A Certain Age

Grammar is the underlying structure that makes languages work. Knowing that makes using the a language precisely and accurately much more likely.

To continue your analogy, would you expect a physicist to do the necessary maths without a good understanding of trigonometry? Or a builder not to understand why foundations are built that way?

I do agree with you that the level of grammar taught to 7yr olds is probably excessive, but learning why one sentence works well and another doesn't - for example - can only be a good thing. We were taught such things at my junior school, over forty years ago, so it's hardly a new idea.

Posted by Bazyle on 09/03/2021 18:55:06:Not one iota << note use of latin

It's Greek, strictly speaking.

Partly tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure.

Actually, most English study at university is a study of the literature rather than the language*. It shouldn't be, in my view, since "knowing" even your own language well requires a lot more than just habitually speaking and writing it; just as most people who can drive a car don't know much about what's under the bonnet, most native speakers of a language have only a superficial understanding of the history, morphology, syntax and signification of the words they're using. It usually also means they "drive their car", i.e. use their language, less skilfully or sensitively than they otherwise might.

*I exclude linguistics subjects, but then the focus of linguistics courses rarely confines itself to the English language.

I heard that radio item too, and tried dredging the mental scrap-yard to unearth my own memories.

To the best as I can remember, we learnt (or were at least taught) Arithmetic to a fairly high level starting in Infants' and finishing in Primary School - "Mathematics" was for the senior school.

For English classes though, I don't recall any analysis beyond perhaps knowing a noun, adjective and verb. Instead the emphasis was on writing reasonably coherent English prose that didn't break too many rules, and "Comprehension" - of set texts, usually passages from novels. In other words, learning what language does first, which is convey messages.

I do wonder now though, just what schools do teach under the heading "English". They might ram parsing grammar down primary-pupils' throats, but do not seem to teach understanding words.

Hence for example, go out "on the quad-bike, and return back with the pre-ordered" shopping. Dr. Who on an 8-wheeled off-road vehicle?

Or the campaigning politician's "I want the nation to solve its fault-lines and be at the epicentre of....!" Really? Not solve the faults and be at the centre then?

'

The best English lesson I ever had?

The message written inside a parting gift book from my teacher when our Dad's work move took us far from my native Emsworth, when I was coming up to 7. She wrote on the fly-leaf, "Keep on reading". I still have it, somewhere.

The book was A.A. Milnes' Winnie The Pooh, so if you knew that too, you will recognise the influence if a mischievous moment means me denoting Something Very Important by capital initial letters.

'

Terry -

- nearly putting the milk back in the wrong place... Phew! So I am not alone in such antics! Ah, but surely that's 'cos our minds are on Higher Things at the time - welding, perhaps?

The reason they are now teaching grammar in schools again is that for the past 30 years all the old gits of a certain age were moaning because it was no longer being taught like it was when they were at school. Poor old teachers just can't win.

Ah, but if you never studied English grammar you are not qualified to make the judgement on your own abilities in its use. You could be a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect where those with the lower skill levels have been found to be least aware of their own skills deficits, while those of higher skill levels are more aware. Or you could just be fortunate enough to have a natural talent for language, which not everyone has.

I did a post-grad diploma in English linguistics years ago (after a BA in English Literature). It was fascinating, extremely challenging and ultimately very useful in following mid-life career changes to teacher of English as a second language, journalist and newspaper editor.

Ironically, at one stage I taught English to foreign students trying to pass the exam to get into American universities. Their knowledge of English grammar and usage was way ahead of American high school graduates - or most American university graduates for that matter -- but they still struggled with that English exam. There is more to it than most people realize.

Edited By Hopper on 09/03/2021 23:16:26

I don't envy the teaching profession at all.

It can't seem to please anyone - local authorities, school governors, the parents whose 'orrible brats, sorry, exemplary little darlings, can do no wrong. Plus being one of those services, like health and agriculture, that politicians of all parties and no professional knowledge cannot resist tinkering with, experimenting with, commissioning Reports for Shelving On; overhauling, regulating, up-grading (as in IT "up-grades".... all to be seen Doing Something Important.

And not least, we grumpy old So-and-Sos putting the World back to the rights we left it in, from our sheds.

I attended a secondary technical school 60-odd years ago, and we were not taught much in the way of grammar in our English classes. We also had to learn German, the teacher had to teach us the basic grammar of that language, and very soon learned that we didn't understand the basic grammar of our mother tongue, so had little comprehension of the rules of the foreign language. The poor man was in despair, as he then had to start teaching us English grammar, which was perhaps what the English teacher should have been doing - I don't know, as I don't know what the English language syllabus at that school covered. In recent months I've been proof-reading a book that a friend of mine is writing, I've been swotting up on English grammar to help me do this, and it's jolly difficult, especially for my aged brain.

The worst examples of bad English these days, both in Grammar and the use of inappropriate words, seems to be the BBC.

It's certainly not as good as it used to be

Roy

And most of the scruffy oiks on the BBC don't even wear dinner suits and bowties, what is the world coming to?

That's because they stopped teaching them grammar in school about 30 years ago. They have only recently brought it back, and that is what the current generation of old gits is complaining about.

I used to get the biggest kick when school teachers would call up the newspaper and complain about a perceived error and I could tell them: "Yes, madam. We just can't get good staff any more. They come out of school and university and they still don't know how to spell or write a sentence until we train them ourselves. It's terrible." It would go all quiet on the other end of the phone.

Or someone would call up and roar down the phone: "Don't you people have proofreaders at your bloody newspaper?" and I was able to tell them "No sir, we don't. They were all made redundant and laid off 10 years ago so we could keep the cover price down to what readers are prepared to pay."

These days they don't even have sub-editors, let alone proof readers. The reporters edit their own copy and write their own headlines, with dire results.

Seems quaint in today's world that someone would pick up the phone and call the editor to complain in person about such things. Happy days.

Edited By Hopper on 10/03/2021 11:24:04

Edited By Hopper on 10/03/2021 11:25:47

Arguably there is no such thing as 'English Grammar', at least not in the way grammar works in many other languages like Latin.

Problem is, English isn't a pure language following simple rules. Rather English has enthusiastically adopted language features, words and constructs from multiple different sources for a couple of millenia. It used to be scholastically respectable to apply Latin grammar to English, but the whole endeavour is unnatural and strained, and has mostly been abandoned. It's because Latin grammar applies only to the romance element of English (mostly imported via Norman French, not from the Romans), and it doesn't work on anything Germanic, Norse, or Celtic. And since the middle-ages, English has become global, as can be seen in words like shampoo, bungalow, cul-de-sac, tattoo, cash, karaoke, robot, piano, hooligan, and cliche. The process continues today, with us picking US, Australian, South African, New Zealand, Indian, and other non-british usages. If we find a word or phrase useful, we adopt it!

The result is a huge language, extremely expressive and flexible, but not amenable to rule-based teaching. What's usually done is to teach much simplified guidance like the ' I before E except after C' rule. This is generally helpful, but don't take it too seriously because more English words break that rule than obey it. Pedants beware - you are probably wrong.

I feel it's better for most of us to learn the living language 'English as She is Spoke', rather than waste a lot of time trying to learn a lot of rules, that don't work when you look closely at them. Consistent spelling, reasonable punctuation and meaningful structures are good enough for me. Reading other people's work, it's rarely grammar, spelling or punctuation that make it hard to understand, more usually it's mixing ideas up, putting them in the wrong order, wandering off the point and leaving out important information that make it hard to decode. I've seen many badly spelt posts with grammatical errors that made more sense than well spelt, grammatically correct muddled thinking. (Me included - what I typed is not always what I meant!)

Academic study is a different game entirely, well worth doing for other reasons. One is it does apply a certain useful level of structure to what might be total chaos, which is important in the sort of material that benefits from clarity - textbooks, law, novels, newspapers, and websites!

I doubt it was a good idea to teach German Grammar from an English base, even if the class knew what that was. When in Rome do as the Romans...

I went to a Grammar School that didn't teach grammar. I don't think it did me any harm.

Dave

Predictive text will do that + a degree in Spolling un Grimmer

The Romans had no monopoly on grammar. Every language, including English, has an underlying grammar. It can be complicated and there can be exceptions but its there. Every three year old English speaker knows it, but just does not know they know it.

Spelling is a different thing - that's writing, not language. It's a representation of language, which is a representation of what the speaker is trying to convey, which is a representation of reality, maybe...

Before starting my marine engineering apprenticeship I went to a secondary modern skool where I did rural studies which comprised digging the skool allotment/garden......none of your fancy grammar skool antics for me....

I still struggle over verbs, nouns and what they mean etc....but even I know the difference between their and there....

Regards to all

Derek

My english teacher at Tech would always use these two examples of poor english

Tube train on fire passengers alight and To touch these wires is sudden death anyone doing so will be proscuted !

H

I came on here today to read a particular thread, but having read all this great funny one. Iv forgotten what it was......

I was always taught never start a sentence with “and”.......  or am I the dolly old duffer?

Edited By Zan on 10/03/2021 13:42:41

It was quite a while before I realised that all the structure we were taught in Latin also applied to English. Unfortunately the nice tidy Latin makes you realise what a mess English is.

Mike

That's one of the invented rules. It's a good idea not to start a sentence with a conjunction very often, but that's a style criticism not grammar. It does require reading and editing your own text, which seems to be rare when you can bash out a couple of hundred words, press send and do something else.

I wonder how Nigel wrote his 'coherent prose without breaking any rules' if he wasn't taught the rules? They never explained the rules of cricket to me, so I spent one summer afternoon a week dodging the missiles that occasionally came flying my way. I certainly wasn't playing the game.

We learnt about nouns, verbs, adjectives, tenses and basic parsing of sentences in junior school and were expected to correctly spell words we used frequently. More technical grammar was taught at senior school, under the reasoning that we would be able to write and speak clear, concise English if we knew how it worked. That's how I learn things today, 32 years after leaving school.

Is this not the gradual expected evolution of language though? As has happened with all languages throughout the ages?

I was taught the following: "there is a number of items" is correct , "There are a number of items" is not correct because there is only one number.

But I see the second incorrect statement all the time. Was my teacher wrong or has the language changed? Colin