Grammar, that is, and isn’t it a potential minefield? Michael Rosen takes a pop at Michael Gove over the latter’s plans for primary school grammar tests. I must say, I was somewhat surprised by this move – after all, for a generation we have seen mainstream education eschew grammar in favour of… Well, what, exactly? Certainly I have been appalled at the quality of the written language I have seen from younger people – poor spelling no structure, text speak and dear God, the grocer’s apostrophe. I was lucky in that I had some tuition in grammar – although not much and I’ve had to muddle along since then, picking it up by trial and error. When I see the barely literate drivel (frequently using text speak) that passes for communication online, I simply don’t bother to read it, thereby defeating the object of the communication – that is; to communicate. And that is the key – grammar is a structure that remains familiar, so that we can communicate and our words are understood – because both parties recognise that structure (it may also be worth mention here that grammar and style are two different things). Contrary to the modern orthodoxy, grammar is a good thing and it helps us if we want to learn a foreign language.
Rosen appears to be of the modern orthodoxy:
He claims that I criticised the new grammar test because there is “no such thing as correct grammar”. No, I criticised it because a) it was brought in without any evidence that it would help children write better, b) that Year 6 is too early to tackle grammar in any useful way, c) the kind of grammar being tested was resulting in it being taught out of context of real speaking, writing and reading, d) questions about grammar are not simply a matter of “right and wrong”.
A – well, er, read some of the appalling test speak that is poured like diarrhea over any Farcebook page for an example that there is certainly incorrect grammar. Grammar comes with a set of rules and structure around which we construct our language. Yes, we can break those rules if it suits our purpose, but in doing so, it helps if we understand them to start with.
B – Bollocks.
C – Really? I learned the rules as they were – rules. Context came later. As did understanding when I could break them – and I do, regularly.
D – Er, bollocks again. Unless you want a nation that cannot speak its own language and make itself understood. Let’s all make up our own rules because we feel like it. It doesn’t matter that no one will be able to make head nor tail of it. Fucking idiot. Of course there is a right and wrong – even if, over time, it changes.
Standard English is a form of writing that has developed, has changed and is still changing. There is not one correct form of Standard English, and to tell children that there is would be to tell them an untruth. To take one simple example, we can write in modern Standard English: “Do you have any wool?” “Have you got any wool?” “Have you any wool?” All three are acceptable forms of Standard English.
Yes? And? So? You point out that each of these is correct. It isn’t difficult. Bloody hell, if this is the standard of primary education in our schools, no wonder we are going to hell in the proverbial handbasket. I recall my teachers explaining that there was more than one way to express an idea and young though I was, I grasped the concept – because I wasn’t thick.
If there were one “correct grammar”, we wouldn’t be able to explain how and why grammar changes.
Rosen is deliberately misunderstanding what Gove and others who think like him are saying. No one has stated that grammar be set in a rigid rule that never changes, no one has said that vocabulary does not evolve – merely that we have a structure and we teach the structure as it currently is along with the recognition that language is an evolving beast, so some rules wither and die and others take their place. The idea that we “wouldn’t be able to explain how and why grammar changes” is utter idiocy.
There’s more like this – Rosen has projected arguments onto Gove that appear to come straight from himself – not to mention his inability to respond to what Gove actually said rather than what he would have liked him to say.
“Mr Rosen criticised the test on the basis that there was no such thing as correct grammar … I could argue that nothing is more likely to condemn any young person to limited employment opportunities – or indeed joblessness – than illiteracy,” Gove said.
Gove is perfectly correct in what he says. Rosen’s whole argument is based upon a strawman. Fucking idiot.
Last night, BBC news local had an interview with the sister of the kid shot in the head in Penge. Out of the 300 or so words she uttered, about a third of them was simply the word ‘like’. Repeated over and over. Used as punctuation.
I’ve no idea what she said – it was so off putting I couldn’t concentrate!
‘Year 6 too early to tackle grammar’?
Spare a thought for teachers of Modern Languages in Year 7, struggling to explain irregular verbs to pupils who have no idea what a verb is.
The training college orthodoxy of the mid-80s onward held that grammar teaching was unnecessary in the Modern Language classroom; expose pupils to enough foreign ‘realia’ (ie cereal packets and bus tickets) and audio-visual stimuli and they would somehow absorb a mastery of the language.
The argument was based on the effective method of total immersion in a foreign language environment, something only the most deluded theorist could equate with five half-hour lessons a week in term-time.
Three decades on and the British are a standing monolingual joke to our polyglot neighbours. True, several of our politicians have recently made speeches in other European languages, but closer inspection shows them all (I think) to be products of independent education, where fashionable orthodoxy has little sway.
Michael Gove’s point about employment is a good one. The way independently-educated people occupy a disproportionate number of top jobs is publicly deplored by the very people who advocate depriving state-educated youngsters of the tools they need to compete.
XX grammar is a good thing and it helps us if we want to learn a foreign language.XX
And;
XX struggling to explain irregular verbs to pupils who have no idea what a verb is.XX
Quite!
Try learning German when one has no idea what a “Dative”, Nomonative” or “Genetive” is. Or Swedish, when one has never HEARD uttered, the word “Supine”.
We had a whole hour of “Grammar” at the age of ten. (1970, British school).
We were told what a “Verb” is, and a “Noun”….”Pronoun”? Anything else? FORGET it.
And that was, for my year, the TOTAL content of “Grammar lessons” in my/our WHOLE school “carreer”! (1964 – 1979).
So it is not a “new” thing”.
I can’t recall ever being taught grammar formerly at school. I have always read quite a lot and I assume that my basic undertanding of grammar comes from the fact that most of them were fairly well written. My parents seemed to know how to speak properly as well so I just learned by example.
Many commenters would benefit from being taught the difference between there, their and they’re. Or were wear and where. Misuse of words that sound the same but are spelled differently is very common.
XX My parents seemed to know how to speak properly as well XX
Yes. And that appears to be another problem today. “Parents” are barely better than Apes, when it comes to “speaking properly.”
(NOT that I am perfect. But there is “Satisfactory”, and there is “”WTF????”) IF you will pardon my “textspeak”. 😉
Agreed. Or lose when they mean loose and vice versa. Reading comments with errors like these in almost makes my fillings ache. Certainly doesn’t do the writers intellectual credibility any good.
We were taught the difference in junior school. Modern day equivalent year 5. It isn’t dragon magic.
I saw a link to a facebook group – “Stop are lollypop people from losing there jobs”,
@Furor Teutonicus:
Nominative. Genitive. I may not remember what either of those mean, (though I can make a pretty good guess as one of my two native languages is Italian), but I do appear to remember how to spell them.
My years of education began in the 1970s and ended in the 1980s. One of the schools was St. John Rigby (of “The Thieving Nun” fame). Another was a 6th Form consortium based in Catford.
Humans are language machines. We seem to develop language skills from a *very* early age. I’ve been watching a niece and a nephew going through the process. It’s utterly fascinating to see how they work it out over time. Mr. Rosen is talking complete and utter tommyrot. There is absolutely no reason to avoid teaching how languages *work* to any child capable of comprehending the information. And, by Year 6, most should be.
XX but I do appear to remember how to spell them.XX
Yes, but as I never heard of them before learning (officialy) German, my spelling may not be perfect. I will give you that.
And really, THAT was the whole point of my post.
I heartily concur: aberrant apostrophes drive me to distraction, and it is sometimes my unfortunate lot to have to make sense of ungrammatical rubbish riddled with “management-speak”.
O tempora! O mores! 🙁
XX O tempora! O mores!XX
So good at grammar, that you can not find a quote in…. you know… ENGLISH! ??