How sad to see the waste of time that is grammatical terminology making a comeback (Experts on the frontline in fight over ‘fronted adverbials’, 9 May). I spent years as a head of English and then as a head of teacher training trying to dissuade teachers from inflicting pointless knowledge of grammatical terminology upon children. That, sadly, is how many view grammar, not as something that can help understanding of how language works but as a way of pointlessly labelling passages of writing. That kind of grammar teaching is as useful as pulling fruit cake to pieces and naming all the dried fruit, peel and cake mix constituents without mentioning how enjoyable and tasty the cake is.
More talk in the classroom and more encouragement to use language clearly and accurately is what is needed not the parlour game of name this grammatical construction.
John Fullman
London
• Two outstanding English teachers and academics, Harold Rosen and RJ Harris, gained their PhDs by researching the impact of grammar teaching on pupils’ writing. Harris’s PhD concluded that his research showed that “the study of English grammar had a negligible or even a relatively harmful effect upon the correctness of children’s writing”. His PhD was gained in 1962, 55 years ago.
If the medical profession ignored its own accumulated history and knowledge as efficiently as education appears to, we would be justly outraged. Amazingly, politicians with neither experience of teaching nor knowledge of educational research can order schools to teach what has been known to be ineffective for half a century. That sentence began with a fronted adverbial.
Michael Torbe
Coventry
• Heaven preserve us from adverbials and those who want to introduce them into the curriculum! Try introducing children to good books, read to them, make them enthusiastic about the beauties of the English language. We all know that basic grammar has to be grasped, but when we have a young population that, largely speaking, is so influenced by the language on television and in the playground, the more esoteric terms of grammar seem a little idiotic. I would prefer not to have the term “these ones” so generally used, and as for “I’m good” rather than “well”, my blood pressure is raised rather too often for comfort. But as my grandchildren would doubtless say, “get real”.
Ruth Baden
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire
• I’m beginning to wonder how I managed to get through life first as a teacher then as a headteacher without knowing what a fronted adverbial was. I’ve obviously been at a grave disadvantage.
Roland White
Bognor Regis, West Sussex
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