Year 5 English test - nails down a blackboard

[Febbers]

I’m checking DD’s homework (series of English tests). I am bored to fuck. It is dryer than a desert.

When I was at secondary school, many kids got put off P.E.

Is the English curriculum going to do the equivalent?!

It already is. A level English Language take up has fallen off a cliff since Gove’s reform of the secondary English curriculum.

I can assure you, it’s just as dull to teach.

Gove can shove his fronted adverbials up his arse.

It’s honestly as confusing as fuck. Who needs to know all this stuff? Kids are growing up with very little grasp of basic grammar because too much is shoved at them.

It's not just that it's dry and boring, it's not achieving anything of use for many - well, going by the numbers who apparently meet the KS2 standard but then appear to lose almost everything past about age 6-7 the instant they set foot in a secondary school and sit anything resembling formative assessment, at any rate.

It’s just the level of grammatical detail - I can’t see the point…although I’m inwardly cringing at ‘dryer’!

Just wait until you see the reading list for secondary. I swear the books offered are designed to stop even the most ambitious bookworm reading for pleasure.
I doubt that DD will ever touch a so-called classic after 5 years of English Lit without one book she actually enjoyed reading. DH and I are big readers and she has plenty of variety at home luckily.

I do think grammar learnt at primary actually stucks, DD's 4500 word coursework for A-level history is really beautifully written and the teachers do work with them to make essays interesting to read.

DD loves reading and writing stories, which will hopefully continue, despite Gove’s efforts. @LunanorthGove’s going to need a bigger arse.

Why do kids - or I - need to know about subordinating conjunctions and fronted fucking adverbials?

Well i don’t at a grand old age of almost 50. It has never held me back.

Though to be fair to Gove i would have to think very hard about what a verb was before I opined so prehaps i am in fact not the person

Why do kids - or I - need to know about subordinating conjunctions and fronted fucking adverbials?

Yes, it's pointless!

I have GCE English Language (pre GCSE) and A Level English Language & Literature and I struggled to help DD with her Primary School English homework. I'd never even heard of a fronted adverbial. Fortunately she's out the other side of all that now and about to go to Uni 😊

It sounds dreadful. I was educated in the era that ignored formal grammar teaching and yet I write better than many. I think this comes from always being a reader and school in the 70s focusing heavily on creative writing.

They’re teaching “dryer than a desert”? Have I missed something?

@purbalI meant I cringed at the irony of using an incorrect spelling on a post moaning about what kids are being taught!

Oh I seeeeeeeee. I think I’ve had the Monday morning thing all day… sorry…