at roughly one-third the cost, though without the oral jingle-and-Q&A method.
• Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts, a family wanting an integrated grammar-plus-literature-plus-poetry-plus-vocabulary program would choose MCT over Shurley because MCT weaves the four strands into a single aesthetic package designed for bright and gifted students, at significantly higher cost and with less diagramming structure.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Shurley English curriculum pages at shurley.com, the publisher's scope-and-sequence documentation by level, and sample lessons available on the publisher site. We cross-referenced with founder biography material, Cathy Duffy Reviews' published write-up on Shurley, and HSLDA's publisher directory. Prices and kit contents verified April 2026.