Leaving school without a basic grasp of grammar in the 90s

[Hjsjshsn]

That’s it really. I even managed to get a degree. Thankfully my first job in the civil service, they gave us all grammar training. I managed to get through a state education with a national curriculum that didn’t teach grammar. Therefore, if like me your school education didn’t include grammar - when did you realise and how did you overcome it later (if you ever did)?

The realisation came with 1st year university linguistics modules when trying to parse sentences and not knowing the terms or being able to apply them properly as my grammar knowledge didn't go beyond 'verb=doing word' level. In general, the European students on the course got higher marks than us native English speakers (well, certainly the those of us educated at state schools).
I know enough to teach lower primary confidently but if I have to do cover in the higher years I do refresh SpaG stuff before teaching it.

Yes, I often think about this, particularly after seeing my kids going through primary school and being taught 'fronted adverbials' and other stuff I never learned about.

And it's funny, considering I've been an editor/writer for over 24 years now!

We didn't do Grammar at school, our French and Spanish teachers taught it to us instead. I did an English Lit degree and our tutors used to get very annoyed at most peoples lack of Grammar knowledge. English Lang wasn't an A Level option for us unfortunately as I would have loved to have done it
The DC did it though

I realised when I started posting online as people are cruel and pull up grammar rather than read your input. Happens a lot of mumsnet, but particularly Facebook.

it impacted me a lot and a few years ago I had some counselling around struggling with confidence at work and it came out as something that had really impacted me as those people had made me feel humiliated and it had a lasting impact.

it hasn’t really impacted me at work, as I’ve always had Google/ word check and didn’t have to write papers until I was very senior ( I work in finance)

I remember our French and German teachers looking at us in disbelief as they were trying to teach us their grammar, and realising that they had to teach us our own language first so that we'd know what they were talking about.

I left school in 1990 and I don’t think I was ever taught grammar. You just pick it up from reading.

Learnt a bit in French lessons.

honestly as a maths person it’s not really held me back.

? Weren’t they teachers in your school? Disbelief seems a bit excessive, presumably if they were that shocked they knew nothing at all about the education system or school they taught in which seems bizarre.

I always felt the primary purpose of being taught other languages at school was to instil an understanding of grammar in one’s own language.

Although I read voraciously as a child, so picked up skills unconsciously, I’m fairly sure I never thought much beyond ‘a verb is a doing word’ until I started learning Latin / French / German.

But I’m much too old to have experienced ‘fronted adverbials’ - so perhaps I wouldn’t pass an English Language GCSE now, even though I’ve followed two professions based on extremely careful use of written and spoken English.

I did an English language A level. I don't believe it was in the a level curriculum but the teacher spent the first few weeks of year 12 teaching us basic grammar. Much of which my children have learnt by year 2!

I left school in 1994 and I don’t think was taught grammar properly.

What sort of thing have you not known that would have been helpful? My kids are learning about fronted adverbials and split digraphs but I've never needed to know these, have done two master's degrees and it has never been an issue. I left school in 1997. I remember learning "should have" not "of", there / they're/ their, use of apostrophes all of which a lot of my old school peers don't seem to remember about. I'm never sure about semi colons or the difference between learned and learnt, but it has never been a problem.

I was also not taught English grammar, I remember our German A level teacher having to go through the basics in English as we were all clueless about what he was talking about in German. It could have been nationwide as DH also wasn’t taught it (grammar school in a totally different area of the country to me).

Yeah, no formal lessons in grammar here either! I only studied English to GCSE level too, so pretty basic teaching. Generally speaking my usage of English is correct, probably due to a lifetime of reading for fun. Fortunately, using a language rarely requires you to describe it, so it's only ever been an issue when helping my children with schoolwork - and we do plenty of looking up what things mean! It helps that I find it interesting, and enjoy playing with language in my own time.

When I was in my early twenties I bought a copy of the Oxford Guide to Style, which is a great resource for looking up such things as when to use an em- or en-dash, which helps fill some of the gaps when necessary. I'm in my forties now and I still have very limited understanding of grammatical terms, other than simply knowing that things like the "pluperfect tense" exist.

I remember my GCSE French teacher being frustrated at our cohort's lack of grammatical understanding. It's hard to learn the past imperfect in a new language when you have no idea what the term means in your mother tongue either.

I was definitely taught grammar during my primary school years mid/late 80s to early 90s. I went to an excellent school though, that is ratex outstanding these days.

I don't remember being taught any in senior school, so I suppose we'd moved on from grammar by then and the children who weren't taught properly at primary were left behind. I do remember there being a surprising difference in writing between the kids I sat next to before we were streamed.

I did combined English Lit & Lang at A level, and remember having a classroom debate on what were then new teaching methods, including not correcting children's grammar or spelling and not using red pen to correct work. This would have been late 90s - the consensus was that it was detrimental. Funny that this was blindingly obvious to a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds but not the government!

Teaching grammar definitely fell out of favour in the 80s/90s.

I studied A level English language, the teachers were busy trying to teach us noun phrases and verb phrases etc, at one point I stopped the lesson - politely, but firmly - and said “ look, we’ve never been taught any grammar, PLEASE do us a lesson on grammar so we have the faintest idea of what you’re trying to teach”. Next lesson the teacher arrived with grammar guides for us all and we did a couple of grammar lessons.

I always felt a bit bad for the French and German teachers trying to teach past participles when no-one had any idea of what they were in English.

Small local state primary, a small group of us were pulled out to do additional grammar lessons with the headmaster during yr4 but other than that no formal English grammar lessons, everything I learnt from doing French, German and Latin!

My grandparents took me in when I was small. They had ideas that were highly unusual in parenting at the time, but did me well educationally.

In particular, I was required to hold interesting and informed conversation on current world events over dinner time. It was expected I'd have read the various newspapers the house was equipped with to have an understanding of the conversation and join in if possible. I didn't like to disappoint them, so read the Guardian and Independent each day and the Times a few times a week from the age of 7 or 8. This did wonders for my spelling, grammar and comprehension skills. They also had 6 degrees between the two of them and liked to expand on the national curriculum wherever possible.

They were amazing, wonderful, selfless people who changed my life entirely. Not just because they scooped me out of filth and loved me unconditionally, but because they genuinely did teach me to love and value learning. That allowed me to drag myself into decent society in a way school never could have done - grammar included. They allowed me to 'pass' in a world I wasn't meant to access.

Like others here, I picked up the basics in my French and German classes.

You don't need to know the y6 grammar to do English Language GCSE. For DD it was (attempted to be) taught but then not really mentioned in secondary at all.

I think it depends on where you live, what school you go to, and who you live with growing up.

My grammar is still terrible but it’s much better than it used to be. It was normal to use bad grammar for working class kids where I grew up in the 90s.

I had no idea how bad it was until I moved away for university at 18 in the 2000s. I lived with an upper middle class lad who used to take the piss out of my accent and my grammar daily for three years. He was incredulous at how appalling my grammar was and how different our education so far had been.

It was a big learning curve for the both of us as it taught us about the north/south divide and the gap between those from wealthier and poorer families. I knew that rich people had more opportunities but “rich people” were an alien species to me and because I was like everyone else back home, I’d never considered myself to be disadvantaged. Before that lad, I’d never had a friend who wasn’t from a poor background. That friendship taught me more than my university course did!

Similar to pps - it was at secondary when foreign MFL teachers were flabbergasted half the class had no idea what an adjective is, let alone a past participle. I learned English grammar from my French and German GCSE teachers!

Shameful how much the government destroyed the curriculum in the 80s and 90s. There was a movement when I was at primary to only teach what kids asked about. Totally irresponsible and absurd.

I am a Secondary English teacher with 20+ years of experience (and a first class honours degree in English Lit from a ‘Red brick’ uni). I remember failing a basic writing task at the start of my PGCE because of my grammar (I literally couldn’t even tell you what an adjective was). I got a text book and taught myself over the next few months. Kids I teach cannot believe that this was the world of someone with 2 As and 2 Bs and an honours degree in English when I tell them. It’s incredible even to me!

@Itsmetheflamingo I think it’s impacted my confidence too. Your experience rang true to mine as well. I also remember have Spanish lessons in South America travelling and the tutor speaking about different tenses and I was so confused!

I went to independent school in the 90s and was taught grammar thoroughly. DH went to a comprehensive school and I have honestly been shocked at how little grammar he knows. It really shows up with bad punctuation in text messages, but at least emails have spelling and grammar correction built in now. I am a bit of a grammar pedant and apostrophes used for plurals really grate on me 😂
<waits for fellow pedants to pick holes in my own post!>