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!

Your view seems to be quite widespread but in fact we do have formal grammar (and as posters have said upthread, the government is trying to reintroduce learning it) and we do have sound academic sources for it and the grammar of the 1950s is still correct formal grammar today. Language is of course fluid, and we have idioms and slang and dialects and regional differences and informal language, and that is all great - but in relation to grammar in many fields you are going to be expected to be able to use it correctly at work and in your professional capacity. If you are going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or that is what your child aspires to be, they are going to be expected to say could have not could of, for example. So it is fairer and more egalitarian to be teaching all children properly (not OTT) at school. And it would be useful to have a regulatory body with academic authority.

I think that EFL teaching was slimmed down to make it more accessible but the opposite has happened, it is being taught incorrectly and the net is flooded with incorrect information or information which is so simplified it loses meaning and is of no use to man or beast.

You’ve lost me here.
I don’t think it’s helpful to look for one to one equivalents of English and French verb constructions or tenses. They really don’t line up very well.

I say "I am assuming" and the like - I also lower myself to the depths of "did you wanna sandwich?" - but... I wouldn't in my professional capacity and I guess (or am guessing) that is the point I am making! As for experts, I wasn't sure David Crystal was alive - but he seems to follow academic sources in his advice so he would have been pretty good probably. The academie francaise have peer elected experts, which change every year I think.

David Crystal is an academic source. Where do you think academic sources come from? And why do you assume all academic sources would agree with each other?

You said it was a better fit and I agreed (!!)

Most of the verbs have clear equivalents. NB many also use auxiliaries - like our future tense.

Their passe simple was originally used in a similar way to our past simple, but their passe simple has become partly archaic (since the French Revolution) and is now used for certain literary or written purposes but not spoken word - though a few people advocate for its return as the spoken word. It means their passe compose can either be translated with our passe simple or as you say using the auxiliary in a direct translation, depending on context.

In sentences which use both the imperfect and the passe compose such as "I was swimming when he suddenly entered" or something, we would use the past continuous for the imparfait (swimming) and the past simple for their passe compose (he entered) consistently in the same way.

If you look at their constructions for the conditional, again the same thing applies in terms of direct translations "j'aurais vu" is "I would have seen" and "I would see" is "je verrais" I think.

They use the subjunctive far more than we do though.

I don’t think many people really want an English equivalent of the académie française.
The thing is, a bunch of experts sitting in a room making decisions about which language changes are acceptable and which ones are not doesn’t have any kind of natural authority over language. Political authority sure. But the only reason the Académie Française is the authority over what counts as correct language usage in France is because people accept that that’s the case. If there’s no political will then there is no authority. I’m not sure you’re really grasping the prescriptivist vs descriptionist debate.

I wouldn't disagree about David Crystal, not sure you are making that point? I said he'd be pretty good?

Academic sources don't all agree with another always, and I think that this is why more than one is appointed at the same time, or they rotate, in relation to the academie francaise. They are peer elected I think. I am not entirely sure, I haven't looked into it in detail.

In relation to English there seems to be quite a lot of consensus amongst academics though. It is the self elected grammarians and linguists who tend to stir things up, is my impression! (I might be wrong!)

Look, I speak French. Your losing me because I can’t follow when you’re referring to French and when you’re referring to English, because you’re translating everything into English. When you say ´we’ I don’t know whether you mean ´we French speakers’ or ´we English speakers’.

You say "I don’t think many people really want an English equivalent of the académie française" - fascinating theory - why do you think that?

If you read the posts on MN you will see an awful lot of people wished they had been taught formal grammar at school. That isn't possible without some sort of sensible body - you are a linguist who thinks that "me and my sister" is perfectly fine - it isn't - it is incorrect and there are clear sensible reasons why (which I can give if you like). A regulatory body would be very helpful in this sort of discussion.

I won't ask you why you want the English language to change, I think I can guess!

we English speakers.

I am English. If I were French I doubt very much I'd care about the UK national curriculum or if there were a regulatory body to govern English in the UK!!

David Crystal teaches formal grammar - or at least, what I have seen is in accordance with academic sources. He might not advocate bums on seats or rote learning, I am not sure - can you link an article or something where he says what you are saying?

You’re assuming I don’t understand that ´I’ is the subject pronoun so ´Me and my sister like black coffee’ should be wrong because you can’t say ´me like black coffee’. Of course I understand that.
My point though is that grammar rules are supposed to reflect actual usage. ´Me and my sister like black coffee’ is such a common construction in spoken English that I think we should be creating grammatical explanations (rules) to account for it rather than tell people they shouldn’t say it.
I haven’t done a survey, but in my experience English speakers are shocked that France has an academie française and French speakers are shocked that English doesn’t have an equivalent.

@SnapCrackleandStop I have just read my comment about "fascinating theory" and it does not come across well, I apologise - I am genuinely interested in why you think that, as it is not much debated and when it is, people generally do say they wish they had been taught grammar properly at school.

Just to clarify that by "we", I mean English people or people who have English as the first language.

OP you have acknowledged you are neither an EFL nor a linguistics specialist on this thread but you have then went on to disagree with every person who has said they are qualified in these areas. That’s why I stopped replying and why I didn’t feel the need to respond to your queries about what I meant by being a ‘linguist’. Great to chat about linguistics and different view points and people have taken the time to discuss at length what you are interested in. I disengaged because it has started to just feel a bit like you asking people to share their knowledge on a topic to then just say actually no that’s wrong.

Have you ever read any William Labov OP?

I don't think that grammar rules are supposed to reflect incorrect usage, as soon as it happens. There are changes to usage over long periods of time, such as certain constructions becoming archaic. Arbitrary changes to make the wrong use of grammar correct, rather than teaching the correct rules in the first place, is not a great idea.

I thought a national pastime of the French was to extend deux doights to the académie ?

Actually a couple of posters answered my original question and I thanked them and lots of posters have provided very helpful opinions.

EFL teaching and resources are mainly very simplified and "linguist" isn't a protected title so neither have much significance. I have pointed out that many of the opinions here are not in accordance with academic sources (as in any, whether conflicting or not) or formal grammar, I haven't disagreed with everyone.

No. I will google, but in the meantime, why do you ask? Who is William Labov? Does he want to eradicate or protect the English language?

I think you are probably right. Other than in relation to passing exams.

@lightlights
The point posters have been trying to make is that culturally having an official body which polices language doesn't sit as well in the UK as it does in some other countries, France could be an example, but also Italy, Germany, I don't know. It's probably something to do with how each country expresses its values, but also to do with what it takes to ensure the functioning of society.

This doesn't mean that people in professional jobs in the UK don't know how to use English, or that it isn't right to teach it to our children, but that there's something about the UK culture that has meant that this type of regulation hasn't been seen to be needed. It hasn't been seen as important enough to deem it necessary, for whatever reason.

It's a bit like the fact that the UK doesn't have or wish to introduce ID cards. Other countries find it extremely difficult to understand how it's possible to function without, yet it is clearly is possible.

I'm not saying that children shouldn't be taught English grammar, but every language is different and English is one of those languages where the average ability child actually doesn't need that much time to be able to reach a certain standard, compared to the average French or Italian child say. These languages have a written component that is rarely heard in spoken language and therefore are learnt off by heart. Children from around 8/9 spend hours learning hundreds of conjugations. Not so they can speak but so they can understand and produce written text. This is generally unnecessary in English, especially if you read.
I imagine children learning languages such as Chinese will spend even longer from a younger age.

English children spend hours learning to spell, because it's a difficult aspect of our language, and skills such as dictation could take years. Italian children can learn to write simple texts within a few months of not even knowing the alphabet, but generally won't be able to use language such as the past historical tense without years of studying by heart.

There’s always going to be overlap between forms. So at any one time there may be multiple grammatical constructions that are used to express the same thing. And over time the constructions will be considered more or less formal, more or less correct or modern or archaic.
You’re still really hanging onto this need for an exterior authority to validate ´correct’ and ´incorrect’ language use. In real everyday life it doesn’t work like that. Sure you can teach grammar in schools, but we mostly learn how to speak our first language or the majority language in our community from family and from peers. Forms you might consider ´incorrect’ because they have not been codified in formal grammar teaching books still have systemic usage and clear meaning for the people who use them within their speech community. Seriously, do look up William Labov. He’s an American sociolinguistic who did a lot of work in the 60s and 70s on different varieties of English in the United States. He worked with African American communities and wrote about how non standard grammatical forms used in their speech have meaning and are not incorrect versions of standard English but part of their own system. Labov is generally considered required reading for any linguistics student.

First time I went, they were having a regular purge. Apparently. The one which tickled me was "aeroglisseur" for hovercraft .. rather childishly I wondered if any eels were involved.

Yes, I think both attitudes are present at the same time, sometimes within the same individuals. So the académie française is considered the authority on correct usage, but people don’t necessarily feel they need to speak or write ´correctly’ all the time. And obviously, different people have different opinions on these things.

I understood the point being made, but there is zero evidence being put forward for your first paragraph and I have never observed evidence for it. I don't agree with your first paragraph at all, I don't think you are correct with your interpretation of English cultural feeling. If you can point me to a source which is the basis of your theory, I'd be very interested to see it though.

As for ID cards, it reminded me of one of the episodes from Yes, Minster!