Q re national curriculum - conditional tense English language

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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!

Remember that writing in English was a phonetic system at one point. Then spoken language changed quickly, and written language changed slowly.

I am not sure the Académie is too successful when I hear "le rôle du management dans un business start-up" on the lunchtime news!
As a seventy-something I also think the OP has a rather limited understanding of how grammar was taught in the past. It really wasn't that high profile in my independent school in the fifties and sixties.
I would agree that when I started teaching in the 1970s we were not teaching enough grammar, but if you look at the introduction of the literacy project (later strategy) in the late 1990s you will see that the comeback started some time ago.

I meant propagate not propulagate, btw. Not sure what happened there!

In ´I would have helped’ the lexical verb is ´help’. ´would’ and ´have’ are both auxiliaries.

Using phonetic spellings would cause even more confusion given that so many of our words sound the same in spoken language.

Getting rid of it as you suggest and getting rid of the formal teaching would be taking us back to stone age levels of communication.

I don't think this is true. Look at Pitman shorthand for example. It was specifically engineered to massively increase speed of writing, but is still completely understandable. I'll concede you'll have more homonyms, but with context it isn't an issue.

I think you're separating language and speech far more than they actually are in real life.

Both "to have" and "to help" are verbs - full verbs - as well
Not sure why it is relevant that help is the lexical verb here?
You can see the sentence both as the conditional tense of "have" and also break down the phrase by referring to use of auxiliaries within the tense.

I have read the memoire which refered to palmer - and also looked at a couple of his books - and this is going to be long apologies. Basically as the memoire says, the 60s and 70s were a time when academics were pressurised to be radical - so there are elements to Palmer's work which show his extraordinary knowledge of the English language, elements which were throwing out the rule book (which translated into progressive schools in the UK and somewhat unhelpful EFL methods) and elements where he re-classifies.

In the English verb he indicates that there are 4 tenses - past, present, past conditional and one other - not the future - so I guess you could say this is authority for what you said about the future, but not what you said about there only being 2 tenses - and also authority for what I said upthread about the conditional being a tense. However - these ideas were seen as radical at the time. Also as Palmer said himself, when terms are used in common parlance ie in day to day language, they should (where certain rules are not broken) be absorbed into accepted language. I would say "future tense" is common parlance. It helps neither man nor beast to go around telling people that English does not have a future tense when talking about day to day things. I think one needs to read the work Palmer did in The English Verb about tenses to understand the context.

So, the work Palmer did in The English Verb about why he would distinguish between how the past and present works in comparision with the future is really interesting and his coverage of the myriad of ways in which we can express the future is fantastic, and his work about why tense and time are different concepts (tense does not denote time) and his work on modality in the same book is extraordinary and well worth reading - but - and this is a big but - the work in this book is advanced English - for beginners and intermediates using traditional or formal grammar is going to be a lot more helpful. I found some research papers on the difficulties found by indonesian students in relation to how English is taught as a FL and it looks like his ideas have been taken down into EFL teaching inappriately and many of his ideas have been oversimplified or misunderstood. NB his work in relation to TEFL was aimed at undergraduates or graduates - it is too complex for beginners and intermediates. I think that beginners and intermediates at home and abroad would find it more cogent and easier to learn via traditional grammar which matches how most other countries teach their languages -that is using conjugated English verbs as they were taught prior to 60s and 70s and basic construction of sentences.

It is clear now where some of the ideas in this thread have come from however. The way EFL teaches about modals is so stripped of complexity it is unclear in some places and incorrect in places and this is clear from some of the posts here as just an example.

The memoire gives a flavour of how politicised language had become in the 60s and 70s. It mentions the British Council which I looked up in wiki (not a good source but I just wanted an idea of the history of the organisation) and that is worth reading too as again it gives context and perspective to why things have happened as they have happened.

Palmer wanted to keep some grammar rules but chuck out the rule book in relation to some of the erudite grammar rules (see his book Grammar) - I can see why he came to those conclusions in the environment he worked in but I don't think he realised how many problems would be created with this line of thinking. I think to be critical of some of the erudite rules is fine but to decide they simply do not exist was being as "prescriptive" as the erudite rules he criticised, ironically. Palmer did also explain quite a few of the erudite rules before saying he thought they should disappear which is very helpful as Grammar operates as a text book in some ways. As I said upthread, the educated classes, children who have been to or go to academic private schools, have continued to learn all the rules since the 50s. People who do not know them are going to risk being excluded socially and professionally. Knowing the rules does not mean they have to be used - Churchill famously told a civil servant to bugger awft when the civil servant tried to correct one of his sentences.

There is a place for radical thought and there is a place for basic, correct education. And some of the radical thought of the 60s and 70s had no place in the world at all - see what Simone de Beavoir signed up to in the famous petition about 12 year olds and CSA.

I apologise for the long post. There was a lot there. It was also very interesting so thank you for the source.

Most people write/wrote shorthand to represent what they had heard spoken, and then write out in longhand before they forgot what had been said. Normal speach is around 130 - 160 wpm whereas shorthand was at absolute best around 100 and usually 80 or 90 wpm. Most people would struggle to read other people's shorthand, and struggle to read their own from years earlier, when memories of what had been said in normal speech had faded. It would be okay for others to read etc if it were just a short quote. Anything long would end up a scrawl for most people.

I think to learn long hand and correct grammar as well as a form of short hand if useful or touch typing is probably the ideal. Depends on what you are writing about. "wht do u wnt to do this wknd" by text is fine. Writing a book like that not so much.

I just replied to this in my (v long) post - one clarification I was too late to correct - where I said "In the English verb he indicates that there are 4 tenses ..." I meant "In The English Verb" ie his book The English Verb.

There are prob other errors too, sorry.

*I meant "Most people write shorthand to represent what they have heard spoken, and then write out in longhand before they forget what has been said"
(oops!)

A linguist friend of mine who specializes in Latin and the evolution of Romance languages told me this week that the Romans only had a concept of grammar for talking about or teaching Greek, and didn’t apply it to Latin at all. They were apparently also very worried about language degrading.

I think looking up ´universal grammar’ should be your next stop OP. You’re still clinging to the idea that ´traditional grammar’ fits all languages and is the simplest way of learning. But you’ve now rejected your own reference (Palmer) for being too radical. So where does your idea of ´traditional grammar’ actually come from? I have a thesis to write, but do let me know if you manage to dig into this further. I think it’s a genuinely interesting question.

In the phrase ´I would have helped’ ´help’ is the ONLY lexical verb. Yes, ´have’ can have a lexical meaning in other sentences but in that phrase it’s fulfilling a grammatical function and not providing lexical meaning. It doesn’t mean ´to own/possess’ in ´I would have helped’. It’s probably called the present perfect conditional or something (I’d have to check) and the auxiliary ´have’ is part of the present perfect construction.

A linguist friend of mine who specializes in Latin and the evolution of Romance languages told me this week that the Romans only had a concept of grammar for talking about or teaching Greek, and didn’t apply it to Latin at all. They were apparently also very worried about language degrading.

Real Romans spoke Greek 😀

Fair play to big Julius - he wasn't ashamed to have some Latin standards.

It is Palmer who talked about traditional grammar. I usually refer to formal grammar, Palmer called it traditional grammar - it is the grammar I was taught because I went to an academic school and the grammar I was expected to know in my professional role in the UK. I haven't rejected Palmer's ideas in full at all - as you will see if you read my long post again a bit more carefully!

What is universal grammar? I am not going to look it up.... if you are referring to what I said upthread, one of the posters gave a rule and I asked if that were universally accepted - you might be referring to that? If so I was simply asking if she thought that her rule was the only rule which applied. Hope that makes sense now.

A source for "stripped language" would be wonderful, I think you were going to provide that. Otherwise, good luck with your thesis! What is it about?

I am sorry I don't think I answered your question when I replied the other day. You were suggesting that Pitman's shorthand could be used to replace English as we know it today - or something similar. PSH could be legible, my example was of problems when written in a rush so I missed the point as I was in a rush, sorry.

So going back to your suggestion - to try to introduce something like PSH to replace English - were you thinking you could teach children in school, instead of English? And presumably if so you'd need to teach their parents, and also teach professionals and academics, and all other adults in fact, including judges, engineers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, bankers. Also replace all official and legal and medical and engineering and academic and all other written works. And translate all historical written works from bibles to literature to history.

I think my question (and most people's question) would be - why would you do that?!

Yes I think it would be confusing and I also think it would have serious human cost, in practice, in reality.

@SnapCrackleandStop PS if you read both comments upthread about "I would have helped" I am not disagreeing with what you have said, I was disagreeing with what another poster had said. Just in case you didn't understand what I wrote about Palmer if you read his books you will see that he clearly distinguishes between traditional grammar ie taught in the UK before 60s/70s and his revisions to that - so you suggested I dig around for more but in fact it is all pretty clear but you'd need to both read his books and also read the grammar books from the 50s to understand.

DC are watching Yes Minster at the moment, and Sir Humphrey in that series displays an advanced knowledge of what Palmer called traditional grammar. In one episode - the one where Sir H realises that his mistake from years earlier had been discovered, Sir H uses traditional grammar to avoid saying "me" in a long convoluted sentence but no one understands and so he finally says "It is I" (instead of It is me) - Palmer refers to the grammar rule relating to It is I instead of It is me in one of his books as an example of something erudite, based on Latin rules. He accepted some rules and threw some out, with his radical hat on, but to someone brought up on traditional grammar his views would probably appear arbitrary.

As you say, if you are into language it is all interesting stuff.

Genuinely interested to know what your these is about?

I started this thread to try to fact find and wanted to update it, in case anyone else is interested. It started with just a question about one particular tense, but for me it led to questions about literacy and the effect of grammar and language teaching on that. I am not an expert about any of this, and so if anyone has more knowledge please do comment!

After the last post I started looking more at grammar teaching and it seems that since the 1960s in the UK (situation in UK is quite different from our friends on the continent) there have been two schools of thought about how grammar should be taught, prescriptive (formal/traditional rules) and descriptive (books saying how language is currently used and not saying what is correct or not correct, and this still seems to be a trend in the UK and it appears to have had a disastrous effect on literacy).

An OECD report of 2019 said that levels of literacy in the UK in 55-65 years group is significantly higher than school leavers. Formal grammar stopped being taught to all children at the time 55-65 year olds were at school, and since then teaching has been sparodic until national curriculum changes came in in 2016. Literacy levels in the generation before 55-65 year olds are higher still according to information available - ie this was time when all primary school children were being taught formal/traditional grammar. It therefore seems to me that there is a link between formal grammar teaching and high levels of literacy. And that "prescriptive" rules based teaching is better for literacy than "descriptive" (or "progressive") grammar

The most recent PIRLS report about literacy levels for 9 and 10 year olds has the UK coming in 4th, with only HK, Russia and Singapore (I think) coming ahead of the UK. This is a pretty fantastic result, especially given that in the 2006 PIRLS report, the UK came in at 19th. The national curriculum introduced far more grammar into primary school teaching in 2016. It therefore looks like this has been significant, and reinforces the idea that prescriptive/formal/traditional grammar and language teaching leads to significantly higher levels of literacy?

Questions remain over how well language is being taught in senior schools and also what could be done about the generations which have less high levels of literacy. Many senior schools do not seem to be following the new, more rules based, national curriculum successfully.

There are also academic disputes about the use of phonics, about the fact that where phonics is used exclusively over presciptive teaching of grammar or to too great an extent there appear to be lower levels of literacy, eg in the states, according to some articles I have seen. Phonics as a basic start to reading is helpful, but there is so much irregularity in English, having phonics as the only teaching method is going to cause problems.

This is just my thinking on the subject, after having read the answers to my original question and then looked into it a bit more. If anyone has more knowledge or expertise over the link between formal grammar and literacy I would be really interested to know.

Shouldn't the second example be "if I were to win the lottery"?

Yeah, this is how I would teach it as an MFL teacher.

if it rains, we get wet/will get wet/let’s get wet
if it were to rain, we would get wet
ifmit had rained, we would have got wet.

I visit English Language Learners Stack Exchange and it often baffles the questioners that native speakers don't have the faintest idea what 'first, second, and third conditionals' are. Unless they are TESOL types. What I mean is that of course we use them, but we don't have those names for them.

TEFL teaching was developed in the 60s and 70s by the same academics who were pulling apart traditional grammar teaching - with such disastrous results. What makes it worse is that current TEFL teaching is a highly simplified version of the rules made up in the 60s and 70s, simplified to the extent of being completely incorrect. Total nightmare.

I forgot to ask in my long post above - does anyone know if the current government is planning to keep the higher grammar level in the national curriculum? I hope so!

What are you on about? You know there is ongoing research into second language acquisition and second language teaching? It wasn’t just invented in the 60s or 70s and hasn’t changed since.

Your analysis of prescriptive and descriptive approaches is weird. There are many teaching contexts where ideally you’d want teachers to be doing a bit of both. If you’re an English teacher working in an area with a local dialect that has significant differences to standard English then it’s really helpful to know and understand the grammar behind both the local variety and standard English. That way you can teach the kids the difference. Which doesn’t mean telling them they are wrong to use their local variety. The goal is for them to become bi-dialectal so they can use whichever variety is the best fit for the situation. I’m not based in Scotland but I believe there has been a movement in the past decade or so to integrate Scots into literacy programs in Scotland following exactly this principle.

I have an old grammar book from 1879 for 'young learners' who've already acquired elementary ideas of grammar from a first grammar book.

From time to time I find it interesting to look up something such as the meaning of parts of speech - but what strikes me is how intricate and nuanced a subject it is when you delve into it. It has a section for exercises and the whole thing looks quite daunting for youngsters. It's also interesting for the inclusion of 'ancient forms', meaning Anglo-Saxon and from the time of Chaucer. Not sure I want to get into the weeds on tenses vs moods but yes, it does cover those.

I went through this with you last time. I am correct. Have a look at the books written by the academic source you provided. Have a look at how much TEFL development work he did.

You dislike the way of classifying English verb constructions outlined by Palmer therefore Teaching English as a Foreign Language has ruined literacy rates in the UK where most school children are native speakers? Or have I misunderstood the logic?