Interesting interview with Simon Heffer about his crusade to improve the teaching of English grammar. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8983000/8983140.stm he argues that most pupils have been left with “nothing but a random and often erroneous understanding of the components of language”.
What do you think?
I went to a very old fashioned grammar school and had English Grammar lessons which have stood me in good stead. However, before coming to France I did a TEFL course and one of my fellow students was a Polish guy, who knew more about English Grammar than all of us put together…stuff like the third conditional, that I’d never even heard of!
I think it’s vital to have some knowledge of English grammar to be able express oneself correctly and to understand information. Once you know the basic rules, you can play around a bit and enjoy yourself.
I don’t know about comprehensive, but more wouldn’t be a bad thing. As far as I know though, they are being taught about verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and so on, and I know because I’ve been writing some educational resources that do so.
Things can’t be worse than when I was at school in the 70s and the only grammar we got taught was in French. Why did we need it in French and not English, one wonders.