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.

Gove bastard. How about children who are already speaking 2 languages fluently at 6? Its a hateful pile of shite borne from the playing fields of Eton and executed by a load of feeble minded Primary teachers.

Perhaps it’s a view that the competition is good and that the ambitious will find a way to make it work for them (home tutors, etc).

Have you ever changed your ability to do something? Lets take a simple example swimming or riding a bike.....you could do it, then you could...oops you sank/fell off One day you mastered it. years later , you try it again , you fall off.....thats how learning is. The damage done to kids ( especially second language learners and kids from poorer homes) is immeasurable.

I agree that, “expanded noun phrases” and “fronted adverbials” is just a nonsensical pain, when you could be talking about “using adjectives to describe nouns” and “putting an adverb as the opener to a sentence”. Why ask a child to underline the noun phrase in a SATS test, instead of asking them to write noun under any nouns and adjectives under any adjectives?

However, grammar teaching in Y6 has been fantastic for my Y7 starting French, and me supporting her with that at home.

Je lui ai donné un livre.

It is so much easier for her to get it, when we have the shared understanding and vocabulary for me to say, “OK, so in French the object pronoun goes in front of the verb, whereas in English we put it after” - and she just says, “got it”. Not, “what the fuck is an object pronoun, and whilst we’re at it, I’m not too sure what a verb is either.” Then there’s dividing the verb into an auxiliary verb and a past participle - both terms that don’t phase her a bit.

If they want to teach grammar, do it by using the perfectly good names we’ve got got parsing a sentence, none of this made up, “expanded noun phrase” shite!!

A 6 year old should be learning this really? A little little precious child having its lovely little mind troubled by this utter shite?

@TeenPlusTwenties

I think this level of technical detail at age 8-11 is pointless as they then don't continue to use it at secondary.

They do use it at secondary. Frequently. I'm in the middle of lesson planning for after half term and using these terms in every plan.

The reason for learning the terminology is to be able to draw parallels between languages. If you know what a conjunction is, you have a labelled box. In that labelled box you can place conjunctions from English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, whatever you fancy. And you know how they work, despite each individual conjunction being a separate word.

You could label the box 'blue' if you don't like the word conjunction, but you'll have to have an index so that when every textbook, teacher and lesson uses the shared label 'conjunction', you know that's the box you labelled 'blue'.

It's about creating a shared lexicon to describe language function and form.

@randomer it's absolutely demoralising teaching it. Writing rubbish like that in the workbooks of children who can't read. Absolute waste of time.

@TheKeatingFive

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

If you read good writing, and practice writing, and still struggle, what then? That's why teachers now break down skills such as 'varying sentence starters' by teaching the use of fronted adverbials, for example, as a technique. It is a scaffold towards being able to write well, before you can do it independently, confidently and fluently. Rather like stabilisers on a first bike.

@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.

Exactly this. The current English NC leaves no space for practice, refinement and gaining experience in applying these skills. Learning the basic tools is important, but so is refining the use of those skills and knowing which one to use in which circumstance, for effect.

It does help with the structure of their sentences to be fair, otherwise you get a lot of “and then he did this, so then she did that, but then they...”

Some children will just do that instinctively but others need to be taught it to access it. It’s not the most exciting thing, though.

The assessment of writing is sort of a bunch of shit though, so take that with a pinch of salt. I do think that it’s important to explicitly teach the skills to children because otherwise they simply won’t do it, but there’s not a lot of space in the ARE assessments for constructing meaning in writing

@HereBeFuckery, tell us more about this and a 6 year old, possibly had nothing to eat or drink since the night before, speaks another language at home, has slept in his/her uniform....so how would that work exactly?

@SarahAndQuack

But the alternative to bad grammar teaching isn't keeping everyone ignorant or uneducated.

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.

Agreed on your first point, but I would suggest that the evidence doesn't support you on the second.

You could always teach them dome archaic language "widdershins ran the dog...", "Without the castle walls...", "forthwith the children shouted.."

Haven't RTFT so this may have been discussed but can I just say that fronted adverbials seem like the Gove-iest thing EVER. They're basically a tactic for delaying the actual point of the sentence/for making you wait longer for the salient facts 🙄

@Laquila

Haven't RTFT so this may have been discussed but can I just say that fronted adverbials seem like the Gove-iest thing EVER. They're basically a tactic for delaying the actual point of the sentence/for making you wait longer for the salient facts 🙄

hahaha!

Perhaps you could include that on the test?

Maybe even: Underline the exclamations
Boris uses in this sentence.

Alack, I am having to ask you to lockdown again, alas.

[quote randomer]@HereBeFuckery, tell us more about this and a 6 year old, possibly had nothing to eat or drink since the night before, speaks another language at home, has slept in his/her uniform....so how would that work exactly?[/quote]
Sorry, more about what? How a six year old from (what sounds like) a very deprived background shouldn't be given the opportunity to learn? I'm not following. I teach in a school with kids from horrendously deprived backgrounds. I get that there are hungry, hurting, sad, abused children in schools; trust me, I really do. I don't agree that we should say 'well, some kids have the most enormous obstacles to climb, let's just move the winning line to a different location for them'. No. Let's help them over the obstacle and get them back in the race.

Depends on the obstacle

Blame Gove OP. It's not the teachers fault.

I hear you! We never learned this at school. My 8yo just cannot remember the words - they mean nothing to her. Her pastoral care teacher said pretty much they are pointless and to do the more engaging lessons.

@OwlWearingGlasses

Blame Gove OP. It's not the teachers fault.

I certainly don't blame the teachers. I'm well aware, as an ex-teacher, that all this is down to Gove, and the government.

@randomer
I don’t really get your angle. I was being sarcastic when I suggested there was a purpose behind it.

And calling primary teachers feeble minded when they have been very vocal about this is off.

My recollection of being taught grammar back in the dark ages is that we learnt things like:
noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, adverb
punctuation and spelling
the subject and object in sentences
main clauses and subordinate clauses
conjunctions
verb forms
single and plural
comparatives (e.g. good/better/best)

But certainly not fronted adverbials etc. And all of that stood me in very good stead in subsequently learning French, German and Latin.

I just can't see the point in even inventing the term "expanded noun phrase" when you can as easily teach children to liven up their writing by using a few adjectives.

@LadyfromtheBelleEpoque, it makes me livid to see the damage being done to children and teachers by the idiotic meddling from government.
I suppose "feeble minded" was unkind but I wonder if Primary school were populated by males would they just nod and smile at this stuff?

Imagine a child with a September birthday, he/she may have just turned 5 in Year One and may or may not be able to have the dexterity to manipulate a pencil. He/she then has to master the concentration needed to sit and write and then to top it off has to learn Grammar.
Look to other countries where children do not start formal education until much , much later.
There is so much evidence to show their little digits aren't even ready to bloody well write at 5/6.
Now factor in "disadvantage" in all its forms.

I like them, English is not my first language which is likely very obvious from my writing style. I started learning English when I was eight, the only things I was actually taught to use at school were capital letters and fullstops. So when I write I’m winging it.

I am learning so so much from my sons lessons and he is only five, my writing is still fairly poor, but it is slowly improving.

The scariest thing about my written English? I have an A at GCSE literature and language!

[quote randomer]@HereBeFuckery, tell us more about this and a 6 year old, possibly had nothing to eat or drink since the night before, speaks another language at home, has slept in his/her uniform....so how would that work exactly?[/quote]
I didn’t see this before I posted, I was this child but I was eight years old.

Correct and comprehensive education was what I needed, that included how to actually use the English language correctly. Neither my primary or secondary school taught me anything beyond capital letters or fullstops.

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