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.

The argument that children are too young to learn specific things is so soul-crushingly depressing

No one is saying that.

But the key to good writing is not coming up with and teaching the names of not necessarily helpful constructs.

It’s reading good writing. And practicing good writing.

@C8H10N4O2

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.

I take your point that it's easy for people with a good education to be a bit dismissive of it.

But I'm certainly not saying it's unnecessary to teach core language structure and I've never met an academic who thinks so.

What I am saying is that I don't believe this is a particularly good or helpful way to teach core language structure. And I challenge you to find any job (with the possible exception of primary school teaching) where the spec includes 'must be able to identify a fronted adverbial at 30 paces'. A good command of written English, sure. But that's a very different thing.

There’s a huge difference between a theoretical knowledge of grammar and actually writing in a way that is grammatically correct and fits in with the conventions that are considered ‘good‘ usage. It’s similar to the difference between knowing the theoretical rules of French grammar and actually speaking French. The connections between these things are not very strong.

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.

To be fair, I think the media has jumped on it because we are all very well aware that there are brilliant writers all over themselves who write wonderfully without ever having been taught about fronted adverbials. There are also children all over the place now writing badly because they have been taught they must use these things and haven't properly understood when they are or are not appropriate.

@TheKeatingFive

The argument that children are too young to learn specific things is so soul-crushingly depressing

No one is saying that.

But the key to good writing is not coming up with and teaching the names of not necessarily helpful constructs.

It’s reading good writing. And practicing good writing.

Multiple people on this thread alone (and on the other current thread about the primary curriculum) have claimed that children are too young to learn or understand these concepts.

One element of being able to produce good writing is understanding how you can use language and structure to influence the way in which a reader experiences your work. This doesn't just happen as if by magic. The teaching of grammar in the right way makes writing more accessible to a greater number of people.

As an ex primary teacher I couldn’t agree more.

It’s unnecessary at primary age and only serves to put most children off English.

Primary English should IMO concentrate on fostering a love of reading, literature and creative writing. Yes, teach basic grammar such as noun, adjective, verb, preposition etc but 7-11 year old do not need to learn all the technical stuff they are forced to.

The other problem is schools end up ‘teaching to the test’ ie SATs now. So creativity is more or less squeezed out of the curriculum now.

I blame Gove and his Tory boys.

One good thing about lockdown is that most parents now are seeing how boring and prescriptive the primary curriculum is (can’t speak for secondary). Hopefully it might help to bring about change. Write to the education minister if you feel strongly enough. I did!

@Arobase
There are also children all over the place now writing badly because they have been taught they must use these things and haven't properly understood when they are or are not appropriate.

Which means that we should be investing time and energy into improving the teaching of grammar rather than calling for it to be removed completely.

I agree that there are some who write well whilst having never learnt these aspects of writing. However, there are even more people, even in writing-based professions, who do not write well.

@lamnnothe

In theory I agree with you but not for children age 7-11. In my experience as a teacher pre and post 2014 (when all this technical grammar was brought in) it absolutely does not lead to better writing in young children.
If anything I’d say children don’t know now in the main how to write well. They are certainly not as confident in writing a good story.

This doesn't just happen as if by magic.

As a previous poster put it very eloquently, there are many wonderful writers in operation today who have no clue what a fronted adverbial is. And many children being taught the term right now producing appalling writing because it’s been drummed into them to use it, with no understanding of when it’s effective.

So i’d hazard it’s entirely counterproductive to teach it in this way.

This explains the point I made above about exclamation marks. Essentially children will only get the required credit if they use it in a sentence beginning "What" or "How". So you may get, say, a piece of writing about something peaceful, or something sad, but the rhythm of the writing is suddenly thrown right out by a gratuitous "What a lovely day!" or "How sad he felt!" because the child has been told they have to get that exclamation mark in.

I love this illustration from that article:

“Remember, children, you’ll be awarded zero credit for writing: ‘I hate the government!’ Instead, try writing: ‘What a pointless nimrod the education secretary is!’”

To be fair, I think the media has jumped on it because we are all very well aware that there are brilliant writers all over themselves who write wonderfully without ever having been taught about fronted adverbials

Sorry, this was meant to be "there are brilliant writers all over the place". It's a rule that whenever you write online about grammar you must make horrendous bloopers.

I would settle for a full on onslaught across all ages in the UK for the principle of
YOU DON'T SHOVE AN APOSTROPHE IN EVERY WORD THAT ENDS IN -S JUST IN CASE IT NEEDS ONE!

There's no doubt we needed to step up grammar in schools - I'm currently doing a SALT degree and there are a lot of my course who wouldn't have known a pronoun if one hit them on their head when we started out, but this fronted adverbial fad just leads to an entire class of stories that become so utterly formulaic and taught to the SATs mark schemes (I used to mark KS2 English and you would get entire schools where they had all been taught a few mark scoring sentence structures and banged them all out in paragraph one, before randomly shoving all the punctuation marks they'd not used yet in in the final paragraph usually resorting to a completely random "but what do you think?" to get the question mark out of the way at the end)

There were kids' writing I marked that was so superb I remember it even now - years and years later - but they were not the kids whacking a fronted adverbial in at the beginning of the story and ones who had a genuine flair for the English language.

I'm very good at the grammatical aspects of my current course but that's because I read voraciously as a child, and also I did Latin for GCSE basically because it was a doss and I could copy my mate's translation homework - but it all went in.

@SurfsUp79
The other problem is schools end up ‘teaching to the test’ ie SATs now. So creativity is more or less squeezed out of the curriculum now.

This is a common perception but not always the reality in many schools. I teach Year Six at one of the highest-performing schools in the country and we do not change nor narrow our curriculum as a result of the end of Key Stage Two assessments.

[quote SurfsUp79]@lamnnothe

In theory I agree with you but not for children age 7-11. In my experience as a teacher pre and post 2014 (when all this technical grammar was brought in) it absolutely does not lead to better writing in young children.
If anything I’d say children don’t know now in the main how to write well. They are certainly not as confident in writing a good story.[/quote]
Whereas in my experience, pre and post 2014, it absolutely has improved writing.

However, it comes down to how it is being taught, the subject knowledge of the teachers and how the rest of the curriculum is brought to life.

I found my understanding of English grammar improved through learning other languages. Looking at the subjunctive (conjuntivo) in Portuguese and thinking "how do we do that in English?" was far easier, I think, than learning English grammar on its own. Two reasons, I think - 1) when you've learnt the grammar of your own language by reading and listening to others, it's hard to deconstruct it and look at the grammar 2) English is such a mishmash, and so many of constructions degraded, that it's difficult to see the underlying grammar.

My 1950s/60s education contented itself with nouns, pronouns, verbs (without, so far as I remember, any mention of tenses), adverbs adjectives and conjunctions, together with the concept that a sentence needs an active verb, something which is widely ignored today. By me too

@Iamnotthe1
The teaching of grammar in the right way does make writing more accessible but the point is that many do not believe it is taught in the right way. Basic sentence structure should be taught. Punctuation rules should be taught. Being able to write and use language to influence a reader comes through wide reading and quality discussion of texts in school. As a new teacher, I noticed comprehension was often an activity that children were left to do with a teaching assistant during planning time. Weekly taught comprehension made a huge difference in my class. Choosing higher level texts as a teaching focus was also effective. I couldn’t use many scheme lessons as the texts chosen were quite basic. Exposure to and discussion of quality writing is the best way to raise standards of writing.

My youngest DC is 24 and I'm pretty sure he didn't learn any of these terms at school. He has completed a humanities degree and is currently doing a Masters and I really don't think his essay writing has suffered in any way from not learning these terms - he is a pedant where spelling and grammar are concerned!
I remember a 6 year old in school pointing to a word one day and declaring "that's a split digraph" and me having a little WTF moment to myself. I did English A level many years ago and had to Google what it was! (It was just a magic 'e' back in my day!
I really do wonder about the benefits of teaching all this terminology to young children - but then I'm not a teacher .

@lamnothe1

I’d hazard a guess that your school is in the minority. I’ve worked in 2 schools since 2014 and my own DC have been at a different school and what I see produced now is rarely as good as the wonderful writing in KS2 I used to read and mark pre 2014.

This is just anecdotal of course. Your school sounds great.

@Blackberrycream

Absolutely. There are so many things that are essential for creating capable and confident writers: the exploration of high-quality texts; the exposure to more developed and ambitious vocabulary; a culture of reading and discussion, etc. The effective teaching of grammar is a part of that - a piece of the jigsaw - rather than the whole solution.

I find this thread a bit sad. I LOVE teaching grammar but do it at the point of reading and writing - never as a stand alone. It gives my year 5s a control over their writing and a language with which to discuss their own and that of others.

Most love having a sophisticated technical vocabulary and talk confidently about expanded noun phrases or subordinate clauses. I'm not the biggest fan of SPAG tests but well taught at the point of writing, it's fab!

I think the posters on here talking about how grammar is important and we need to be able to write well to get jobs etc. haven't actually seen what these 8 year olds are being taught. You need to see it to believe it. I'm all for a bit of grammar and learning how to write well - I'm an MFL teacher - my life would be so much easier if kids knew the basics. But that's the point: they're not being taught the basics. Half of them are still unable use full stops competently or identify a verb and yet they're trying to teach them how to identify and how to use fronted adverbials. Get the important things done; the things that actually do matter instead of wasting precious time and energy on this bullshit. The fact that the concept is not age appropriate makes kids feel like failures and puts them off literacy for life.

Agree it's nuts and focusing on more basic stuff like when to use their/they're/there and apostrophes (so many adults can't cope with this) would be much better.

I think it’s completely pointless teaching complex grammar theory to primary or even secondary children and I refuse to engage with such nonsense.

It was trendy not to teach English grammar back in the 70’s so I never got further than how to use an apostrophe correctly, which is all 99.9% of us ever use. However, it didn’t stop me getting two degrees and working for many years in HE.

I think it’s something that only needs to be introduced at A level English.

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

Oh that makes sense. I remember learning about the best place to put adverbs in a sentence, I don't remember that terminology (which could be my memory!)

I think that autocorrect and the number of children getting devices at a younger age will lead to a deterioration in spelling standards over time. YouTube or Google are smart enough to have a guess what your spelling mistakes are meant to be and predictive text means you only need the first few letters of the word for your device to guess what you meant.