Q re national curriculum - conditional tense English language

[lightlights]

Any experts on the national curriculum around? I have been looking at various sites and it seems that the conditional tense is not taught in years reception - year 13?

By conditional tense I mean the conjugated past and present conditional for verbs, for example would have, could have etc.

I have also noticed quite a lot about zero conditional, first conditional, second conditional etc in relation to teaching English as a second language. I was taught formal grammar which I am fairly sure did not include these ways of categorising the conditional tense, we learned the straightforward conjugated past and present conditional for verbs. Are these ways of categorising just taught to people learning English as a second language, and if so why?

Thank you very much!

That was beautifully explained, @laalaaland.

It depends what you're teaching, to be fair - if it's a course with a set syllabus and coursebook and exam at the end, you probably will use technical grammar terms, because they're likely to come up, and it would be weird not to explain them, if you're doing a chapter on prepositions or something.

But if you have a class of refugees from all over the world, who may not have had much formal education in any language, let alone English, then the focus should be on communication and functional use, which is probably enough cognitive load without adding extra info that people don't use in day to day life. I mean, I might have conversations about the subjunctive or gerunds or how Welsh mutations make me cry, but most people probably don't...

Having had an 80s/90s education, my English grammar was mainly nouns/ verbs/ adjectives/ adverbs a few times over (plus punctuation), and most of my knowledge comes from learning MFL at GCSE/ A-level in the late 90s framed by the languages I learned.

Having had to suffer Covid "home learning" to a y2/3 grammar has gone the other way into ridiculously pedantic constructions that are stupidly abstract for that age group to understand. It's now costing £££ to catch him up to the standard expected of y6 because being dyslexic he did not cope with the curriculum requirements and he didn't have the spare capacity to catch up. While I don't give much of a shit about fronted adverbials, subordinate conjunctions or SATs, I do care that he has inconsistent gaps compared to his peers and that can have consequences further on.

There is a happy medium somewhere between neglect of the way a (usually) first language works and the weird post-Gove over-zealous grammar for the sake of it approach. English is a strange fusion of Latin, Germanic and other languages and isn't easy to pigeon hole into a neat structure.

This is such an interesting thread to read even though I don't understand most of it
I was born in the 80s and at school in the 90s and didn't learn much beyond the absolute basics, until doing GCSEs in French & German.
My eldest child then started school just as the Conservatives brought in their super dull, grammar heavy primary curriculum and I had to start googling fronted adverbials and time connectives and subjugating coordinates etc (he's in secondary school now and reports they basically dropped all the grammar stuff from Year 7 onwards??)

Anyway, I managed to get writing-heavy A Levels including English, a first class degree (even took a semester of linguistics) and a PGCE without knowing what a past participle or present conditional is, so I wonder if it is really important to know these technical names?

Anyway, I managed to get writing-heavy A Levels including English, a first class degree (even took a semester of linguistics) and a PGCE without knowing what a past participle or present conditional is, so I wonder if it is really important to know these technical names?

I think it is useful to spend some time thinking about how language actually works, the functions of words. And it may inspire some people to go on and study linguistics (probably more come from studying foreign languages, but then understanding how languages work is definitely useful.)

For many people it won't be important in the same way that many people couldn't tell you what are stamens or pistils on a plant or what a terminal moraine is nor have ever calculated the volume of a cone or the refraction of light through a prism. And others will go on to work with it as adults.

But having covered a bit of all those things broadens the mind, gives you an idea of different ways of looking at the world, different things that interest you, which is likely to be different from your sibling or the kid who lives next door. It's part of being someone with a well-rounded education - most of us don't remember the details of much of what we learnt at school, but it does all feed into the sort of person we each are.

I absolutely agree that it should be about communication if you have a class full of refugees, but I also think that you have the conditional concept in every language - that is, it is a human concept in terms of thought - and therefore the concepts are there already - and in terms of language the zero/first/second etc is too unclear and prescriptive - it doesn't reflect the fact that the meaning will depend on context and nuances and so on The academic sources explain fairly simply and clearly the tense and the mood and distinguishes between real and unreal which would probably be more helpful to a room full of refugees. I think I am objecting to the fact that it looks like this was a reinvention of the wheel and the design was better first time round! But at the same time I do agree that it depends on who you are teaching, and how their native language deals with concepts, absolutely.

Another poster has said that conditionals aren't taught but the use of "of" and "have" is corrected - if it is to be corrected then it probably should be taught. But it isn't just about being right or wrong - English children learning English isn't just about learning grammar for the sake of it - you need language to express ideas and so the better a child's knowledge, the more opportunity it gives in relation to language, job, social life. The better you know correct grammar the easier it is to learn a foreign language. And also knowing correct grammar doesn't mean you have to use it all the time - you wouldn't be able to use "innit" in a situation where formal language is necessary, but you can use it at any other time as you wish - but I think knowing what is and isn't correct is worth it, even if you choose to not use it.

David Crystal is really clear - I think most of what he has written for the public is pretty good. Not sure why you are recommending him? I might have missed your point there.

You ask, does it matter technically if there is a future tense - well, it is more that it is misleading to say there isn't one, the poster was saying that our language was stripped down and said there wasn't a future tense but you could express the future only by using will - so there is a future tense. Also as David Crystal himself writes that there are many ways of expressing the future not just will...

However, you ask, is it important to be clear about grammar and actually, I think it is up to adults to decide and no it isn't going to be important for everyone - but this thread is about the national curriculum and I do think it is important to know the rules and that it should be taught well in schools - as you are heavily limiting opportunities for children if you don't. This thread was just about the curriculum, for children. And I do also think it is dangerous and not good at all that incorrect info is being passed off as correct - it would be better if we had some sort of formal body with appointed experts (real ones) to govern usage of the English language.

I agree with your comment that academics don't always agree - I thought you were saying that the other poster was right ie she was absolutely right and no one would disagree. Which isn't the case - as you have said too. If you could attach any sources at all I would be grateful, because I am really interested.

Also, when you say linguist, please could you explain what that means in terms of qualifications and experience - I am guessing it could mean anything from work which relates to language to being an academic in a department of linguistics? Genuine question again! Same question to your fellow linguist @SnapCrackleandStop Thank you!

By the way if you want to know my qualifications, I am educated to post grad level and in my profession exact language is of paramount importance, but my work is not related to linguistics as a study or teaching or anything like that.

I really don't agree with you at all here. The English language is partly rooted in French (post 1066) and there is in fact a fair degree of equivalence with French tenses. Translations from passe compose are pretty straightforward - j'ai vu easily translates to i have seen, and like in french we also have the preterite which is pretty much equivalent in usage to their imperfect. We don't have a special tense equivalent to passe simple which is the past tense used in literature. In terms of future, je verrai easily translates to I will see or I shall see etc.

Also the way French children iis similar to how all English children learned grammar in the 1950s and how some but not all schools in the UK still teach grammar - not all - so I would have thought it better to be teaching them using traditional formal grammar?

When you say you are a linguist, you teach English as a foreign language is that right? Can I please just ask (and I promise I have a genuine interest here I am not trying to score points) - did you study formal English grammar at school and/or at higher ed level?

And I do also think it is dangerous and not good at all that incorrect info is being passed off as correct - it would be better if we had some sort of formal body with appointed experts (real ones) to govern usage of the English language.

I think that depends whether you think linguists should be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

I think when it comes to teaching language - yes you should teach "the standard" language, but once someone is past the basics, they need to start becoming aware of different registers, of regional and slang variations.

If people are actually using the language, they may well see "could of". They might hear "you was". It might not be strictly standard, but it's commonly used, at least round here. If you write a story, once you get to a certain level, dialogue will sound inauthentic if every character speaks as though they were presenting on 1950s BBC.

British English is full of variations in vocab, grammar and accents - I've struggled to understand some other British people and they me, if I'm tired and at my most Dorset. I have words in my vocabulary that I didn't know were dialect until I left home and found people didn't understand me. And then there are all the other world Englishes. We might have been first, but should British English be the standard? Why not Irish or American or Australian or Malaysian? If people are communicating successfully, does it matter if it's not what someone else defines as perfect?

I'm a language learner as well, around B2. I am being taught things - "you probably won't ever use this construction, but you should recognise it in case you come across it in more formal texts." "You've learnt this, but in the north, you're more likely to hear that" - language changes over time and place. It's not immutable.

The terminology used by linguists or grammarians changes over time as do the ideas and theories about parts of speech, for example definitions of tenses and descriptions of the conditional, as discussed in this thread. I'd never heard of the second and third conditional, although I did do grammatical analysis in school. For what it is worth, I'd say the conditional is a mood but often described as a tense; it features in different tenses. It is an If mood. Subjunctive is also a mood.

Tenses indicate time, namely present past and future, and completeness or incompleteness. We form the future tense by using will before the verb (to go; I will go), although also I am going to. I don't think it is arguable that we don't have a future tense; possibly there are grounds for arguing that tense and mood are in the same category but I'm not an expert so what do I know?

Once you get into it, you see that there is complexity underneath the apparent simplicity of English grammar. Fortunately we learn a lot of it naturally from learning to speak rather than in school but then we also end up with the dreaded could of and had I have done replacing could have and had I done if it's not taught in school.

I am a PhD student in linguistics (although grammar is not my field) and I have taught many French students English grammar. I didn’t learn much English grammar at school because it wasn’t part of the curriculum at the time but have since learnt loads at university level, alongside French grammar and bits from other languages too.
I know that English has present perfect and it’s constructed in a similar way to passé composé but they really aren’t used for the same things. At all. Most of the time when you translate French into English you turn the passé composé into English simple past/preterite tense. Because we only use present perfect when there’s an important link with the present time. There are a whole series of time marker words that preclude the use of present perfect in English but not passé composé in French.
So you can say ´Yesterday I ate pancakes for breakfast’ but not ´Yesterday I have eaten pancakes for breakfast’. Whereas in French ´j’ai mangé des crêpes au petit déj hier’ is fine. I have spent many hours drawing time lines to explain this.
English Grammar books designed for ESOL teachers are always a good source. But terminology does vary a lot.

I don’t agree that French imperfect can be easily translated to the preterite. More often past continuous is a better fit.

Also, to give a classic example of why ´traditional’ latin based grammar can be nonsensical when applied to English - have you heard that you can’t split infinitives? So ´to boldy go where no man has gone before’ is supposedly grammatically incorrect? Except that it makes perfect sense in English. You can’t split latin infinitives but we do it all the time in English. But for a long time children were taught that was incorrect. See also ´Me and my sister went to the shops’ instead of ´My sister and I went to the shops’. What’s wrong with ´Me and my sister’ as the subject of the verb? Objectively, nothing is wrong with it. It’s a construction that’s used all the time and understood by everyone. So we should change our grammar books to reflect actual usage rather than attempt to change well established constructions to suit out of date grammar books.

DH and I taught ourselves (bad 80's comps), DS1 state, prep and then not really enforced at grammar school - lots of SPAG revision. DS2 prep and then private school - no issues with grammar, DD (ADHD, not academic) issues with pronouns when younger, but none now.

The main issues are that state school teachers don't seem to mark stuff sufficiently, it's peer marking and that's not good enough.

Are you French OP? I had wondered earlier in the thread as it seems you want a sort of Académie Française equivalent. It’s not the English speaking way! David Crystal is very much not into teaching formal grammar in an old fashioned way which I why recommended him.

j’ai vu does not translate as ‘I have seen’ it translates as ‘I saw’. This is a common error of translation from French.

To be able to use English functionally simply does not require the same level of grammatical knowledge as other languages. We barely have a subjunctive, conjunction is easy, there’s no case endings… things that I found hardest to teach in tefl are things that ‘you just have to learn’ like which verbs are followed by a gerund and which by an infinitive. Native speakers learn these without direct instruction. You would barely ever hear a native speaker get that wrong eg. ‘I considered to go to Spain’.

the primary school grammar curriculum is mental and isn’t picked up on in secondary school at all so it’s a massive waste of time. How to write is what is important and I think children certainly need direct instruction in that and distinct grammar instruction is a significant but minor part of that.

id forgotten what the original question was as the thread has been so interesting but going back to conditionals - it won’t be taught because the overwhelming majority of school children in the U.K. will not need to be taught it. The zero, first, second, third system is useful if you are leaning English and haven’t just assimilated it. Also as a PP pointed out you also start talking about modal verbs which are extra confusing because they are ‘weak’ verbs - native speakers don’t need to know that either really. The ‘could have/of’ thing is essentially a phonetic spelling error that’s quite easy to make but should be corrected you’re right!

the one that is very common but drives me mad is the use of ‘yourselves’ to mean ‘you’. I could get behind teaching THAT in schools lol. I always want to shout ITS NOT A PLURAL ITS REFLEXIVE!!!

@Abitofalark omg I’d never noticed ‘had I have done’ before - I know it’s wrong but i also sort of think it’s ok 😂 this is probably how other people feel about ‘how about yourselves?’. One person’s acceptable evolution of language is another person’s personal bug bear.

Also OP who would you appoint as a ‘real expert’ in the English language. I’ve met David Crystal a couple of times - he’s an expert- and he’s very interesting on English as a global language and how we’re in a minority in the world in the UK in terms of the number of English speakers there are. So who is the expert?! Americans barely use the present perfect - “I saw it already” (shudder) - many Indian speakers of English will use the present continuous where I would use the present simple, stative verbs aren’t *supposed to be used in the present continuous but that’s a free for all these days - I’m loving it, I’m liking it, I’m hating this. Etc etc. It’s an enjoyable shitshow.

It has become so prevalent that people must think it's right. Another one like that is more smarter replacing the comparative smarter. It's just so common now.

Zero, first, second and third conditionals absolutely make sense! They are so neat and tidy. Four different ways to make condition clauses, four different ways to make consequence clauses, and you can pick and choose which order you put them in and even (in the case of the unreal ones) mix them up.

Present and past conditionals are (imho) more confusing, there are more than two forms. And what about mixed conditionals?

I do think that English Grammar schools did use to want to teach English grammar as if it was Latin, when it’s far simpler than that. In my opinion, it over complicates a veTy simple (grammatically speaking) language.

Take the future tense, for example. There are many ways to indicate future, but why the insistence that there is a future tense when there is no future verb inclination as there is in French, Spanish etc.

“Call me when you arrive” (obviously the future but the verbs are all in the present tense). That will be Lucy at the phone, she said she’d pop by (now it’s the present but we’re using the modal verb “will” which normally indicates future).

OP, as you asked about backgrounds, mine is an Eng Lit degree with MFL, PGCE English (but I never taught in the uk), CELTA and DELTA.

OP, you were given the correct answer to your question about the NC in the second reply I think. You disagreed with it. Doesn't change the fact that it was correct in the terms that are used in the national curriculum which is that the things you are referring to are noted as modal verbs in the NC (specifically in the appendix on punctuation and grammar) and are taught in Year 5 as part of sentence structure.

Overall, I think that sadly our education system is not clearly teaching children properly that generally the written word is expected to adhere to more formal rules than the spoken one, and that there are levels of formality depending on what you are writing.

I think that @SnapCrackleandStop gave a good answer further up the thread.

Some European countries have official language and grammar. By this I mean that there is only one standard, and language is either correct or not, there's no in between.
If, after many years a word or grammatical structure has changed over time this can be debated over and possibly changed, in writing, to proclaim this as a recognised alternative to the past rule. It's a very rare occurrence. We unofficially recognise a standard English grammar system, but it isn't set in stone let's say.

The objective in many European language cultures is often to remain as near as possible to the official grammar and children are taught this as part of their curriculum.

It is a reflection of cultural differences that means the UK treats language and how it evolves differently to many other European countries.
We tend to be far more flexible and fluid in all ways of life, and probably wouldn't like the idea of something being either right or wrong. Our language reflects this and it also shows in the way we choose to educate our children.

I agree with you that the past continuous is a better fit, usually, for the imperfect - some academic sources refer to the preterite as the equivalent of the past continuous and others the past simple, I meant to amend the post to correct this.