To think that teachers should be able to punctuate

I don't think it unreasonable at all, bags, I am just glad that I
I got into teaching!

Anno you're right about languages and patterns, and also about teaching styles. In my (our?) day teaching styles were relentlessly didactic. I understand more about Maths now, after 48 years with Theseus, and after hearing him coach the DGC; he actually explains things to me. After taking the p***, of course!

aka, agreed about confusing arithmetic with maths. I'm not fast at mental arithmetic, nor even very accurate when rushed, and people sometimes comment "I thought you were a mathematician?!" My response is that arithmetic isn't maths. You can be a mathematical thinker without being a speedo at arithmetic.

Not that speed at mental arithmentic is to be scoffed at. It's a valuable skill.

pen, ditto re random facts... well, random useful facts anyway! At least (*least*) half of teaching and teaching related tasks is problem solving of one kind or another.

My feeling, back in the eighties, and as governor of a school where there was one good maths teacher and the entire school depended on him, was that if it is reasonable to expect all teachers to have an O level in English language, then it was also reasonable to expect them to have an O level, or the equivalent in tertiary education training, for teaching primary maths. Perhaps that is an unreasonable view to have held, but no-one has convinced me it is... yet.

Yes Bags while number and algorithms are very important they are only one aspect of Maths. I think many people confuse Arithmetic with Mathematics.

PS I did have the Scottish equivalent of O level Maths - Lower Maths - escaped from the Higher set by failing the Prelim exam!

Maths and languages (and music) have this in common - patterns. I was good at languages because I noticed and applied the patterns. If you know the patterns to which a language or family of languages conforms, you have the tools to learn them. I applied this to Swahili, until the class I was in collapsed for lack of support. Pity my maths teachers didn't realise that this was the way I learnt. Nowadays teachers are trained to recognise individuals' styles of learning and I hope that my GC are able to benefit from this.

Hoisted with my own petard 'their, there and they're'!

Agree Ariadne anyone who's chosen profession requires them to communicate to a high level via the written word needs to be able to use grammar correctly, spell and punctuate. This is sadly not always the case and often the person is not even aware of their shortcomings.

For example I've had some student teachers who think that 'a lot' is one word, who cannot distinguish between their, their and they're, where and were, and some who were unaware these were in fact different.

I even had an email once from Head of Children's Services which stated '..the one criteria we need to address...'

I am a learner...just not of random facts and my recall of them is poor so I cannot spit them out again in an exam /quiz .

I can apply knowledge and skills though and put my own thoughts together creatively and think 'out of the box' (whatever that awful phrase means!) to solve problems!

I think in service training for teaching maths has made a big difference since the eighties. School maths is, after all, as much about recognising patterns as anything else.

P.S. I DO understand that with dyslexia come bigger problems, by the way.

I don't have Maths "O" Level either, and just Biology as a science, yet ended up as an Assistant Head in a big secondary school, with a Masters in Education and half a PhD (that's another story!) I was very good at my chosen subjects, and useless at anything mathematical or scientific, so current entry qualifications would not have allowed me to teach. Yet I think I was a good teacher.

However, that's a digression! Returning to the OP - I think that anyone who needs to communicate with a number of people needs to be able to present the written word accurately and clearly. I know some people have issues with spelling and grammar, but in most cases careful proof reading would solve the problem. Often it is just carelessness!

Oops sorry ....wrong link lol

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/say-it-aint-so-the-movement-to-kill-the-apostrophe/#ixzz2ftjhThj1

Yesterday was National Punctuation Day in the USA.

mm.ilovefreegle.org/hullfreegle

I think the reason more people don't get qualifications in Maths is poor teaching and the idea that prevails in this country that Maths is difficult, boring, etc.

Once you get past that then you can se the beauty of numbers and concepts.

I'm sure you are a learner Penstemmon and as for regurgitating ... only usual in animals feeding their young.

Aka too right I wouldn't. I got 4 'O' levels: Eng Lit, Eng Lang, RE, Geog.

I got A level English and RE

I gained my Cert Ed with Hons and subsequetly did a Masters. Some of us are late developers! also some of us are not learners and regurgitators!

I should have said remember all that jargon

If your average seven year old is really expected to understand all that linguistic jargon, never mind what it means as well, then the world of school tick boxes is even madder than I thought.

Interesting Pemstemmon to reflect you would not have the basic qualification to take a teaching course nowadays, these being:-

A GCSE (or standard equivalent) in EnglishGrade C
A GCSE (or standard equivalent) in mathematicsGrade C
A GCSE (or standard equivalent) in a science subject if you want to teach primary or key stages 2/3Grade C

A UK first degree (or equivalent qualification) if you want to take a postgraduate teacher training course

I do not have maths O level and I am an accredited OFSTED inspector, school improvement adviser, former teacher & headteacher!

I was a very good teacher of maths (even though I say so myself (smug sounding emoticon) for the very reason that I found maths quite difficult. I knew how important it was that children understood thoroughly the patterns and concepts and how to apply them and that rote learning was useful but limited in value.
My Queen's, Belfast top maths graduate 'O' level teacher had no idea how to communicate her knowledge to me as an average ability maths student.

I agree that there are a lot of terms which are only useful if you are deconstructing a sentence and demonstrating to someone else that you know the relationship of one word to another. That is a technical exercise which needs technical terms, or at least an explanation which is known to both the person doing the exercise and the person assessing whether they really understand what they are talking about.

By the time children (teenagers?) are doing that kind of work, and if it is done at all, they are as well to know the "correct" terms as to have to describe words and concepts in a roundabout way.

The first time I heard the word "onomatopeia" and learnt its meaning, I was delighted with it, both with the concept of words which sound right for their meaning, and to hear that there was even a name for that!

And digraphs and phonemes and - wait for it - schwa! (A common vowel sound) I didn't come across all these until I did my MA linguistics module (yawn..the most boring thing I ever did.)

Children do need the vocabulary of language to explain how it works in a particular context, but there does seem to be a proliferation of linguistic terminology at the moment.

I have no problem with nouns and verbs, pronouns, adverbs and basic tenses. I just don't see why they have to get bogged down with all the other stuff like perfects and imperfects. Surely they just get used without having to know what they are. I was using words like 'bang' and 'crash' for effect long before I knew such words were called onomatopoeia. In fact I only found that out when I began to teach Year 3. Now children are expected to know what onomatopoeia is by the age of 7.

I agree Elegran. At the age of 6 my grandchildren already know what adjectives are and can find them in a sentence and use them to enhance their own writing. They are doing the same with adverbs this term. They find it easy at this age too.

I think that at times we (particularly teachers) have to refer to nouns, verbs and so on by name, otherwise we have to resort to long-winded descriptions of " a word meaning doing something" or "a word giving more detail about how we are doing something".

Finding out that there is actually a single word for that circumlocution means that everyone understands the concept equally. For the first several mentions of the word "noun" the teacher needs to add "the name of something" so that the word and its meaning are connected with one another, but after the link has been made it is a lot quicker and more accurate to use the proper term.

English spelling is a topic of its own! I am not going to get bogged down in that.