Grammar test for 11 year olds - the Rosen View

[mystery]

Yes, me too. It's all these trite arguments about creativity - how it will be ruined if you teach anyone how to do x, y or z. Quite often, being taught the tricks of the trade properly, whatever that trade is, frees up the creativity.

This particular Rosen article is good and thought provoking though. But I don't think that poor exam or syllabus setting is a new thing or restricted to grammar and punctuation. Maybe it's worse in grammar and punctuation than in other subjects? If so, perhaps it's because people are, in general, so poorly educated in English grammar and punctuation that the syllabus definition and test setting is poor too.

[Daogroupie]

Ugh, this myth of stifling creativity is very very annoying. Look at the devices in any page of Dickens. I hear this line of argument all the time. "English must be left alone to flourish and not governed in any way"

A parent recently told me that she had consulted a firm of educational consultants (and how much did that cost, probably about £600) who told her that her dd's writing had "a unique flair" and should not be interfered with in any way so she should not do any preparation at all for 11 plus English papers. Of course when her dd fails to get into any school at all the consultants will say it was because the 11 plus markers failed to appreciate her "unique flair" just as the GCSE markers will do when she writes creative pieces with no reference to punctuation and sentence structure at all!

At one primary I worked in we were told we could only identify the first three spelling and grammar mistakes in a piece of work and then we had to leave the rest.

This is why we have a whole legion of students and adults who cannot distinguish between your and you're and where and were and their they're and There and I have even found some preps who get mixed up between know and now??????? DG

[Guest55]

I think you are all misunderstanding the Rosen article. He is not against teaching Grammar - far from it!

What he objects to is the current KS2 test which marks 'correct' answers wrong because they aren't in the mark scheme. There is a collection of them going around ...

[enema]

That marking rule still exists in my daughter's state primary. Teachers can mark no more than 3 things wrong in any one piece of English work, and must find a positive to also comment on. At parent's evening I spotted lots of uncorrected spellings in her work.

[mystery]

Did you say anything and did it have any effect? There are so many uncorrected error in my child's book it is depressing and it gets worse every year but they don't listen to me or think that it matters one jot.

[enema]

Yes, I raised it with her teacher who said that whilst she privately didn't think the marking policy was helpful, it was school policy and so had to be followed. Over the years of primary, I have several times approached staff of varying levels, up to deputy HT, about the lack of teaching of spelling and grammar, and have got nowhere on it. And ironically now in Y6, they are suddenly aggressively pushing grammar because... the SATS are looming.

[JaneEyre]

That marking rule still exists in my daughter's state primary. Teachers can mark no more than 3 things wrong in any one piece of English work, and must find a positive to also comment on. At parent's evening I spotted lots of uncorrected spellings in her work.

How depressing... but I am not surprised... It must have been the same in my DS's primary. These kind of rules are so detrimental! I wish the trend could be stopped!!

[Stokers]

I became so frustrated with the absence of grammar and spelling marking for DS (we only correct if it interferes with the flow of the work; we only correct the spelling of 'topic' words) that I insisted they send all books home each weekend so that I could mark them. When this was refused (in case the books got lost or damaged!), I insisted all new work be photocopied and sent home. They put up with this for 4 weeks before they started marking his work more thoroughly and I said they could stop.

[Amber]

This is why we have a whole legion of students and adults who cannot distinguish between your and you're and where and were and their they're and There and I have even found some preps who get mixed up between know and now??????? DG

And people who put multiple question marks on the end of sentences when one would do?

[JaneEyre]

I became so frustrated with the absence of grammar and spelling marking for DS (we only correct if it interferes with the flow of the work; we only correct the spelling of 'topic' words) that I insisted they send all books home each weekend so that I could mark them. When this was refused (in case the books got lost or damaged!), I insisted all new work be photocopied and sent home. They put up with this for 4 weeks before they started marking his work more thoroughly and I said they could stop.

well done Stokers!