Whatever happened to grammar and spelling?

Can't agree about European countries, either Lilygran. The standard of written French I see in some of the children who come to me for English coaching is often quite dreadful. I sometimes end up teaching them French spelling / grammar as well.
I would also be genuinely interested in the evidence for your comment about, "The desirability of adapting the way you speak and write to the context is not getting through. If it is taught". I have seen hundreds of children's English books where it is quite clear that they understand writing for different audiences and in different genres and have also observed hundreds of lessons where it is being taught, and taught well. Are you talking about a particular age group? It just doesn't match what I have seen in lessons.

I'm not talking about formal exercises but about how people speak and write when they aren't doing it for a test. The grocers' apostrophe has taken over and, for example, 'Soz' is fine for 'Sorry' with a friend but not, it seems to me, if you are a shop assistant to a customer you have failed to serve efficiently. We regularly get business letters that are almost incomprehensible because of strange verb forms and 'sentences' wandering everywhere but to a conclusion. I'm pretty good at understanding accents and dialects as I taught English and ESOL for many years but I find I'm defeated by some interviewees on television. I could offer lots more examples but I might sound like a crabby old woman.

Well, greengrocers are greengrocers. So long as they are communicating what's important to them, they won't be too bothered about the grammatical correctness or otherwise of apostrophes. I sympathise. Yes, it would be nice if they could get it right, but it doesn't really matter except to pedants on apostrophe spotting exercises.

Likewise with the seemingly casual 'Soz'. Maybe that's all that person hears. Surely if they mean they are sorry and that message is conveyed, the actual expression of sorrow doesn't count.

I do think it's just grumpy to complain about these things all the time. It's fine on here of course, just for the hell of it, but I do think it's worth frequently reminding oneself about what actually matters: greengrocers don't actually need a high standard of grammar to do their jobs and a soz is as good as a sorry if the apology is real. It's easy to tell.

Wrongly or badly written letters from "utility service providers" [yuck! emoticon] are annoying too, but apart from the pleasure of picking holes in their grammar and diction, does it really matter? I don't think one can reasonably expect someone doing a badly paid, boring office job to do more than repeat the gobbledegook and jargon they hear all day.

I also think that it is nothing new. You must remember from teaching, Lilygran, how illiterate letters from parents could be. I started teaching in the early seventies so those parents must have been at school in the fifties and sixties.

I used to get so irritated by misplaced apostrophes and fed up with students who obviously failed to read or understand my carefully devised study guides, that my ultimate message to them was: 'if in doubt, leave it out.' I think George Bernard Shaw would have agreed with this.

I agree too but I think we're onto a lost cause.

I finId text speak tedious to read and uninspiring. Had no idea that Soz meant sorry. I think it is aprivate language best kept by the young for the young rather like yhe brontes did. Plus ca change.....

My daughter used to say "soz" when she was a teenager. I think she's grown out of it now! (32)

I was listening to From our Correspondent on Radio 4 yesterday. A contributer was talking about the island Alexander Selkirk [Robinson Crusoe] lived for a while. Apparently it is a small island and the contributer said ' he could have rode around the island' instead of 'he could have ridden around the island'. He'll be saying 'he dove into the water' [as they say in the US] instead of 'he dived into the water' . !!!

I think we're probably more laid back about a lot of things in this country.

As for regional phrases such as 'I were going', that is fine when spoken with the genuine regional accent, but I don't think anyone would deliberately write in that way. Though if they did, I wouldn't knock it.

Or perhaps - he could have rowed round the island?

Good thinking, Mamie!

Living in Norfolk, I used to work with lads (sometimes the odd girl) on Youth Opportunities Scheme, allegedly teaching them social skills. The dialect they used in the Marshlands was interestingly free of inflexions. For example. 'Ee goo Norch' could mean either 'he is going to Norwich', 'he will go to Norwich' or 'he went to Norwich', depending on the context. Wish I could use phonetic symbols on this keyboard!

OK, so I am a crabby old woman! And, Mamie I started teaching in the 1960s so perhaps I am the author of my own misfortunes. [guilty emoticon]. I just think we are doing children a disservice if we don't get it across that there is formal and informal language. My DGSs can switch registers at the drop of an an aitch as their father could but many children can't. We don't teach non-standard English to children whose first language isn't English and I think we should offer the same to all children in school.

Doesn't children's speech follow the patterns that they hear at home? If the parents don't care about changes in register between the various forms of spoken and written language, if follows that the children won't bother either.

MiceElf The is no such thing as a London accent or standard usage in London. Whitechapel is different from Wandsworth and Kensington is different from Kennington – not to mention the traditional Fulham whine.

Absent, I didn't say there was a London accent. I said that there was a non standard regional variation in everyday grammatical usage. Accents differ across the classes. But 'I done it' is frequently heard amongst non standard speakers from Plumstead to Pimlico and Brockley to Bermondsey.

Exactly, anno. www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9570432/Four-in-10-children-struggle-to-read-basic-words.html Respecting the children's culture and offering no alternative sounds egalitarian but it's actually very patronising and further disadvantages the already disadvantaged.

I don't think non-standard English is 'taught' anywhere, is it? It may not be always commented upon by teachers, though at DD's primary school they were very hot on distinguishing between the spoken word and the written. DD learned the difference. Some of the other kids may not have, perhaps because the distinction wasn't reinforced at home and perhaps because they didn't read as much as she did. There lies the rub — not all learning happens at school. In fact a great deal of what people learn is not learned in school, including attitudes to learning. Teachers can't be blamed for everything.

'I done it' is heard in western Scotland too. I correct it when I hear DD say it (I haven't heard her say it for a while now). Most people don't notice.

I think kids learn standard English from parents and other close relatives, or not as the case may be. Not at school because by the time they go to school they've already absorbed "homespeak" and will stick with that (except when they need to do peerspeak ).

Have you seen that pilot test that they gave six-year-olds this year, Lilygran? My GD who is a fluent reader of "chapter" books still got one of the nonsense words wrong because she applied the "wrong" phonic rule. I think they need to work on it a bit more, before they make any judgements from it.
The reporting of the Key Stage stuff in the DT is interesting. Despite the fact that standards have gone up at both key stages in primary, we still get the fact that 20,000 boys are below Level 4 at the end of Key Stage 2 as a key point. If we include pupils with special needs, I think that is not surprising given the size of the cohort and I can't think that is a fair summary of the test data as a whole. Level 4 is not basic, it is challenging. Yes, there is still too much of a gap between boys and girls, but this year it closed significantly. Yes, groups at risk of social exclusion performed badly. Not good enough, but very hard to put right. Why can't we applaud what teachers and children have achieved? Why are so many people so negative about children and young people all the time?

Is the teaching profession the sole agent of social change or should successive governments, and all other agencies accept responsibility for poor achievement and alienation from school of some pupils?

It's very easy for privately and expensively educated journalists and ministers to heap opprobrium on teachers, but I doubt if any of them have every even dared enter an inner city classroom with thirty children who may not have had a breakfast or sufficient sleep and who certainly haven't been given even one twentieth of the experiences or privileges that they have benefited from.

Bags - plus ca change.... when I was at school, we heard 'I done' in the playground but never in the classroom. Mind you, this was sixty years ago.

The percentage still not doing well varies but it's never zero and it always seems to be centred on the same groups in society. No, schools can't remedy the ills of society singlehanded and I hope my comments aren't seen as teacher-knocking. It's the stupid short-term interference of politicians and their lackeys that is at the root of the problem. I did some comparative research, years ago, on the teaching of reading and came to the conclusion that there is no magic bullet. If a child (or adult) is having problems they have to be offered a variety of ways in. Phonics works very well for a lot of children but so did 'look and say' and the ita.

It never will be zero, and I think it's unreasonable to expect that it ever would be, if anyone does expect that.