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.

@Janegrey333

It’s totally pointless to compel children of this age and their teachers to jump through hoops for the sake of it. The government - surprise - are taking the easy route and engaged in a tick box exercise.

Sounds like they're gone too far the other way on the pendulum.

When both myself and OH were at primary (70s) we did none of that, but neither did we learn any other English constructions. Even basics like verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, tenses, etc weren't actually taught formally, so we didn't really know the definitions of each term. It just seemed to come naturally because we did a lot of reading (an awful lot of reading) so it seemed natural to talk and write in the same kind of manner as you read.

I remember the language teachers in first year of secondary school whingeing about how they shouldn't have to be teaching the technicalities of English before they could even starting teaching French or German! Formal teaching of tenses, sentence construction, etc was done by our foreign language teachers!!

That's probably why it's all been brought into the primary curriculum, but as usual, always the way with pendulum swings, they've gone too far the other way.

@HugeAckmansWife
Let's focus on that and basics like nouns, adjectives, verbs etc rather than these made up nonsense terms. Love the 'ly' words short cut posted above..just teach that.

Except that it's grammatically wrong as there are plenty of adverbs that aren't 'ly' words and so teaching that will embed a misconception on one of those 'basics' that you want kids to know.

@SarahAndQuack

It's a skill that may well be useful in his future academic career.

That is exceptionally unlikely, given that the consensus view of academics who work in English or linguistics seems to be that this stuff is pure bullshit.

Exactly. I have a fair number of friends with degrees and higher degrees in language and linguistics, they couldn't care less about preserving grammar, in fact they are actively against it and say it's not how language is supposed to work.

People say it helps with foreign languages and that's why the British are so bad at them - not true. My Spanish family are all bilingual because they learned English intensively since they were young. If you ask them explain even simple Spanish grammar, they don't have a bloody clue.

@justchecking1

Those terms do nothing to help the language stay nuanced. They're very clumsy descriptive terms for grammatical constructions most people learn to use just by speaking and reading.

And there lies the problem. My DP is a teacher. Teenagers these days just don't read books. He says the difference in skill level between those who do and those who don't is enormous.

I agree, I definitely notice the difference between students who read widely and those who don't. But I think we sometimes do get a bit negative about 'youth nowadays'. When I was a teenager we were all being told English was in decline because we were all watching telly and listening to American music and other such degenerate things. And I'm sure our parents' generation were accused of similar.

I've found it very frustrating. Why can't they just teach good basic grammar? Some of the sentences the teachers put up to explain the work have very basic mistakes in them. Schools could at least teach staff how to use apostrophes correctly and avoid comma splices before setting them loose to make snippy comments to the children about the quality of their adverbial clauses.

Thankfully in Scottish schools we don't have SATs or this obsession with having to teach unnecessary grammar.
I have taught my entire life and wouldn't know a fronted abverbial clause from a subordinate conjunction.

Totally irrelevant and stressful for pupils and parents trying to teach them at home.

I have no idea what any of those things are, and I'm a professional writer and editor.

I am highly educated and have a professional job. I never learnt any of it and have no idea what my kids are on about.
I had a love of reading. Surely that matters more.

My theory is that people like Jacob Rees Mogg were forced to learn these things at their fancy schools, and because they believe they got where they are on merit rather than money and connections, that must mean that fronted adverbials are the key to success, and they enjoy being the gatekeeper of language the lesser mortals don't know or care about.

@Boeufsurletoit
Schools could at least teach staff how to use apostrophes correctly and avoid comma splices

Unfortunately, many teachers were educated at the time when there was little to no teaching of grammar. Having a generation of adults who make these mistakes is precisely what the curriculum is trying to avoid.

Comma splicing is also difficult to learn through reading as many published books contain a ridiculous number of comma-spliced sentences.

@justchecking1

Those terms do nothing to help the language stay nuanced. They're very clumsy descriptive terms for grammatical constructions most people learn to use just by speaking and reading.

And there lies the problem. My DP is a teacher. Teenagers these days just don't read books. He says the difference in skill level between those who do and those who don't is enormous.

I fully agree. Another point, though, is that a lot of "modern" or "trendy" books are actually really badly written from a technical point of view, so reading badly constructed sentences does actually more harm than good.

But there is also the point as to why teenagers don't read. We encouraged our son to read from a very early age, and in fact, he could read before starting school. He rapidly went through all the schools reading lists, moving up through the colour schemes etc. We also went to the library weekly and participated in all the library's reading initiatives.

When he got to secondary, it all came crashing down, and he completely lost interest. The secondary school teaching sucked all the joy out of it for him. Almost from the first few months, he even stopped reading for pleasure. Unfortunately, he had the same teacher for 4 out of the 5 years pre GCSE. After leaving primary with the highest mark/grade possible in English, it became his worst subject at secondary right from the first year. In only one year, second year, when he had a different teacher did he enjoy and excel at it - A grade and something like 88% in the end of year tests. In third year, back to the original teacher, and it was back to a D with under 50%. For GCSE, he managed to pull himself up from a projected grade 3 to a couple of 7's simply by teaching himself via CGP revision guides and watching youtube videos on how to answer GCSE exam questions on poetry, shakespeare, etc., i.e. learning the "cheats" to gain points rather than actually reading and understanding the literature.

Poor teaching seems to have a lot to do with teenagers lack of reading.

It was opposite for me in the 70s. I came from a home where we didn't read, so I just read the books provided by primary school. Same in early years at secondary, I just did what I had to without any interest as the teachers were pretty crap. But, we got a truly inspiration teacher for CSE/GCE in the fourth year, and it turned it around for me. Rather than drab/dry reading of tedious literature, he chose books we could relate to, in particular Kestral for a Knave (Kes) which probably half our class could actually relate to (poor background, low aspirations) and really brought it to life. Same with poetry, where he chose poets and subjects we could relate to (but before dissecting them, he did a lot of lessons "studying" pop music lyrics for their poetic construction etc). I got my best, by far, results in Eng Lang and Eng Lit because of that inspirational teacher. Not only that, but he was the one person who gave me a love of reading, and I've read ever since, even now, 40 years later!

@iloverock

I am highly educated and have a professional job. I never learnt any of it and have no idea what my kids are on about. I had a love of reading. Surely that matters more.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't it be both?

I find it slightly fascinating that understanding grammar becomes really important when you learn a foreign language, but most people don't seem to think you need to know it for English. Do other countries have the same way of thinking?

I was at Primary school in the 70s don't really remember learning much grammar then (don't really remember learning much at Primary to be fair). I then went to a private secondary school where we had to learn Latin and German. Our Latin teacher was also our English teacher so they really went all out with English grammar so we would be able to cope with Latin and German

I am of the age where we were taught virtually no grammar in school. I'm going to be completely ruined when my children come to me with questions. I have a very vague recollection of them teaching ' doing words' and ' describing words' but that was all they were ever refered to as.

When going into highschool I found that many English teachers would get frustrated at us and have to attempt a quick re-teach of adverbs and nouns. That never went in our heads very well and ate into the time needed for other things.

I think we need a happy middle ground as I still struggle in general conversation about it, as does my boyfriend. I think that they should be pushing the normal adjectives and nouns, but leave the 'fronted adverbials' for year seven and eight work to set the foundation for GCSE.

[quote Iamnotthe1]@Boeufsurletoit
Schools could at least teach staff how to use apostrophes correctly and avoid comma splices

Unfortunately, many teachers were educated at the time when there was little to no teaching of grammar. Having a generation of adults who make these mistakes is precisely what the curriculum is trying to avoid.

Comma splicing is also difficult to learn through reading as many published books contain a ridiculous number of comma-spliced sentences.[/quote]
That's a brilliant example of the "pendulum" swings I was referring to. Too far one way (virtually no technical grammar teaching) then too far the other way (teaching it at a too high level, too young).

@ZoeTurtle

I have no idea what any of those things are, and I'm a professional writer and editor.

I was listening to a piece on Radio 4 one day where an editor was giving examples of how a particular piece of writing could be improved. She was removing a lot of the structures we are encouraging children to include. The adverbs to start a sentence are a pet hate of mine. They sound clumsy and unnatural. Lots of teachers encourage them as model sentence structures. Carefully, he cut the cake. Awful. Creativity, natural flow and simplicity are very under valued.

@Iamnotthe1 I do get that. I was educated in that era too. The current way of doing things is certainly not instilling any love of language in my children though. I think learning the parts of speech is a great idea, but a constant drip of negative comments on imaginative work because it doesn't contain a set number of grammatical features is just soul-crushing nonsense. I also have to bite my tongue when the teacher misses adverbs not on the list and tells my child they haven't included any.

A good grounding in grammar is really sensible. What is currently on the primary curriculum is not.

Won't help with improving his use of English or as background knowledge for learning other languages

I wasn't taught half of this at school and it made learning other languages so much harder later on. We'd be asked to use a certain type of grammar and wouldn't have the first clue what it meant in English, let alone in the other language.

After my A-levels, I spent five months in Germany and attended a German secondary school as a pupil and this grammatical knowledge is normal to them and is highly helpful when learning second or third languages. If it's a normal part of their curriculum, why is it so difficult for our students to learn the same?

Aside from biological functions, every single thing we do in life, we have had to learn. Why would we not want children to have as much knowledge as possible?

Haven't got a degree in English but part of my job involves proof reading and correcting letters and documents - l have a reputation for 100% accuracy and attention to detail so l know what l am doing. Never heard of a fronted adverbial until l started homeschooling!! Yes they need to learn these things but why put labels on them to kids so young?!

@PorkPieForStarters

I wasn't taught half of this at school and it made learning other languages so much harder later on. We'd be asked to use a certain type of grammar and wouldn't have the first clue what it meant in English, let alone in the other language.

After my A-levels, I spent five months in Germany and attended a German secondary school as a pupil and this grammatical knowledge is normal to them and is highly helpful when learning second or third languages. If it's a normal part of their curriculum, why is it so difficult for our students to learn the same?

Aside from biological functions, every single thing we do in life, we have had to learn. Why would we not want children to have as much knowledge as possible?

Are fronted adverbials a thing in German?

@Pukkatea

My theory is that people like Jacob Rees Mogg were forced to learn these things at their fancy schools, and because they believe they got where they are on merit rather than money and connections, that must mean that fronted adverbials are the key to success, and they enjoy being the gatekeeper of language the lesser mortals don't know or care about.

no, I'm pretty sure they are stupid new inventions.

JRM probably wouldn't know what they mean - I hadn't heard of "fronted wotsit" till yesterday on MN.

The main problem is that it makes writing so incredibly joyless. Good writing and understanding language comes from independent reading. Knowing what a fronted adverbial is won’t inspire anyone to pick up a book.
The problem with 1990s children not knowing grammar in MFL lessons indicated a problem with the MFL lessons rather than with the English lessons IMHO (I am a linguist).
It would be much easier to teach this all later, although I personally don’t think a research based argument has been made for teaching it at all.

I have a PhD in 18th century lit and the term ‘fronted adverbial’ is entirely new to me.