Where to start?

[Maria]

The college where I teach recently started a new semester and once again I am teaching an intermediate grammar course. I use Fundamentals of English Grammar (Azar) with these students, but I always spend the first 5 lessons outside the book with a module that I developed- part review, part new information. I always begin this course with a review of subject, verb, and prepositional phrases, and then move to clauses and the ways to connect independent and dependent clauses.

I do this because I want grammar to have an immediate effect on their writing course, and one way to have an immediate effect is to show students how to avoid run-ons and fragments by being able to identify and repair them. (I do prepositional phrases only from the view of knowing that your subject is not in a prepositional phrase and a prep phrase is not a clause.)

I'm wondering about how other grammar teachers, especially those who teach adults, begin their semesters? Which grammar points come first, and why?