How well is English taught in schools these days? I will attempt to ascertain this by asking two questions about grammar. Not easy questions, but not overly difficult ones either. I thought long and hard about what I might ask of a pupil emerging from 6th Year aged 17 or 18. They have, by that time, had 13 or 14 years of tuition. I chose examples of grammar that students would instinctively understand, but might have needed guidance to unravel and explain.
Children arriving at school as five-year-olds don’t mistake past perfect tense for present continuous tense. “I wish I had packed my schoolbag properly” is past perfect tense. “My mum’s always telling me to pack my schoolbag properly” is present continuous tense. They use these tenses, but would need to be taught to describe them.
Question one. Would 6th Year school pupils be able to explain, and give an example, of past perfect tense?
All children know that it would sound very odd to invent a new pronoun. It is a closed class of words. We say “it, you’ll, we’ll, them, our, your” and understand that it would be difficult to even think of a word that might be added to the list of pronouns.
Question two. Would 6th Year pupils be able to explain, and give an example of, a closed class of words in English?
I’d hope they would easily be able to answer such questions. There should be time, in 13 or 14 years of schooling, to teach to this level.
However, I often look at the qualifications pupils have gained, and the impressive-sounding degrees that university graduates can boast, then am amazed that they can’t use commas properly.
So are children being taught the building blocks of grammar? Have they learned how to parse a sentence? Can they list the nine parts of English?
I know some English teachers read this column and I want to make it very clear that I am not criticising them. I have done some research on this and believe the problem, if there is one, must lie with what is allowed under the Government’s Curriculum for Excellence. This has been in place for 10 years and should, by now, be bearing fruit.
If there is not enough time allotted to properly teach English, the fundamental tool used in all human interactions and all workplaces, then what is it that is more important to a student?
Word of the week
Parse (verb)
To resolve a sentence into its component parts and describe their functions. EG: “At school, I spent months learning to parse sentences”.
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
