Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

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

127 replies

Hjsjshsn · 29/12/2025 11:25

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)?

OP posts:
tokennamechange · 29/12/2025 18:13

Hoppinggreen · 29/12/2025 11:43

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

very similar - not 90s but left school mid 00s. Did GCSE and A level French and definitely did more grammar in that than in English despite doing a separate Eng Lang GCSE. Also did a Eng lit degree and remember having intro lessons on really basic stuff like grammar and how to set out essays. It was an RG uni as well and at the time high up in the league tables for English so quite high entrance - I think we needed at least AAB or similar to get in. Mind you at least one girl said to me she didn't like reading so no idea why she wanted to do that degree or managed to get in!

Hjsjshsn · 29/12/2025 21:45

bemine247 · 29/12/2025 18:05

I'm really grateful that I wasn't taught grammar, I can't think of anything duller! I have an MA in education but couldn't tell you the different past tenses. It's just words to describe words to me. I do however do things that are very frowned upon on MN like saying 'I was sat next to a man on the train'.

DS did all that fronted adverbials nonsense and no doubt promptly forgot it all a week after the tests. Complete waste of time.

See I keep on reading this over “I was sat next to a man on the train” and never knew this was frowned upon. Why is this grammatically incorrect?

OP posts:
CautiousLurker2 · 29/12/2025 21:48

Hjsjshsn · 29/12/2025 21:45

See I keep on reading this over “I was sat next to a man on the train” and never knew this was frowned upon. Why is this grammatically incorrect?

Because it should be either ‘I sat next to’ or ‘I was sitting next to’.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Ozgirl76 · 29/12/2025 22:46

I finished my A levels in 1995 and was lucky in that my mum was a stickler for grammar so would say things like “my dad and I sweetie not my dad and me” and “fewer not less”.
I worked with a woman the same age as me (as lawyers) and she had “their they’re there” pinned above her computer.
I did English Lit A Level and some of it was corrected there (the difference between eg and ie which previously I had just sprinkled interchangeably around), especially punctuation.

I actually think lots of the very detailed stuff is unnecessary IF children read, because it becomes obvious when you’re writing “well”.

However, I now have a few people working for me and not one of them knows how to correctly use their/there/they’re and their spelling is shocking. However, most customers that email me also have terrible spelling and grammar so I guess it’s everyone.

LostittoBostik · 29/12/2025 22:47

Same. Ironically I’ve got an English degree. I’m struggling to help my DD with her primary level grammar.

ABeerInTheSunshineMakesMeHappy · 29/12/2025 23:05

I’ve never heard of fronted adverbials and split digraphs before this thread! I went to school in the 70s and like others, I learned English grammar through my French and German lessons.

VikaOlson · 29/12/2025 23:09

A bit of basic grammar eg learning the terms for verbs, nouns, tenses in French/German lessons.
But mostly just picked up grammar rules from reading.

I don't think it has done me any harm to be honest though I do still have to look up whether to use : or ; 😂

Primary school grammar now is mostly useless nonsense!

Talipesmum · 29/12/2025 23:23

We hardly learnt any (English) grammar at school (same as you, left mid nineties) but I’ve got excellent “hands-on” grammar. I can’t describe any of it or break it down linguistically, but I know what to do / how to use it.

(praying I haven’t made too many mistakes in this post! Let’s put them down as informal message board usage…)

StrictlyAFemaleFemale · 29/12/2025 23:27

When I moved to Denmark and had to learn Danish, and the teachers used the correct terms. So I remember the day we did conjunctions, and I said to the Philippine woman next to me that I'd just learned what a conjunction is, and she looked at me like I was nuts.

Ithinkihatethislittlelife · 29/12/2025 23:28

I went to one of the best grammar schools in the country and I am constantly amazed at how thick I am at basic things. I am atrocious at spelling (I’m 46 so was there early-mid 90s).

pickywatermelon · 29/12/2025 23:54

Gosh this brings it all back also in the same situation secondary school in 90’s

Barely learnt what a verb was and like others anything beyond that was learnt in French and German. Got to uni doing a degree that required essays and had no idea how to structure it

EBearhug · 30/12/2025 01:09

I finished school 1990, so just ahead of the National Curriculum.

I was definitely taught punctuation, including semi-colons. I was taught the parts of speech, and around age 11 was taught about subject - object - indirect object and subordinate clauses (which I believe fronted adverbial are a part of, but don't quite me on that; they didn't exist in my day.) We also had weekly spelling tests from a young age. I knew about tenses, at least in the sense of past, present and future.

I also had Granny, who, in response to a letter in which I had said I had been "practicing my violin" (a thrilling letter, no doubt,) wrote back to tell me practice was a noun, and practise was the verb, so I had been practising, not practicing. My mother would often say things like "fewer, not less" and "yes, you can do that, but may you?" so I learned a sense that different words can convey slightly different meanings.

Also, we didn't have a TV, so I read all the time - including Laura Ingalls Wilder, where in Little Town on the Prairie, she has to parse a sentence to become a teacher, and something about that really grabbed me for some reason, the way she could break down a whole sentence and explain exactly what each word was doing.

Then I started learning French, and then Latin, and I learnt a lot more about grammar. I have since learnt other languages and qualified as a TEFL teacher - where my knowledge stood me in good stead, even while a fellow trainee asked what was wrong with "could of" - so I explained about auxiliary verbs (while crying a little inside.)

As an adult, as well as learning languages at evening classes, I read books about linguistics and grammar for fun, and I'll happily have conversations about things like the subtleties of meaning implied with the subjunctive.

I try not to do so unless invited these days. 😀

EBearhug · 30/12/2025 01:14

Having just looked up split digraphs - never learnt the term, but I do remember Mrs L at infants school teaching us about magic e changing the sounds of letters, so not becomes note with magic e and so on. So I did learn it, just not that it had a technical name of a split digraph, and knowing how it worked rather than the metalanguage was far more important, especially at age 6 or whatever I was.

canuckup · 30/12/2025 02:04

Same here

Not exactly sure how we all made it really

ChocolateCinderToffee · 30/12/2025 02:15

I did two languages at school and learned some grammar because of this.

PerspicaciaTick · 30/12/2025 02:26

I left school in the mid 80s with no real grammar education. It definitely hindered my understanding of French and German lessons.
I've always read everything I could lay my hands on so I've sorted of absorbed how written English should look. I know my grammar is a weakness but it has always been good enough for the level of writing I did at uni and work.
I don't know any of the technical language for describing grammar, but then again it isn't anything I've ever needed to formally use. I don't feel this lack has impacted my life at all.
On the plus side, I find grammar pendants very peculiar. Watching people on lose their minds about some minor grammatical infringement that I've never been taught, do not understand and makes zero difference to most people's lives.

TravelledLodger · 30/12/2025 03:12

I attended an excellent primary school in the 1980's.

I don't recall having specific grammar lessons. However, I just know instinctively what to say and write.

That was pre 'National Curriculum'. Our headteacher had licence to ensure that we were given a very well rounded education. We listened to classical music and the Head taught us the names of the pieces of music we were listening to.

He also taught us about Constable's artwork and about the Beaufort Scale of Windforce. How lucky we were to have such an excellent Headteacher and teachers there!

Fatiguedwithlife · 30/12/2025 03:38

Itsmetheflamingo · 29/12/2025 11:53

? 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.

Why would the language teachers know the English curriculum?
Mine were the same, frustrated that we didn’t know the basics in English. This was a fee paying school too. Left in 1997

W0tnow · 30/12/2025 03:59

Echobelly · 29/12/2025 11:40

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!

Edited

Is that the same thing though? I have no idea about the correct labels are for grammatical things, beyond the basics - like ‘noun is a naming word’. But I think my grammar is sound. There is the ability to string a grammatically correct sentence together (which I think I can do) and there is the knowledge required to be able to label things like an adjective, like @captaincannot was saying.

So, for example I guess there are rules for using adjectives in the correct order. Like, ‘I saw a beautiful big brown dog running today’. No one would say I saw a brown big running beautiful dog today. I think i know the rules, I just don’t know how to label them.

Case in point: I couldn’t tell you confidently what a preposition was. 😆

Focusispower · 30/12/2025 04:10

I always wondered if I’d somehow missed something during my education that meant I’d not learned grammar in depth. But it wasn’t part of the curriculum even for English Language GCSE, although our very old school teacher did go off curriculum to teach the basics. I studied English Literature, then Law and Economics and have always scored very highly in essay based assessments. I predominantly learned how to write from reading.

I now I see it as kind of freeing not to feel like there’s a non-negotiable set of rules to follow. My 7 year old is learning a lot more structured grammar and frankly it’s joyless.

Toddlerteaplease · 30/12/2025 05:22

My mum was a primary teacher. It was like she was speaking another language at times, when she spoke about the curriculum. I came unstuck when I did German GCSE, as I had no idea what a split infinitive etc was.

onceagainforrose · 30/12/2025 06:57

We had English text books that covered some grammar (Haydn Richards) at my state junior school and my English teacher in years 10/11 had a different language as her first (home) language and so impressed grammar on us (I remember we had to work from the back of our exercise books on grammar work). But mostly it was my French teacher. I did A Level French and English Language too, much more grammar taught in French than English Language (which was about child language acquisition, sociolinguistics, history of language development, and analysis of language).

Ithinkihatethislittlelife · 30/12/2025 07:04

PerspicaciaTick · 30/12/2025 02:26

I left school in the mid 80s with no real grammar education. It definitely hindered my understanding of French and German lessons.
I've always read everything I could lay my hands on so I've sorted of absorbed how written English should look. I know my grammar is a weakness but it has always been good enough for the level of writing I did at uni and work.
I don't know any of the technical language for describing grammar, but then again it isn't anything I've ever needed to formally use. I don't feel this lack has impacted my life at all.
On the plus side, I find grammar pendants very peculiar. Watching people on lose their minds about some minor grammatical infringement that I've never been taught, do not understand and makes zero difference to most people's lives.

Grammar pendants are just life’s wankers.

There must be something missing in their lives, or something making them unhappy people if they feel they have to spend their precious time correcting someone else’s grammar. Especially a stranger on the internet. Does it matter? No. They just want something to feel superior over. I find it really sad, actually.

It says a lot about a person that they want to correct others.

rickyrickygrimes · 30/12/2025 07:13

I got to PhD level and still am not completely confident in grammar. Good comprehensive school in the late 80s, we didn’t even learn the apostrophe rule correctly 🙄. I realised first when my friend at uni who’d gone to private school taught me the apostrophe rule, then many years later I moved to France and started having French lessons and my tutor was horrified that I couldn’t show her the subject and object in a sentence 🤦‍♀️. I was a voracious reader as a child so I know correct / incorrect grammar when I see or hear it, but I couldn’t explain the roles or use any of the ‘fronted adverbials’ vocabulary.

Thingamebobwotsit · 30/12/2025 07:26

Eudaimonia11 · 29/12/2025 12:23

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!

^ This. Moved South for university and it was an eye opener on how much broader and deeper the education had been for my counterparts. Add into the mix there were those who went to grammar /private school and my "standard comp with low aspirations" education fell massively short. Even though we had the same A level results between us.

I still don't understand grammar. I got by (successfully) by being a voracious reader, but it means while English is easy I really struggle to learn other languages.

Thankfully ChatGPT helps iron out any editorial mistakes in English these days. But I do need to try harder at the language thing.