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.

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

When I review CVs or peoples' documents I don't ask them to define a frontal adverbial but the quality of their written English is certainly under scrutiny.

Terminology aside, the idea that we magically absorb good language and grammar from books and our enviironment and don't need lessons is quite discriminatory against those who don't grow up with those advantages.

So I don't care about terminology, I do care that children learn to structure good written English for when they have the need.

It doesn't need to be over engineered but IME young children like rules and like the "puzzles" of matching sentences to the rules (or at least that is largely how mine learned in their state school). I don't recall it being quite so painful but I can quite believe the Gove regime sucked the joy out of it.

The "we don't need to learn" grammar reminds me of the similar debate about whether spelling or times tables should be taught by rote or acquired by reading and maths. Most of the research subsequently showed that the learning by rote was key to building reading and numeracy skills. The children who missed out were those who didn't gain these skills at home.

I was at school in the era when grammar was not really properly taught and certainly was not described with formal terminology.

Somehow, I learned quite a bit along the way. How?

Through reading widely.

It feels like this overly formal drilling of grammar rules is a crap replacement for children & young people almost absorbing the "rules" by reading good quality written materials, extensively. In the same way that toddlers learn to use the right grammar when speaking through hearing adults speak and absorbing those rules, it should be possible to pick up more from simply reading more.

@C8H10N4O2

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

When I review CVs or peoples' documents I don't ask them to define a frontal adverbial but the quality of their written English is certainly under scrutiny.

Terminology aside, the idea that we magically absorb good language and grammar from books and our enviironment and don't need lessons is quite discriminatory against those who don't grow up with those advantages.

So I don't care about terminology, I do care that children learn to structure good written English for when they have the need.

It doesn't need to be over engineered but IME young children like rules and like the "puzzles" of matching sentences to the rules (or at least that is largely how mine learned in their state school). I don't recall it being quite so painful but I can quite believe the Gove regime sucked the joy out of it.

The "we don't need to learn" grammar reminds me of the similar debate about whether spelling or times tables should be taught by rote or acquired by reading and maths. Most of the research subsequently showed that the learning by rote was key to building reading and numeracy skills. The children who missed out were those who didn't gain these skills at home.

Did you ever learn to read and comprehend while you were doing all of that assessing of CVs?

I'm sorry to put it so rudely, but ... you're quoting my post, so what bit of me saying that teaching grammar is useful do you disagree with?

If you don't want grammar teaching 'over engineered' then you agree with me.

I have never said 'we don't need to learn grammar'.

How about you take up your argument with someone else, instead of using me as a straw man?

And btw, I agree that it is discriminatory to presume everyone has the same access to books and the same exposure to standard spoken English.

However, I think you're massively naive if you imagine that the same parents who don't or can't buy their children books, and don't or can't speak standard English, are suddenly going to develop the capacity to teach their children about fronted adverbials from a send-home worksheet. That is what we're talking about here, remember. Not highly qualified and well trained teachers delivering learning, but parents or grandparents like the OP.

We risk producing a generation of children who believe that a sentence such as ‘I bounded excitedly from my cramped wooden seat and flung my arm gracefully up like a bird soaring into the sky’ is preferable to ‘I stood snd put my hand up’

suitable-education.uk/childrens-writing-skills-harmed-by-primary-curriculum/

Talking of adverbs ending in ‘ly’, a dd at about 10 came home after some school tests saying, ‘English was OK, Mum, but I did really craply at maths.’ 😂

As a new teacher, I noticed comprehension was often an activity that children were left to do with a teaching assistant during planning time.

Funny you should say that. I've often thought that comprehensions weren't taught well enough or frequently enough. When I was at school in the 70's, we did the odd one in class and there was always one in the year end test, but I don't really remember anything being "taught", i.e. you did it, it was marked, end of story.

I noticed the same with my son when he was at secondary school - they were set, maybe, one per year, and then there was one in the year end test. The only feedback being a mark out of 20 or whatever.

I was also pretty unimpressed that the comprehensions at my son's secondary (last decade) were nearly always on fiction. I actually quite enjoyed the more "real life" comprehensions we used to do back in the 70s which were usually more real-life factual, i.e. based on a technical journal article, or even the one's I used to do at primary in the 60s which were often based on a cooking recipe. They "trained" you to look at the detail and answer factual questions which is a hell of a lot more interesting and relevant to real life than the more subjective modern "what did the author mean by ...." or "what would be a better title than the one used by the author?"

OP, my dgd is 9 and I'm supervising lessons. It's hard, and I taught English in the past.

In the 60s and 70s, in non-fee schools, we weren't taught those things. I think we were short-changed.

Children should be taught grammar "jargon" (for want go a better word) but not at 8 years old. I'd do it at 13/14 and tie it in with comparing and identifying their uses on French/Spanish/Mandarin etc

Teaching it at 8 is stupid. Teach it at an age they can actively retain the grammatical names/knowledge so it will aid when faced with learning complexities of foreign languages as a teenager/in adult life.

@lalalandisnofun
Yep. A lot of it is bollocks! - she exclaimed wildly.

Of course most decent professional authors stick to "she said" 95% of the time so the curriculum is horse shit.

How about you take up your argument with someone else, instead of using me as a straw man?

Huh? Where did I disagree with you? I was simply extending the discussion and drawing the comparison with the "spelling and tables" debates from 20+ years ago.

We didn't learn any grammar at school and I wanted to. Now my daughter knows more than I do. She knows how and why words are used and the different options available. I think it's more vital as a lot of this is implicitly known by a native speaker, but it's extremely helpful in a world where basic English is morphing into text speak. We don't have the BBC pitching at those who speak proper anymore so we better learn how to do it somewhere.

not vital

@C8H10N4O2

How about you take up your argument with someone else, instead of using me as a straw man?

Huh? Where did I disagree with you? I was simply extending the discussion and drawing the comparison with the "spelling and tables" debates from 20+ years ago.

Oh, gosh, I am really sorry. You quoted my post and I took it you were replying to me, and I was angry because I thought you were objecting to what you thought I'd said. I've not seen quote post used like that much on here.

You quoted my post and I took it you were replying to me, and I was angry because I thought you were objecting to what you thought I'd said. I've not seen quote post used like that much on here

I plainly need to improve my grammar and punctuation

No, I expect it's me!

The "we don't need to learn" grammar reminds me of the similar debate about whether spelling or times tables should be taught by rote or acquired by reading and maths.

I don't think that's what people are saying on this thread. I certainly am not, anyway. I think learning grammar is very valuable; it has always helped me in terms of knowing how to sort out something I've written that just isn't working properly. It's particularly important because it helps people to understand why some of the more horrendous errors around are wrong - e.g. that you can't say "would of" because "of" isn't a verb.

What people are saying is that teaching complex grammar in a formulaic way and insisting that children must drag these formulations into their writing whether it's appropriate or not is simply not helpful, and in many cases is actively leading to poor writing. There needs to be a balance.

Yanbu. It’s cruel.

The primary curriculum is very messed up at the moment - too many years of idiots being put in charge of education 😭 and privately educated ministers thinking that they can make state schools ‘better’ by making the work harder instead of looking at class sizes or funding or teacher stress levels...

It’s interesting, I was expecting to be annoyed by the newly-invented grammar stuff (and I was taught in a different country where grammar, parsing sentences etc was drilled into us from early primary) but I’m actually seeing the benefits for my 9yo who isn’t a whizz at writing creatively or persuasively. He seems to approach these as tools to use - ‘actually, a simple sentence might really help here, I’ve used a lot of complex and compound ones.’ He’s of an analytical bent and while he’ll never be a great creative writer, I’ve seen the improvement in him knowing the different tools he can use and the impact they can have. His writing is definitely less monotonous in its structure and he’s experimenting with the techniques he’s being taught.

I don’t give a damn what they’re called, really. But I do wonder if the focus on the complexity of the terms is a bit over-dramatic. Is coordinating conjunction really that much harder than lowest common denominator, which is taught at the same age?

I wouldn’t think the goal of this is to turn out a few more Booker prize winners. It’s to turn out more people who can write reasonably well.

I write professionally as a core part of my job - I’m good at it (don’t judge me by my MN posts though!) but I’m constantly amazed at the number of well-educated people who don’t have the fundamentals of good writing. I’ve worked in countries where the overall standard of written English is definitely higher, and I’ve often wondered why.

I was at primary school late 60s and early 70s in those glorious years of creative writing and no formal grammar teaching. Somehow I became a voracious reader, a pretty articulate writer and a teacher without the benefit of ever hearing about fronted adverbials. I worry that the current curriculum is going to kill the love of language for our young people

Somehow I became a voracious reader, a pretty articulate writer and a teacher without the benefit of ever hearing about fronted adverbials.

I reckon the voracious readers (I was and am one too ) will always probably fare all right when it comes to writing ability.

It’s the kids who aren’t who might need something else to help them. As I said, I think the terminology is a red herring. They focus on different terms than when I was a kid - my 9yo isn’t doing subjects and predicates, adverbial and adjectival clauses like I was - but they seem to be serving the same purpose. And that’s to get children trying and practising different kinds of sentence structure, and understanding how they fit together.

The only case I’d make for traditional grammar is that it’s so useful to have it really securely before learning a foreign language in any depth.

I would agree that having marking schemes that require different sentence types to be used whether appropriate and useful or not in a piece of writing is bananas, though!

It must kill any joy in language.

I agree that it is absolutely sucking the joy out of English as a subject.

At 7 I just remember the sheer pleasure of getting my thoughts down on the page. So I am taking that approach with DD and if she happens to tick their boxes for all the grammar we were meant to include (she usually does, but we don't consciously try to) then that is a bonus.

My son was saying he hated English, but he has a tutor now and my brief to her was just to get English to be fun. Where he would have written the bare minimum for his teachers he is writing lengthy creative pieces of work for his tutor and looks forward to it. I expect the fact she is teaching live rather than in a video recording helps, but it is so great to see how creative he actually is when you peel away the pressure of including "5 fronted adverbials" or whatever.

Fuck all that shit.

See a whole world of all manner of authors and English teachers.

Fuck all that creativity sucking bollocks.

Fuck all of that, just write the fuck out of shit

But do write for fucks sake. Keep fucking writing for all our twatting sakes.

Currently the fucking fucker's fucking fucked.

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