I confess. I know almost nothing about grammar.
That is to say, I don’t know what past perfect means or even if there is such a thing. Nor do I know the definition of a phrase or a subordinate clause. Subordinate… ordinal… mathematics?
So, it was interesting reading the problems native speakers are facing with teaching grammar. An anonymous secondary school English teacher from Sydney questions the place of teaching formal grammar in the curriculum. The blog entry also touches briefly on the socio-political factors surrounding the Australian grammar crisis.
While the situation in Singapore differs, we should be asking the same question: Where is the place of formal grammar in schools?
I’m a bad case study because I come from an English-speaking home. I know that English, as it is spoken/written in Singapore, is often a result of thinking in another language and translating the output.
Force feeding grammar won’t work. The anonymous English teacher quotes Dr Ken Watson, apparently “an English educator of international repute”, alluding to a possible solution:
The study of rhetoric, the art of effective speaking and writing, was a central part of education from classical times, and in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the study of rhetoric was part of the trivium (rhetoric, grammar and logic). The grammar studied was, of course, Latin grammar. Centuries later, as Latin gave way to English as a key subject in the curriculum, rhetoric could easily have become the central part of the new subject, but unfortunately grammar won out, and the focus in language study became the sentence rather than extended passages of prose and poetry.
Rhetoric and logic. Prose and poetry.
Cannot lah. Wait everyone start thinking, blogging and criticising without giving alternatives, then how? Not to mention an increase in the number of never-to-be-seen plays.
Original photo by Adam Chamness, modified from
www.flickr.com/photos/adamchamness/61602245/, under a cc by-nc-sa 2.0 license.
C.S.Murthy
/ Saturday, 26 August 2006Dear Deadpoet,
From what you have expressed about learning English Grammar as a Singaporean, it seems that the same problem exists with Indians who are not from elite schools. The grammar is force-fed, with little emphasis on using it in day-to-day interactions in school.
Secondly, here too, students think in the native language (there are many in India) and then try to translate it into English. Thus they end up in something akin to ‘minced meat’ in a butcher’s language.
Regarding your musing that ‘Where is the place of formal grammar in scools?’
I feel that, English being a hybrid language, the grammar learning gives the foreign learner some sense in the apparently chaotic language.
C.S.Murthy