Children repeating bad grammar they hear at nursery

[caughtinthesnow]

My little one is 2 and a half and I've noticed she repeats some grammatical errors. She definitely hasn't heard them from us..

The main one I've noticed is ' was ' instead of ' were '.

I know it hasn't come from us, because that's how the nursery teachers speak and write too...

It's not ideal is it? Has anyone had this issue with nursery or school ? I would expect a school teacher not to make grammatical mistakes like confusing was with were, but I don't know. I wouldn't have expected nursery teachers to make that kind of mistake.

I used to desperately try to “roughen up” my non accent as a teenager- paffe’ik innit!

My dc are bilingual and growing up with me as their only regular 'live' source of first-language English. They pick pronunciation and vocab up from all sorts of other places as well. If I was going to have conniptions at every Americanism or non-standard form of grammar, our relationship would be a nightmare. Explicit correction is disadvantageous in raising bilingual children, because it introduces an aspect of achievement and right/wrong into everyday communication which shouldn't be weighed down with that, and gives the child the impression that how they say something is more important to the parent than what they are saying. I would apply these principles here as well.

And what they all said above about code-switching.

I picked up all sorts of stuff when younger from travelling a lot. I'm now really anal with grammar 😂

They'll move on.

But how would you be able to so easily determine who you are superior to if everybody spoke in the way you think they should? It must be a blessing for you, surely?

I was bilingual at secondary school - spoke 'Sarf London' at school. Main difference was an absence of t's. My sister was less good at switching and was constantly being corrected by my parents - 'it's waTer not wo'her'

Think of it as a second language!

For example I’m Mom - her friends all use Mum, so she fits in and does the same, but is corrected at home as I refuse to answer - she’s an adult now and alls well!!

Dd was 9 before we were finally rid of bring/brang/brung. She was a slow reader though. Ds read early and voraciously and had lovely vocabulary and great grammar (with the exception of his Dogman period)

The equivalent in Scotland, particularly the West, is mixing did and done.

“I’ve did my homework”

”I done that thing you asked me”

It’s incredible how many educated adults do this!

Absolutely this. They are severely underpaid early years practitioners, not Oxford Dons.
And later, it’ll be their friends as well - shockingly, most schools have a variety of grammatical abilities among pupils (and teachers). I went to the same primary school my mum taught at, in a very economically deprived area of east London. She spent hours correcting my grammar, though later I had to teach myself not to use East Midlands pronunciation of certain words (salt, ringing, bath). These days I am extremely well spoken with the ability to do north, south, east and west London accents as well as RP. Consider it an extra curricular skill, or if it bothers you that much, look for a nice Norland nanny or cosy pre-prep instead.

DD1 was educated in American schools from age 10-18. Although she has lost the accent she has entirely retained the vocabulary. Which wasn’t too bad until a request for a cheese and pickle sandwich resulted in a cheese and gherkin sandwich.

And apparently her American accent sounded like she was from Kansas. Which, her friend informed me, was Not A Good Thing.

I was thinking this. My 2yo DGD says 'my can't reach it's and 'my touch it'.

Actually at the poster talking about putting my hand in my pocket and paying for a prep school environment.. yup I did just that with my oldest.

It costs exactly the same as a normal nursery but the ones around here take them from 3. Which is when my child is moving there.

But around here the cost of the prep school nursery is the same as the day nursery cost.

Also in south London and my DS was the same.

but his accent changed soon after being in primary.

as they get older, they tend to talk with similar accents to their friends ( and parents to lesser extent)

i didnt chose a child minder because she said Aint.

they will learn from you op, dont worry

‘Drived ’??? Oh dear.

Mine spoke broad Yorkshire at school (anything else was labelled 'posh') but would seamlessly switch to a kind of RP at home - although I was raised in Devon my social climber of a mother knocked accents out of me and I spoke like a Radio 4 announcer most of my childhood.

The kids switch and swap depending on who they are talking to now and when they chat among themselves it's quite an education as they waver in and out of accents and dialects! But in the workplace they are labelled the posh ones, apparently, just because their accent is neutral.

Just reiterate correct grammar at home.

If they go to a state primary, they'll come into contact with a very broad range of kids and they will pick up a host of things you'd rather they didn't!

I try not to correct at this age, intstead I repeat back e.g 'oh you did x,y,z? That sounds fun!'.

It's tricky because I don't really want her to use incorrect grammar or muddle her tenses, but I also don't want her to look down on people who do or make a big thing out of it.

That's really quite bad. Why are so many adults incapable of using the correct grammar? I'm a TA and cringe when colleagues speak like that. My ds used to go to a Cub group where the leader was a Deputy Head of a school. She used to write a newsletter to parents. The newsletters would be written withou using ANY punctuation whatsoever. Trying to read it was like reading a stream of consciousness!

I really hate threads like this. Nursery nurses are more often than not underpaid and undervalued. Most of them do that job for the pure joy of caring for our children. Yes sometimes good grammar and spelling can be missing but I could never get worked up over something like that. They prepare our children for that big leap to school and shape them in ways that will help them throughout their lives. Be grateful and worry less about a few mispronounced phrases that will soon get corrected!

'There is no empirical relationship between a teacher's accent and their ability to teach. But there is a long-standing ideological relationship which frames non-dominant and non-standardised accents as signs of imagined pedagogical illegitimacy' - Ian Cushing

I work in a primary school in an area with a strong accent and there’s a lot of “I seen him” and “we was there” etc, from the local staff. Our head teacher has subtly tried to address it with staff but then they get annoyed as they feel the head teacher is looking down on them, judging them etc. Its an awkward one isn’t it!

It is certainly ungrammatical and sounds absolutely ghastly.

‘ neutral accent’
oxymoron?

Please don't correct your 2 year old who is still learning now to speak and will pick up your accent and grammar anyway. It's very demoralising for a toddler to be corrected constantly.

If you are very eager to support proper grammar development google modelling and recasting which is more effective than overt criticism.

This bothers me too