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

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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)?

It was awful! As a teacher now, one of my favourites phrases is ‘let’s look in the dictionary!’

I left school not even knowing what a noun was!

I left school after A-levels and certainly did learn some grammar, possibly at primary school. We learnt about nouns (as naming words), verbs (doing words) and adjectives (describing words). We might have vaguely learnt about conjunctions and adverbs, and we definitely learnt about correct use of apostrophes. What we didn't learn was things like the subject and object of a sentence - I learnt that from my French and German teachers

I remember my mother getting me a basic grammar book when I was in primary school in the 80s as she was very unimpressed with the ‘progressive’ curriculum that didn’t include grammar.

We did some grammar at my indie secondary in the 90s, but nothing more than what nouns/ verbs/ adjectives were and apostrophes etc. Any more complex grammar I know came from languages.

Oh yeah, not knowing what things are called has never been an issue as an editing/writing professional. I still know what good English looks/sounds like without that anyway. Probably because I did, and still do, read a lot.

Late 80s and I was literally never taught about nouns, adverbs, adjectives etc. Like others it hindered me with learning foreign languages later because I didn’t have the building blocks other students had. It’s a relief to see this thread as I sometimes wondered if I was the only one, although I knew I obviously couldn’t be!

Yes, this. It wasn’t externally evident that I wasn’t taught the structure and rules of grammar as I picked it up instinctively, but it has made learning foreign languages more of an effort due to missing the knowledge of the framework of grammar. Also - helping children with their homework!

Didn’t do grammar at school, never really needed it until I did a degree at 35 and then I got my dh to proof read everything. I Basically stick to one comma in a sentence and end it with a full stop. I know how to use brackets and quote marks and that’s about it.

I wasn’t taught grammar either, beyond verbs, adverbs etc in a very vague way. I read voraciously through my childhood and my parents modelled correct speech . I did an English Lit degree with linguistics forming a very heavy component. I struggled with learning Old English and the linguistics side because I hadn’t studied language like that previously. These days if people aren’t taught grammar, don’t read and have parents who aren’t very literate, they end up speaking and writing mangled English.

Same and it was even worse when I went to study languages at university in Spain. They had endless hours of grammar and I had no clue what was as going on.

I left secondary school in 1990 and went on to do a modern languages degree. It was my French and Spanish teachers both at school and university who taught me about tenses, subject pronouns, even how to find the subject and the object of a sentence. We were never, ever taught that at any stage in English. The grammar education I had in English was very much verb = doing word, noun = naming word.

I wasn’t taught any at primary school, I was taught a small amount at secondary school, but it was more a case of being given a defintion, there was no attempt at mastery.

I was taught grammar in my first language, however as a school child I wasn’t aware that grammar in english is different, so that made writing very difficult as no one ever actually pointed out what was ‘wrong’ with my written work. My husband also wasn’t taught grammar at school in england, but he was in his first language, which like me caused issues in his written work as he was neither guided or corrected.

Now if I translate to Swedish I cannot translate to English, I have to do English to Urdu, then Urdu to Swedish as I’m only confident in the structure of Urdu as I was taught formal and correct Urdu.

It does however still lead to confusion as I’ll write something I can almost see the confusion in the person reading it. So at work I’m the person who wants to phone, rather than send over a request via email.

I didn't do it at school ( left in the 80s). I read everything though and no doubt learned that way.

I've just remembered my French and German teachers had to try and teach us grammar.
1980's secondary comprehensive teaching was pretty hit and miss. Mostly miss in my schools case.

Same here. I suffered a crap comp too! Thing is that it was a newly converted ex-grammar and the "soundbite" around town was that it was going to be a "grammar standard education for all". It was the opposite. A truly awful and hideous place, made worse because the ex-grammar teachers hadn't a clue how to deal with unruly pupils, bullying etc. It went downhill year on year as more years of "comp" students came in at the bottom and the "grammar" kids left at the other end. It's been a "failing" school ever since, lots of different management but none have managed to turn it around. Latest is that they're planning to close it completely, even though it's still pretty well subscribed and bus hundreds of kids across the county boundary to a school 20 miles away!

I wonder if that is why I’ve found languages so difficult. Learning a second language seems like an insurmountable mountain!

You’re definitely starting from further back as there isn’t the framework to fit the new knowledge into!

Same as lots of other posters here, I only learned grammar from French at school. The poor French teacher must have despaired. It must have been so hard trying to teach a language to a bunch of kids who couldn't even identify a verb, let alone conjugate one.

No grammar teaching at all beyond what a noun and an adjective is. I sat my GCSEs in 1993 and A Levels in 1995.

It was all very much, just be creative, get your ideas down. So I left my pretty awful secondary with no grammar knowledge and terrible spelling. I did read a huge amount though so that probably taught me the grammar, I just sort of picked it up that way.
I have managed to get an A in A Level English Lit , a degree in English Literature from an excellent uni and have taught English for over 20 years. Not sure how useful an indepth knowledge of grammar might have been. Fixing my spelling would have been useful though.

At secondary level, there isn't much grammar teaching and it is assumed the kids have had it hammered into them at primary. This is starting to change a little though. I have to teach myself some stuff before I teach it and rely on the brightest ones in the class to give me the right answers.

The thing about split infinitives is that they usually sound better than an unsplit one. I think that’s an area of grammar that sounds too stilted and formal these days, and even the most pedantic probably split them.

I was at secondary in the 70s (O levels) and we learned a little basic grammar but nothing detailed. I picked that up from French and German lessons and from reading voraciously.

I'm an author now and, according to my editor, I rarely make grammatical errors. So I must have picked it up along the way rather than being taught.

@BunnyLakeyou are speaking a different language!

I'm an author now and, according to my editor, I rarely make grammatical errors. So I must have picked it up along the way rather than being taught.

Most of us know the grammar of our native language. What we might not know is the language to describe it.

I am not cruel, but I can't stand reading posts with your/you're muddled up, those that say could of/should of and been instead of being, muddling up he's and his, that kind of thing. It jars and takes you out of the actual post. It does for me, anyway and I can't concentrate. Same with those walls of text posts without punctuation or paragraphing.

It isn't cruel to point this out either. If I was lousy at grammar, I would be grateful for being pointed in the right direction whether that be on here or in real life. Thankfully I don't have that as a problem. I don't remember ever actually learning grammar, I just know that I know it.

Loads of us can't spell, blame it on how they taught us to read, by learning words by sight, pathetic
And hateful bully teachers

Most non English speaking countries teach their children English grammar regularly every week at school. It’s taught very systematically and methodically from a young age; these lessons are not a bolt on mini lesson to an English class. Teaching of English grammar helps children be amazing spellers too. The teaching of synthetic phonics is not always the done thing as they rely on the teaching of grammar, spelling lessons for high frequency words and multiple reading comprehension lessons every week to speed up the acquisition of the English language. It’s a different educational approach altogether.