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.

Completely agree about the reading. My form class of 13/14 year old boys has very few readers and guess which ones are doing best academically? My son is 11 and I can see him going the same way as the pp above who said her son has lost interest. He has loads of books but reverts to bloody Walliams and Wimpy Kid most of the time - short, lazy sentences. Walliams' books are mostly long lists of things, endless examples and the same "joke" fifty times. There's a definite issue with attention span that I think is linked to internet use - youtube clips of a few minutes rather than whole episodes of something or a flim lead to a real inability to focus for the length of time you need to get really into a decent book.

He has loads of books but reverts to bloody Walliams and Wimpy Kid most of the time

Surely that’s better than nothing?

I agree that screens and their impact on attention spans are really problematic.

I’m an MFL teacher and have long argued that English grammar needs to be taught better at primary school as having a good understanding of grammar gives you the basic building blocks to develop an understanding of other languages. However, I’m talking about adjectives, adverbs etc. I have never even heard of a fronted adverbial! I’ve managed to study two foreign languages without ever hearing this! Agree with the comments that it’s things like this at young ages that put children off grammar. When taught well and age appropriately, it can be really fun and engaging!

TheKeatingfive yes it is, but it kills me when there is so much else out there. It doesn't have to be classics- I've bought him biographies of his favourite sports people etc but he has a really bad reaction to anything new - books or tv or activities - its like he's scared that if he doesn't like it he will have wasted his time so best not to try. Its always a massive struggle to get him into anything new.

I apologise if this is a stupid question

do pupils get tested on these things at any 16+ or 18+ exams?

I got an A in my English A level but I wouldn't have if this stuff was part of an exam. Actually, I wouldn't have chosen English A level if this was part of it!

yes it is, but it kills me when there is so much else out there

I honesty wouldn’t stress. If he’s enjoying them, leave him to it. He’ll diversify in time. Having a positive relationship with reading is the most important thing at this age.

Apart from the fact that the way grammar is currently taught sucks the joy out of the language, we also have to accept that language evolves and what is taught today will be irrelevant tomorrow.

I'm old enough to have done "proper" old fashioned grammar and sentence structure as primary and secondary school and my DC have all gone through school and had grammar lessons. I found a grounding in grammar helpful when learning languages (and vice versa).

I've never heard of a "fronted adverbial". It looks like an adverb in front of a verb, is that all it is?

I'm generally in favour of age appropriate grammar being taught but I'm bemused by some of the complexity and terminology added into modern grammar.

@lovepickledlimes

I assume it the purposes of the task was to ensure he has a good grasp of the english language and understand how to properly use it. It's a skill that may well be useful in his future academic career.

I am a retired teacher who had a 1960s Grammar school education. I didn't do most of the grammar my grandchildren have to do until secondary school. I hadn't heard of fronted adverbial until they had to do them. Of course I understood the concept but I don't understand why it has to be taught in that way.

I would rather they learned their/there/they're and not to say 'would of' it would be more useful. Then the rest of the time they could read (or have the teacher read to them) good quality children's literature. Not with the intention of studying it and parsing the grammar but to develop a love of literature and expand their imaginations and vocabulary.

This is Biff.

This is Chip.

This is Biff and Chip’s homework.

Biff and Chip are required to write down ten examples of fronted adverbials.

Biff and Chip have not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is.

This is Mum.

Mum has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.

“We don’t know what a fronted adverbial is,” whinge Biff and Chip. “This homework is impossible. You will have to help us.”

“It’s not my homework, it’s your homework,” says Mum, thanking her lucky stars that she did not have to engage in any of this fronted adverbial bollocks when she was at school.

This is Dad.

Dad still struggles to distinguish between a noun and a verb, and would not know a fronted adverbial if one came up and punched him in the face.

Biff and Chip think for a moment about asking Dad for help.

They decide to Google instead.

This is Mrs May.

When Mrs May went into teaching she honestly believed she would be able to spend her time helping children to love learning. And putting on plays. Mrs May loves a play. She did not realise that a love of learning would not feature on the National Curriculum at all, and that she would instead be forced to meet a series of impossible and continuously moving goalposts which successive governments would put in place, and have to teach her classes about ridiculous concepts such as fronted adverbials which, in all honesty, are only ever likely to be of use if they end up becoming professors of linguistics. Or primary school teachers.

If truth be told, Mrs May has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.

This is Floppy the dog.

Floppy holds no truck with fronted adverbials.

Floppy eats the fronted adverbial homework sheet.

Floppy knows that he is a fucking liability, and waits to be told so.

No one is more surprised than Floppy when the entire family gather around and tell him “Oh GOOD dog Floppy.”

Floppy feels this is proof positive that some good can come from fronted adverbials after all.

Later at school, Biff and Chip are, for the first time, able to legitimately use the excuse: “My dog ate my homework.”

Mrs May breathes a secret sigh of relief that that is one less set of incomprehensible and entirely incorrect homework that she has to plough through, and suggests to the class that they will all put on a play instead.

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

IME it always is academics, with the benefits of a good education behind them, who think its unnecessary to teach core language structure.

The reality is that good basic grammar and written language is still necessary in a great many jobs and people are judged by it.

Seen on another site. I couldn’t post the link but could copy and paste the text. Enjoy.

This is why if I had primary age children now I'd be tempted to home school. It really is a load of nonsense and puts kids off writing for life. It's so, so sad to watch children struggling with such an abstract, irrelevant and unnecessary concept. I have an English degree and studied linguistics and I'd never heard of a fronted adverbial phrase until I worked with a class of year 4s. Utterly fucking bonkers and made up by that incompetent twat, Gove. And it's not a case of dumbing down- when you speak to language experts and successful writers they all agree it's nonsense. But then Gove doesn't like experts, does he?

It's no more daftcthan teaching five year olds about split digraphs , phonemes and graphemes.

Too much jargon!

Knowing grammar is one of the foundations of learning foreign languages; that's the main benefit of teaching young children grammatical concepts in my opinion.

Fronted adverbisld are utterly useless unless you’re wanting to write a Stodart like character into your storyline.

As for the obsession with adverbs, all that serves to do is encourage purple prose. The key is BETTER verbs. Sure, learn what an adverb is but for the love of god stop telling kids that every verb needs an adverb to make writing better - it KILLS a narrative voice.

babybythesea applause!

that is a great example of what love of language and wordplay is about!

The reality is that good basic grammar and written language is still necessary in a great many jobs and people are judged by it.

That’s true.

But it doesn’t mean that teaching ‘fronted adverbials’ to 8 year olds is necessary to achieve it. There’s a real danger that it’s counterproductive and limits children’s love of language.

@C8H10N4O2
I've never heard of a "fronted adverbial". It looks like an adverb in front of a verb, is that all it is?

It's using an adverb or adverbial phrase at the start of the sentence rather than next to the verb itself.

Ultimately, the effective use of them helps to avoid repetition at the start of sentences and, as a result, creates pieces that are more varied and interesting to read. It can also help improve the overall cohesion of a piece.

It's not a complicated concept and is easily understood by children with no negative impact on language, imagination or enjoyment if taught as part of a well-rounded plan. Unfortunately, it's something that parents/the media have jumped on because they didn't learn it and so don't see the point.

The argument that children are too young to learn specific things is so soul-crushingly depressing. Why do we sell our children short? Why do we lower the bar for them rather than helping them reach greater heights? We saw the same arguments with phonics (children will never be able to say digraph) and computer science (a child could never understand what an algorithm is). Why do we do this?

A reliance on stylistic affectations such as fronted adverbials kills writing stone dead.

Haha!! have you been subjected to the a white bus is coming video yet? its still in my head.

Also see: clichés (unless used ironically).

@borntobequiet

A reliance on stylistic affectations such as fronted adverbials kills writing stone dead.

Yup

Children (indeed adults too) just don't need to know the names of the words that they're using in that kind of depth.

I've worked as a professional writer for 9 years since graduating with a good degree, and I am about to Google what a 'fronted adverbial' is, as I have no idea.

You can teach kids to read, write, spell and construct sentences without deconstructing them to that level of detail.

@lovepickledlimes

I assume it the purposes of the task was to ensure he has a good grasp of the english language and understand how to properly use it. It's a skill that may well be useful in his future academic career.

But I don't understand how learning this stuff achieves that. I'm ancient enough to have spent a lot of time on grammar and sentence construction in school, and it's always stood me in good stead; I've done well in every English exam I've ever taken, and I now work in a field where good English is important. However, I was never taught about fronted adverbials and the difference between subordinate and co-ordinated conjunctions. I was encouraged to read a lot, and I think I therefore absorbed a lot of good English without knowing it.

What bugs me about the current system is that the children are taught to shoehorn examples of certain grammar formations into everything they write, whether it's appropriate or not, so that their teacher can (literally) tick the relevant box on her mark scheme. I remember being shown a piece of work where children had been told they had to use the exclamation mark at least once, using it in the officially government approved format which in itself is incredibly clunky. There were some really good pieces of writing which were just ruined by these inappropriate sentences with exclamation marks, but they all got full marks because the teacher could tick that box to say they knew how to use it - despite the fact that what they knew how to use was in itself, in my view, blatantly incorrect.