Fronted phrases (I think). Grammar help, please?

Couldn't resist adding this - sent to me by my dear sister; a head teacher!

This is Biff.

This is Chip.

This is Biff and Chip's homework.

Biff and Chip are required to write down ten examples of fronted adverbials.

Biff and Chip have not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is.

This is Mum.

Mum has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.

"We don't know what a fronted adverbial is," whinge Biff and Chip. "This homework is impossible. You will have to help us."

"It's not my homework, it's your homework," says Mum, thanking her lucky stars that she did not have to engage in any of this fronted adverbial bollocks when she was at school.

This is Dad.

Dad still struggles to distinguish between a noun and a verb, and would not know a fronted adverbial if one came up and punched him in the face.

Biff and Chip think for a moment about asking Dad for help.

They decide to Google instead.

This is Mrs May.

When Mrs May went into teaching she honestly believed she would be able to spend her time helping children to love learning. And putting on plays. Mrs May loves a play. She did not realise that a love of learning would not feature on the National Curriculum at all, and that she would instead be forced to meet a series of impossible and continuously moving goalposts which successive governments would put in place, and have to teach her classes about ridiculous concepts such as fronted adverbials which, in all honesty, are only ever likely to be of use if they end up becoming professors of linguistics. Or primary school teachers.

If truth be told, Mrs May has not a fucking clue what a fronted adverbial is either.

This is Floppy the dog.

Floppy holds no truck with fronted adverbials.

Floppy eats the fronted adverbial homework sheet.

Floppy knows that he is a fucking liability, and waits to be told so.

No one is more surprised than Floppy when the entire family gather around and tell him "Oh GOOD dog Floppy."

Floppy feels this is proof positive that some good can come from fronted adverbials after all.

Later at school, Biff and Chip are, for the first time, able to legitimately use the excuse: "My dog ate my homework."

Mrs May breathes a secret sigh of relief that that is one less set of incomprehensible and entirely incorrect homework that she has to plough through, and suggests to the class that they will all put on a play instead to celebrate.

When the new SPAG test was introduced, Y6 teachers had to re-train on the grammatical features.

My examples didn't have any adverbs, though. I could understand how they are 'adverbials' if they had contained adverbs, but whilst 'Running for the bus' describes what Sophie is doing whilst she thought about her holidays, it there is no adverb.

'Quickly running for the bus' might be a tautology, but it is an adverbial phrase, as is 'Nostalgically looking through the photo album . . .'

That is what led to my confusion. I had heard of fronted adverbials (from other exasperated parents), which is why I googled it, but the explanations I found all said that they were adverbial phrases, which are different - or have I misunderstood?

GrandmaKT

An adverbial phrase or clause doesn't need to contain an adverb.

These poor children! No wonder they get put off learning!!

So many average children simply do not get this stuff so mark themselves down as stupid. Children with so much to offer.

Poor souls do it all over again when they get to secondary school.

Teach them to spell, to express themselves clearly - they do not need to know these labels in order to do that. And some of these labels are recent concoctions.

GrandmaKT


Any reading together of the Oxford Reading Tree books with the DGC would usually result in questions as to why anyone would name their children Biff, Chip and Kipper

'But why, Granny, why? I don't know anyone called that'

They're tested KS2 SATs

But that doesn't answer the question:
Why are they taught this?
If KS2 SATS is the answer then the question needs to be changed.

I thought these phrases were previously called something like hanging sentences (or dangling modifiers?)
To my mind, the terminology now being used in schools just further complicates the teaching and learning of grammar!

To GrandmaKT
That is so good. Says it all really. ????
Which reading scheme do people recommend ? I bet many of us on here could read before we went to school.

Just love that Grandma KT - it has gone to my fellow governors - they will LOVE it!

They are taught this Callestemon because about 6 years ago the then Education Secretary AKA Slimy toad/Mr Michael Gove decided that the primary curriculum which was currently in use was not fit for purpose. So in order to 'raise standards' everything was changed, the curriculum became instantly more difficult and in most teachers' views without any purpose at all. The joy had gone out of teaching English to primary children that's for sure.
I taught year 6 at the time and when, as part of the transition to High school, I showed the Year 7 teacher the work my year group were undertaking- she couldn't believe the complexity or the difficulty...nor could her Head of English. Both wondered why it was thus and my answer was that we had no choice as this was Mr Gove's new curriculum.
We might think Bojo's a bad PM but - heaven help us all if Gove ever gets the top job! (and as an aside you might be interested to know that a certain Dominic Cummings worked with Gove on the New Curriculum- so the latter will support the former all the way, and vice versa most probably!))

My question was intended to be rhetorical, mamaa, but yes, that is a good explanation, thank you.

Indeed mamaa - god help us all if he finishes up as PM.

What a total waste of time, when there is no time for art, music or fun at school.
After being required to learn this bollocks, about 75% or the population don’t know how to use apostrophes or how to spell simple words.

Like others here I have a degree in English (St A) but in all my years in teaching was never called upon to teach these irrelevant concepts.
Fortunately Scotland is free of Gove reforms/ Cummings input and SATs.

As a retired teacher I went back as a supply in the school I had taught in. I dreaded being asked to teach a Yr 6 class SPAG!! Fronted adverbials were my least favourite. ???

I think there is still time for music, drama, art at school
As well as learning Welsh in Wales.

Thanks everyone for helping me to identify them.

Are children encouraged to use this construction in their writing? I can see that sometimes it will be the 'right' thing to do, and of course they should have as many ways of expressing themselves as possible at their disposal; but on the whole, as I've said, I think it is clumsy. It reads like something out of a tabloid magazine - the ones where readers sell their stories to a ghost writer.

Yes the children are encouraged to use fronted adverbials in their writing. It will often be one of the targets in a piece of work that they need to show.

This nonsense makes me glad my SEN grandchildren can barely read or write. They’ll never be expected (or helped) to get to the stage of writing a coherent sentence because their teachers are too busy teaching Michael Gove’s ludicrous fancies.

I sometimes wonder if Michael Gove knows what a fronted adverbial is. Seems unlikely.

As I sit here in the shade, I wonder idly if there is such a part of speech in the Welsh language.



Perhaps I should get out more.
If I were allowed to do so.

Is that an Unreal Conditional?

GrandmaKT Thankyou so much for that it is hilarious. It shows as well that teachers still have a sense of humour about the awful things which are foist upon them.
As for Michael Gove and what he did to education and what he is up to now that's no laughing matter.