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!

All serious linguists who study English are all quick to point out that there is no one "right way" to "do" the language. This is blatantly obvious when one considers both the origins of the language and the fact that we have two major anglophone countries that have different spellings and grammatical conventions. Trying to impose an English Academy simply would not work and I'll be honest from the French speakers I know it doesn't actually work that well in France (and that is before we get to all the other places that speak French in the diaspora).

What we need to begin to teach our children is to give them a proper toolkit that allows them to begin to adapt their style to different forms of verbal and written communication. There is some attempt at this in the NC, but, based on what my children are doing and have done, it seems quite partial and focussed only on certain types of communication that perhaps betray the biases of those drawing up the curriculum (too much focus on media/content type writing rather than other forms). Of course you can't cover all styles and some styles are so specialised that they really don't get fully developed until the beginnings of a professional career. Certainly I have to spend plenty of time with new graduates honing their technical writing skills when they first begin their careers.

Alright OP, let’s play sources.
You keep talking about ´academic sources’ - I want to know who/what your academic sources are?

Another linguist here- so many of us!- although I do semantics/pragmatics and so am not going to join in the debate about tenses 😂

OP, I think you are mixing up a few different things- grammar (in the sense of what linguists study- descriptive), grammar (taught at school- often prescriptive). For linguists, the idea of "correct grammar" is a bit meaningless- if the theory doesn't fit what native speakers actually say then the theory is wrong. That doesn't mean that no linguist supports any degree of prescriptive teaching in schools, just that we are doing different things. Clearly there are circumstances in which a speaker might be disadvantaged by using a non-prestige dialect. Whether the solution to that is to deem non-prestige dialects "incorrect" is as much a political question as a question of language.

When linguists use the term "formal grammar" they are not usually talking about traditional grammar or people being taught to speak in a formal way but about the underlying syntactic structures that govern how sentences are generated.

Would add that the existence of the Académie française doesn't mean that there aren't native French speakers using a variety of dialects and different forms of grammar, many of which the Académie française would deem incorrect 🙂 It is very much the King Cnut of cultural institutions.

Another linguist here- so many of us!

Hardly a linguist - just an English speaker 😁

I agree with your second paragraph.

Your first paragraph - basically formal English grammar has been set in stone for a long time and is not difficult to learn or teach - it is of great importance to teach it to children. What is in the NC now is better but will hopefully be improved over time and the teachers given more training where necessary. In relation to l'academie francaise, in fact ime French parents and children see it as really good because the representatives have studied French extensively, they mostly have decades of experience and so it is a sound source for learning. The only reason I am advocating for it is because the net has been flooded with bonkers EFL resources which range from inadequate to completely wrong. It is a problem.

And sorry to be cheeky but one of them used "your" instead of "you're" - which either should not inspire confidence - or - it was simply an expression of their desire to get rid of all existing grammar rules and replace with arbitrary new rules to validate incorrect usage of English...

I will start with Palmer. And your starter?

I have to get off MN right now, but will check back when my DC give me permission (ha)

@lightlights
I haven't got any sources, just that by living and experiencing multiple other cultures you tend to get a sense of some of the subtle differences in cultures and learn more about your own. So yes, this is my opinion of a reason why certain things are done differently .

It's a bit like asking why the British have somewhat lost their tradition cuisine and society doesn't deem it important in their sense of identity. Why we feel that's it's fine to cook a mismatch of food, influenced from all parts of the globe, but don't see the need to preserve our own.

I know that there a host of reasons as to why this has happened, but at least a small part of the reason is that "people" don't feel or didn't feel strongly enough about it to prevent it happening.

In my opinion a similar thing is happening here. The amount of people who feel that attempting to slow the changes to our language is of extreme importance is not that high, or not high enough to police it to a great extent. Together with the fact that as others have said we are only one of the countries where English the official language and therefore wouldn't have the right to police what is taught in other sovereign lands.

I already gave you mine. Labov.

I haven’t checked but this was probably me.
I mean, you know why this is a super frequent error right? Because ´your’ and you’re’ sound identical.
I have an interesting thought experiment for you; what would happen if we got rid of all the spelling distinctions in French (or English) that distinguish grammatical or lexical forms in written language but not spoken language?
If it helps you could imagine using phonetic symbols instead of the current orthographic systems so that in written language you would see all the sound differences that distinguish grammatical or lexical forms that can’t be seen in written language currently.

40 years of cyber communications has drilled into me not to fuss too much about spag online. It's not the Booker fucking Prize.

Throw in spearchuckers and now the creeping menace of "AI", and I can see written postings becoming far less intelligible (and therefore far more ambiguous) in the coming years.

And that's before you factor in Muphrys's Law

It's a bit like asking why the British have somewhat lost their traditional cuisine

Ce n'est peut-être pas une perte ?

😂

EFL teaching and resources are mainly very simplified

Have you seen the higher level IELTS material?

I know! I 've seen the Cambridge C1/ C2 and it's no walk in the park.

The problem there would be regional accents.

F for TH, etc.

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/2739/19-Memoirs-20-Palmer.pdf
Actually this biography (co-written by David Crystal) suggests that Palmer was the one who came up with the grammatical account of English verbs I described earlier, where tense refers only to past and present, and combines with aspect and the passive/active distinction and modal verbs such as ´will’ to form all the different verb forms we use in standard English.

I think it could definitely reduce intelligibility between different varieties of English, yes. But I also think it would be completely comprehensible within speech communities. I think grammar would change faster too.

No idea why you are being so rude about EFL OP, a lot of native speakers wouldn’t get through a C2 Cambridge exam.

Have a go at their Use of English paper, you might enjoy it! Especially Part 4 transformations. Then imagine teaching the grammar. Then come back and call EFL simplified 😉

Agreed. Been teaching EFL / ESOL for 27 years. I can wing some lessons but no way would I walk into an IELTS academic or Cambridge C2 class. Serious prep needed.

As an example

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'm surprised you disagree with the poster who said that people don't want an English version of the Académie Française. In my opinion the majority of people aren't remotely interested in grammar, even if they are aware that theirs isn't great. Most people would probably scoff at the idea of such a regulatory board and regard it as a stuffy anachronism.

I have been a foreign language teacher in English secondary schools for nearly 30 years and have also taught adults. I can of course see the value in teaching grammar from primary school age, not least because it makes my job a lot easier. However, most people's view is that they know how to speak English, so why study grammar?

You asked for a source to provide evidence that people wouldn't want an 'Académie Anglaise'. What is your source which shows that they would?

Our national cuisine? Not sure what you mean there but full English breakfast, fish and chips, Cornish pasty, roast dinner, toad in the hole, Scouse, cream tea, cups of tea, etc plus many regional specialities are very much preserved and valued. If you don't agree just go abroad to Spanish resorts and see the number of restaurants serving traditional British cuisine.

I think the OP is a bit pedantic but agree with her very much that it is elitist to not bother teaching grammar to children and expect them to pick it up at home or by reading. It just serves to widen the divide. These threads always attract people who say "I never learned grammar and now I have a PhD in English and am the editor of the Times", conveniently imagining their ability with English fell out of the sky and didn't come from growing up surrounded by well spoken people, having access to lots of books etc. For every one of these there are several others who left school unable to construct a sentence in their own native language. Just look on your local community Facebook page for evidence of this. It's all very well to argue that language changes and there are no fixed rules but in practice it's the rich who make the rules and if the poor don't stick to them it is a disadvantage throughout life. As OP said you won't find many doctors or lawyers saying "I have went" or "I could of".

@PrincessTeaSet
I made the point about national cuisine, not to say that we don't have one, but that we culturally are extremely quick to open up to new cuisines from all over the globe and to be honest I don't think that there will be a large proportion of people under the age of say 50 who eat in the same way as their parents did. This is in stark contrast to many other cultures where aside from the odd burger and fries the majority of people still eat traditional food, as did their parents.

I was trying to show how I think that some cultures are less open or at least quicker to change habits and the UK is generally one of the quicker ones. There are many other examples and these were to answer the OP when she asked why I thought the UK wouldn't appreciate a national policing of grammar.

The education system in the Uk tends to channel "the right" people into different areas of work or further education rather than a basic standard of knowledge and competence that as a nation we should acquire. It matters more that we get the right people doing the right things and not whether all of these people have reached a certain level.

Other countries make other decisions on how they educate their population. I am in no way saying that teaching and enforcing standard grammar is not beneficial to students, but I suspect that many families and educators wouldn't be in agreement with the methods that many countries use to achieve these standards.
The hours of homework a night, rote learning, completing and rewriting 100's of complex grammatical structures into workbooks. Sitting in individual desks in silence in class and doing pages of dictation so that these skills can be monitored without parental intervention.
I'm not saying that these methods are right or that they couldn't be modernised but a change in method and priority would be needed if we want all children, independent of family background and language of origin to reach a certain standard.

As a nation would everyone agree that it was worth it, or would they say that actually, by insisting so much on one aspect then all children are missing out on a wider range of educational opportunities?

Certainly I have to spend plenty of time with new graduates honing their technical writing skills when they first begin their careers.

Even past that. I'm a scientist currently doing a professional course in an area I work in, but that is law- rather than science-focussed. I'm being told I don't signpost enough in my assessments. The problem is that what they call "signposting" is what I've been trained into thinking of as unnecessary waffle!

Because ´your’ and you’re’ sound identical.

It actually doesn't where I am! "You're" sounds like "ewer". It would be interesting to know whether fewer people make that mistake here.