Against the proposed Y6 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Tests - your views needed!

[KarenInglis]

All - please read this open letter to the Times Educational Supplement from Alan Peat about the proposed grammar, punctuation and spelling tests for Y6 children. I don't know Alan - this just happened to pass my Twitter feed. But I am glad that I read it.

My children are all grown up now but as an author and being passionate about encouraging reading and writing I think what he has to say needs a very close look.

If you agree with what he has to say please do tweet/FB etc using the hashtag he has supplied. He is clearly trying to raise the profile of his piece to ensure that it will be picked up by the TES. alanpeat.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/open-letter-to-the-tes-opposing-the-y6-grammar-punctuation-and-spelling-test/

Best wishes,

Karen

I'm all in favour of children learning the parts of speech - I had to pick them up myself, as a keen reader whose parents went to grammar school. Maybe this test will produce more children who know when, where and how to use an apostrophe, which would be a blessing. Clearly there is a balance to be struck between knowing the rules and creative expression - will this test really suck all the joy out of English lessons?

Jane Austen's not really a fair comparison because I think in her day the rules were still rather more fluid. And there's only one Jane Austen - most children aren't going to be great authors whose work will still be read hundreds of years after their death. But they do need a good working grasp of written English.

pointy, yes, I'm fully prepared to believe Gove doesn't actually know what is being taught now. He seems to suffer from Daily Mail prejudices that the world is going to the dogs and the answer is to teach all the paupers Latin.

vess - but the grammar being taught is NOT the grammar that pupils need to know to improve their writing. That is the problem. They are being taught the arcane terms for various constructs that they ALREADY use perfectly correctly in their writing. All of them. So it doesn't help them one little bit.

What you are talking about could have been the focus - and then it would have been a useful exam. But that is not what is being tested - and hence not what will be taught.

Pantomimedam and hang them and flog them, of course. The paupers, that is. Probably for misuse of apostrophes.

pointy, sadly I've forgotten the Latin, but perhaps Gove deserves the sort of punishment of which Catullus would approve? Radishes up the bum, I seem to recall...

Breadandbutterfly, have you never met anyone who says 'should of' instead of 'should have'? And writes it down like that?

Here's something I found - Six reasons to study grammar by David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language:

1. Accepting the Challenge

"Because It's There." People are constantly curious about the world in which they live, and wish to understand it and (as with mountains) master it. Grammar is no different from any other domain of knowledge in this respect.

1. Being Human

But more than mountains, language is involved with almost everything we do as human beings. We cannot live without language. To understand the linguistic dimension of our existence would be no mean achievement. And grammar is the fundamental organizing principle of language.

1. Exploring Our Creative Ability

Our grammatical ability is extraordinary. It is probably the most creative ability we have. There is no limit to what we can say or write, yet all of this potential is controlled by a finite number of rules. How is this done?

1. Solving Problems

Nonetheless, our language can let us down. We encounter ambiguity, and unintelligible speech or writing. To deal with these problems, we need to put grammar under the microscope, and work out what went wrong. This is especially critical when children are learning to emulate the standards used by educated adult members of their community.

1. Learning Other Languages

Learning about English grammar provides a basis for learning other languages. Much of the apparatus we need to study English turns out to be of general usefulness. Other languages have clauses, tenses, and adjectives too. And the differences they display will be all the clearer if we have first grasped what is unique to our mother tongue.

1. Increasing Our Awareness

After studying grammar, we should be more alert to the strength, flexibility, and variety of our language, and thus be in a better position to use it and to evaluate others' use of it. Whether our own usage in fact improves, as a result, is less predictable. Our awareness must improve, but turning that awareness into better practiceby speaking and writing more effectivelyrequires an additional set of skills. Even after a course on car mechanics, we can still drive carelessly. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language." If that sounds a bit too lofty, we might return to the simpler words of William Langland in his 14th century poem The Vision of Piers Plowman: "Grammer, the ground of al."

Wouldn't be so bad if they had also had a test for original, creative writing to let the Agatha Christies, Flauberts, F Scott Fitzgeralds, Hans Christian Andersens and Jules Vernes of tomorrow shine. These guys all had dyslexia and would have flunked the test.

Vess - I have no objection to children being taught to use 'should have' rather than 'should of' - but you will note that that commonsense point is NOT tested in these tests. What is tested is not kids' correct USE of grammar but kids' correct RECOGNITION of grammatical terms. Which is not a particularly crucial thing for them to know, beyond the basics - noun, verb, adjective, adverb.

Could you name the grammatical structure that 'should have' represents? I very much doubt it. I could - but that is because I have twenty years' experience of teaching ESOL/EFL - to NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS. They are the only ones for whom being consciously aware of the very technical terms to describe the language they are trying to use might be helpful. And I only say might - very few TEFL/TESOL teachers would agree that memorising grammar terms or indeed learning languages as a list of grammar rules (rather than, say, via communicative functions), is the best way to go about learning English.

And David Crystal's points are all valid - but really only applicable to adults. 10-11-year-olds do not have the intellectual abilities or time in their days to learn all the grammar rules of their native tongue. In point 4, I'd wager he was not advocating that all English children be able to correctly label a future perfect continuous tense, for example.

It'll help when they start foreign languages ...

I agree with whoever said radishes in dark places for Gove

The tests are very disappointing; they are tedious, use technical language that I suspect some children won't understand and they won't find out what children can do.

I have loved the way that our dds have been taught English at primary school; they do lovely, long bits of creative writing. It might be poems, stories, reports, letters, but they are encouraged to write and write and use the right style.

I have visions, now, of the less able children being put through loads of tedious exercises to even give them a chance of getting a score in these tests. (Like Spain, where the education is all about grammar and - apparently - everyone hates school!)

I have learned most of my spelling through reading - why can't modern children be given a chance to learn in this more delightful way.

Does Gove actually know what goes on in schools? (Is he a bit thick?)

catinhat exactly, it worries me that the writing part of assessing English has now been reduced to the bare mechanics of spelling, grammar and punctuation only. Only L6 children will sit a piece of long writing, and based on previous writing tests I dread how dull and uninspiring that will be. I realise that this is a consequence of previous cock-ups with English marking and that there had to be a solution, but this isn't it. It's perfectly possible to mark a piece of creative writing for all the mechanical aspects as well as for content.

I think learning a bit of grammar will help children have a better understanding of their own language. It develops abstract thinking, learning skills and ability to categorise information. It may not be of immediate benefit to kids in Y6, but useful for their education in the long run. Definitely not pointless.

I can see how it could be a PITA for Y6 teachers, though.

Vess, I completely agree. It's just the way that it is being done, and the fact that it is at the expense of creative writing. But then, introducing something new will always have to be at the expense of something else.

It doesn't sound to me like it should impact on creative writing - except, maybe, for the current Y6, because they will have to squeeze the new stuff in.
Didn't the article say that the teacher will assess their creative writing work throughout the year and that will form part of the mark? It's not like they can forget about it just because there's a new test!

Do you think children are not currently taught grammar vess?

I was schooled abroad in a different system, and we did grammar lessons every single day, increasing to an hour a day as we got older (in primary). I used to hate it, however when I came to study languages in the UK at a Russell Grop university, I was shocked at what a poor grasp of grammar many of my fellow students had. The tutor had to start from scratch teaching grammar before we could tackle the language itself.

I don't think things have changed considerably, my children do a little bit of grammar at school but it is very basic and very occasional (once a week, sometimes once a fortnight), I know for sure as I have seen their grammar folder. Everyone is now going to jump on me and say that their children's school does 1 hour a day, but if one school is doing it this infrequently, then I guess it can't be that consistent.

I think an emphasis on grammar is an excellent idea, but obviously I cannot comment on the proposed test and I am sure there will be valid arguments for an against as with all tests.

This is interesting. DD1 is in Y5 and as I read through the first part of the example level 3-5 test I thought "oh this is all simple - she'd have no problems". But later on there was stuff I couldn't do - I'm hazy on prepositions and adverbs for example, although she probably isn't! Too scared to open the level 6 test!!

DD1 is very strong on creative writing but NOT on spelling and so far the school have done really well in encouraging her rather than just telling her her mistakes. I'll be sorry if that all changes in Y6.

That said, I do remember really struggling to learn foreign languages at secondary school in the mid-80s because we just hadn't been taught any grammar at primary, so I do think there's a place for learning the technical terms (but maybe not quite all the ones on mrz's list!)

I was schooled in the Netherlands, and we did grammar too - but certainly not every day. (In Dutch it really isn't necessary). I have no trouble with grammar at all, not in my native tongue, not in English, not in any of the other languages I'm fluent in.

I have no issue with children learning the essential building blocks of grammar - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, basic clauses. All those things aid writing and the learning of MFL.

However, I did not suffer from not learning about the passive voice until secondary school, nor was my command of Dutch any the worse for not being able to tell a nominative from an accusative until I started learning German in the second year of secondary school.

The technical terms should only be taught when they are actually going to be used. There is no point in teaching something which is not routinely used, just for the purposes of a test - it will simply be forgotten. That's a basic principle of training technique.

And as I've said above, my DD1 went through primary before the grammar test and she most certainly knew all this stuff - and this was not in an academically selective super school, just a local primary rated 'Satisfactory' at the time by OFSTED.

What really makes me at the Idiot Gove is his assumption that because not everything is being done perfectly everywhere, it is therefore necessary to tear down the education system and rebuild it in the image of his own experience. I don't think there is anyone on here who is against striving for continued improvement, but Gove just keeps on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He simply cannot stop his tinkering, and it is the current generation of children, my own included, who will suffer the consequences.

How can anyone who cares about language and literature be against the teaching of basic punctuation, spelling and grammar?

I've spent decades teaching children and adults. If someone writes in " non-sentences" the only way they can understand what is incorrect is by knowing at least some basic grammatical terms. A very simple example would be to say that there was no verb in their sentence, or they had used the wrong tense.

Similarly, if you are teaching the use of commas, it's helpful if they know what a subordinate clause is - when the commas act like a pair of brackets.

I can't stand this notion that somehow we must all rebel against something hat appears a little difficult and is therefore a bad thing for children.

Anyone learning a modern foreign language has to understand grammar, so why should our own native language be an exception?

I do agree though that there is a fine line between teaching enough grammar so that you have a reasonable understanding in order to write correctly, and teaching it at a level that would be part of a degree in linguistics.

But we're not talking about basic grammar, are we?

My DC love the technical vocal associated with different subjects. My LO will happily talk of digraphs/trigraphs/phonemes etc and it makes it easier to talk about the learning involved. I can say 'no, look again, can you see that that's a split digraph?' and my LO will change his pronunciation accordingly. Is there any way that the proposed grammar material will allow for a similar dialogue to be opened up in terms of making the learning of grammar explicit?

technical 'vocab'