To hate the grammar lessons children are having to do?

[Clawdy]

Trying to help DGS with his work sent from school yesterday. It was co-ordinated conjunctions and subordinate conjunctions, and so confusing. He struggled with fronted adverbials last week, but eventually managed them. I was a primary school teacher years ago, but I found the whole concept difficult. When we finally completed the work, I wondered what on earth was the purpose behind it. How could analysing the difference help with his story- writing? He's eight years old.

I don't pretend it is easy, as it is not, but I am glad to see grammar being taught in schools, even at that age.

I value proper grammar and not all English people speaking the so-called American English. We are not the 51st state.

Yanbu, we read a fantastic story yesterday for my ds' homework, then massacred it. Hate it all!!

@SimonJT

"It is even more important for children who are disadvantaged to have a good quality education, that includes being able to right well."

See, @randomer? Someone who lived through a disadvantaged childhood acknowledges the value of a correct and comprehensive education.

Plus, you conflated year 3 level learning with a description of a reception aged child who struggles to hold a pencil correctly. No one teaches reception aged children grammar; once they have learned to hold a pencil and form and name letters, and blend sounds, and read - that is when they begin to learn grammar.

Why does the terminology of grammar upset people so much? No one rails against the carburettor and catalytic converter being called by confusing and inaccessible names; grammatical names such as 'fronted adverbials' are simply analogous technical terms.

@SimonJT, You may well like them and a conversation about the teaching of Grammar is a worthwhile one. However, would you like them if you were 5?

Why can't children be children? Pick up a story book, pick up a pencil ( when you are ready) and enjoy it?

A little anecdote for you......years ago one of my children was asked to produce a discursive essay ( aged 8). After a full day at school and a session at Beavers, exhaustion had set in. I more or less wrote is and he copied out and submitted it.
Said essay was returned with some comments and corrections.
Its laughable.
The demands being made on these tiny children will put them off learning and reading.

Do many small children learn technical names connected with cars I wonder?

My son is five, he has enjoyed the ones with have done with homeschooling and has managed to retain some of it between lessons.

It doesn’t remove joy from reading, but as the child who hadn’t been taught appropriately reading was hard because I would see this ; and have no idea what it meant, some story lines would confuse me as I couldn’t spot certain literary devices being used by the author. I couldn’t record my own thoughts etc as I simply didn’t have the skill to do so.

It was only when I started learning a foreign language properly - attending classes with formal instruction - that I realised just how awful school instruction in my own language had been.

Learning another language improved my English grammar so much, because I had to learn the sort of grammatical rules the OP is complaining about, for the first time.

There are so many British people who don't even know how to write plurals in their own native language - "story" becomes "story's" for instance. It's embarrassing.

So YABU. Of course children should learn correct grammar in their own language and not just avoid it because it's a bit difficult.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

My 7yo needs to write some 'complex sentences with subordinate clauses'.

She might as well as being speaking Greek... But I don't deny it's making their writing more interesting and increasing their vocabulary. My 9yo is encouraged to use a thesaurus while writing. And thanks to Google, I now understand what she's trying to do.

Hopefully it will soon be Maths. That's straight forward. It's either right or wrong.

Ha, nope they’ve changed maths so it’s utterly over complicated now.

@randomer I still refer to cars as 'the red one' , 'The big black one.'

YANBU, op. Teaching terms such as the word classes (so noun, verb, adverb, connective/conjunction etc... ) is really useful for English and MFL but complicating it with phrases such as fronted adverbial which as far as I am aware is just an adverb used at the front of a sentence is off putting for most 8 year olds. It depends how it's taught, I think. I teach secondary English and while there is a space for rigour and precision in writing, I try and demystify these grammatical terms as much as possible to give them confidence with them and freedom to be creative. It's a balance though as they need to learn to write clearly at times (writing to inform etc... )creatively at other times and to analyse language as well. Maybe the curriculum expects too much. At 8, like the OP's grandchild, I would like them to be able to focus on enjoying language, writing and reading with just a little grammar taught in an holistic way, where possible. So not, that piece of writing is not good as you didn't include fronted adverbials!

Grammar=good for older children ,Secondary.
Grammar because Gove wants to play Eton with 6 year olds=not good

@peak2021

I don't pretend it is easy, as it is not, but I am glad to see grammar being taught in schools, even at that age.

I value proper grammar and not all English people speaking the so-called American English. We are not the 51st state.

So do I, but I don't want to see grammar taught badly. That is what is happening here with all the focus on expanded noun phrases and frontal adverbials and the insistence that children shoehorn examples of set grammatical constructions into all their writing regardless of whether it is appropriate or not. Some of it is just plain wrong - witness the government edict that you can only use an exclamation mark in writing in a sentence beginning "What" or "how".

ha ha!!! The government decides when to use an exclamation mark! How bloody stupid!!

Yes and either ? Or !. Never both together.
Mad, eh?!

There are so many British people who don't even know how to write plurals in their own native language - "story" becomes "story's" for instance. It's embarrassing. So YABU. Of course children should learn correct grammar in their own language and not just avoid it because it's a bit difficult.
Huge difference between learning plural and the examples people are given as to what children are being bogged down with now. Student graduates today don't know about not using text speak in formal letters and their spelling is atrocious. They dont know how to write reports, how to be succinct, how to paraphrase. It's things like this that need to be addressed early on and reinforced all the way up, along with appreciation of stories, books and poetry

Ps excuse the mistakes above, trying to hide my phone as just told my ds to put his away!!!

Language is fluid.

@randomer

"Do many small children learn technical names connected with cars I wonder?"

No. However, there are plenty of small children who can name numerous Pokemon, characters from tv shows, footballers/clubs/rules etc. Why should it be any harder to memorise grammatical terms?

Again, you are pretending that this level of technical accuracy is taught to five year olds. This is not true. I have a seven year old. She is in y2. I see what she is set in English work. Fronted adverbials and conjunctions (subordinating or co-ordinating) is not on the curriculum for this age group. Simply saying that it is makes you look hysterical.

[quote HereBeFuckery]@randomer

"Do many small children learn technical names connected with cars I wonder?"

No. However, there are plenty of small children who can name numerous Pokemon, characters from tv shows, footballers/clubs/rules etc. Why should it be any harder to memorise grammatical terms?

Again, you are pretending that this level of technical accuracy is taught to five year olds. This is not true. I have a seven year old. She is in y2. I see what she is set in English work. Fronted adverbials and conjunctions (subordinating or co-ordinating) is not on the curriculum for this age group. Simply saying that it is makes you look hysterical. [/quote]
Conjunctions are on the year 2 curriculum

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335190/English_Appendix_2_-_Vocabulary_grammar_and_punctuation.pdf

Wait until next year for fronted adverbials

I find it all a bit strange. I have a degree in linguistics and now teach yr6. In my first year at university, I was taught to pull apart a sentence into phrases, clauses etc and to name them all- we now teach those ideas in primary school.

Why? The rationale was that it would improve the understanding of grammar needed to study other languages, thus increasing the (woeful) take-up of MFL in key stages 4 and 5. I would be fascinated to see the numbers for this year’s GCSEs in MFL as this is the cohort who were swapped to the new primary curriculum and took the new SPAG papers first.

Year 2 have to use fronted adverbials to get greater depth in the sats so schools have to teach them then if they don't want Ofsted to rip them a new one.

Hey Ho! @HereBeFuckery, seems like Michael Rosen writing in today's Guardian has a similar theme to me
However,before reading his article,I reflected on my own paucity of lingusitic talent.

Nobody wants to study MFL because its damn hard work and rather tedious.
And we a sovereign nation so why bother.

@LittleBearPad apologies - I had missed that. I teach secondary, and haven't read the KS1/2 curriculum in a couple of years.

@randomer

Hey Ho! *@HereBeFuckery*, seems like Michael Rosen writing in today's Guardian has a similar theme to me However,before reading his article,I reflected on my own paucity of lingusitic talent.

I read his article. What he fails to acknowledge, in a rather facile article, is that he does not need the kind of structure taught in schools; his writing is beyond needing that scaffold.

Not all children have Michael Rosen's skill, experience and talent. They need to be taught in a very detailed, very carefully planned way. Once they can do without that level of support, of course they won't consciously think 'do I need a fronted adverbial', it will have become internalised.

Oh, and I'm ignoring your feeble comment about MFL. Actually, I'm not ignoring, I'm choosing to believe you are making a lame joke.