Did YOU learn English grammar at school? Me no.

I understand what are you talking about. But that does not mean that you did not learn grammar, it means that you did not learn it as a foreigner. There was no need for analogy sampling as, for instance, for the East Europeans. My granddaughter raised in Bulgaria and I also had to spend much time to explain her grammar on the comparison with another language (with help of my daughter, of course.). But I think that that's not the main problem of the modern education. As with the negative impactgrowth of the media and communication, students now try to find easy ways for the problem-solving. For instance, instead of any attempts to generate by yourself the original idea, it is much preferable to find the list of narrative essay topics that are on the trend. I mean that the authentic fresh ideas are a kind of unique case for the current generation of the students.

The native speaker knows that we say he is doing something, while he is actually doing it, where he does it, means that he is in the habit of doing such and such.

One can also use the present continuous to mean future eg I am going on holiday to France.

Like varian I am grateful for the benefits of a Scottish education in the 50’s and 60’s . And for a father who taught me to spell and value the right word in the right place.

We had a book called "Fundamentals of English". I never understood where the fun came into it!

At my Scottish school in the 1950s, English ( both language and literature) was the most important subject. Analysis and parsing had to be mastered to pass the qualifying exam at age 11-12 to enter the Senior Secondary school and Higher English was required at age 16, 17 or 18 to matriculate at any of the four ancient Scottish Universities. When I left school Scotland had not had a new university for five hundred years. Higher English was required for all undergraduates, whether they were studying English, history, foreign languages, mathematics, science, theology, engineering or any other subject.

I'm not sure I could now do the analysis and parsing exercises I did when I was nine or ten, but I do think we were given a good grounding in our native language.

perhaps I should have said different from

Who knows and does anyone worry about it? Apart from DD2 who teaches English

One text-book which I remember from junior school is 'First Aid in English'. Is it still published today? If not, then perhaps it should be.

I agree with M0nica that the terminology for grammar used in schools now is different to that which we were taught - and I think is unnecessarily complicated for primary school children.

Welshwife, I left school in 1956. We also did parsing - and had a different colour for the different parts of the sentence, and then went on to use the same colours for clauses. To this day, I still think of verbs as red, nouns as green, pronouns were dotted green, adjectives as yellow, etc. etc.

This weekend grandparents and parents sat around helping Year 6 DGD to do her English grammar homework. All the adults are over educated and three have degrees in arts subjects, but we really struggled to get to grips with the grammar. Part of it was the change of vocabulary for the different grammatical constructs (Lots of, 'Oh we always knew it as.....') but we were all agreed that what she was doing we did not meet until we were in grammar school.

I went to 8 primary schools and 2 secondary schools and although we did some English grammar I cannot remember it featuring very highly in lessons in any of my schools. Certainly no parsing of sentences.

Where I did learn grammar and verb tenses was studying languages, mainly Latin although we did study grammar in French lessons as well.

However I have always been able to write clearly and grammatically and I spent a significant part of my working life either writing for publication or editing other people's work for publication. I do it still.

I was at primary school 1953-1959 and at a girls grammar school until 1966. Every mistake was marked in red. I only vaguely remember being taught English grammar, I picked it up when I started learning French and Latin. Both those languages have made learning Italian easier. We had elocution at some point, I could never talk 'posh' without convulsing into giggles. I found that the grammar and spelling of my graduate work colleagues was often very poor - I went to teacher training college not university but in some ways had a more thorough basic education. My grammar school had teachers with good degrees and was excellent.

I loved English language at School, but cant recall having learnt some of the things other readers have written. I found Latin was very good later on, when I studied Nursing. I am fluent in Swedish, now thats an odd language, even more dead than Latin I am afraid, I mean who speaks Swedish outside Sweden for heaven sake!

I learned about grammar through learning Latin. I do find it easier if I also understand the grammar of a new language but the real thing is just to be able to speak and be understood whether or not it is grammatical.

(Pressed post too soon!)
So as not to put them off writing. This went too far and resulted in a generation who has poor grammar and unfortunately this includes many of today's teachers.
Now we have come full circle and very complicated grammar is being taught in primary schools . It's just not true that it isn't taught nowadays! However the tide will turn again at some point I expect!

Thise of us who went to school in the 50s and 60s were taught grammar (I remember the parsing and clause analysis in grammar school -and enjoyed it)but for many children it was a turn off as was hsvi g tgere work covered in red corrections all the time. So in the 70s & 80s (these timings are approximate) schools were told to allow free expression with minimal correction so as not to

I went to school in Scotland in the 1950s-1960s and t here we were taught grammar, but I don't think anyone ever bothered labelling the tenses. After all, if you grow up with English as your first language, you are more or less using the correct tense before you ever get to school.

By the way if anyone is wondering the present continuous is when we say I am writing, the present simple I write.

So you see what I mean don't you? The native speaker knows that we say he is doing something, while he is actually doing it, where he does it, means that he is in the habit of doing such and such. No trouble to us, but getting a foreigner to understand the distinction can be tough, It all depends on how their native language distinguishes between doing something habitually and doing it right now or at the time something else happens.

I was having a bath when the phone rang. Try translating that into French or Spanish. You need two different past tenses for the two different things going on in that sentence, which we find just as confusing, as the average Spanish or French person faced with the difference in English between He takes the train to work every day, and he is taking the train to work today.

I think assuming that certain "faulty" pronunciations can easily be rectified is incorrect.

My son has difficulty pronouncing th - he does not have a cockney accent and doesn't have problems with other letter sounds. I pronounce th quite naturally but my husband can't because his first language is French. I believe in Hindi there is a sound somewhere between our "th" and "d" which is very difficult to attain unless you have grown up with the language.

I do think it is quite useful to know the names of different tenses and parts of speech but I'm not at all sure that drumming this into young children is the right way to go. I loved English at school and going to the library each weekend but I think my enthusiasm would have been dampened by lots of teaching of grammar.

For the french 'u' I was told to form your mouth for 'oo' then say 'ee'.

It is useful to learn some grammar but unfortunately the Government has now decided that all primary children should learn masses of grammar. And even changed some of the names of the tenses and parts of speech. Madness.

I have no problem with roue and rue so I guess the context comes into it as well.

Sort of Siobhan, but dessus is much more nasal and needs the mouth to be shaped in a different way.
I learnt the distinction of ou and ew at school, but it isn't good enough for the neighbours. ?

Um -- isn't it 'dessoo' and 'desseeuw'? (a bit like teenagers' 'eeuw gross' but not quite so much W on the end )

I think it is a bit unfair to mock non-native speakers for not getting the pronunciation of 'th' right. It is very hard for people learning a language later in life.
I still struggle to produce 'dessous' and 'dessus' in a way that my neighbours will understand. ?

I can`t understand why my 5 years grandson is being taught about split diagraphs

W11girl - I sooo agree with you! A few years back I was asked to perfect the English pronunciation of an uppercrust manager of Italian TV. With his pompous voice, - he thought he knew the lot - I had agonising difficulty in containing my mirth when he said things like: firty free/ free fings. This is baby talk for us (small British children do have difficulty with the TH sound), but when you hear it spoken by an adult, to me, it is just laughable!

I think my English language education was quite good - certainly better than either of my children (or DH!). I enjoyed Latin but eventually gave it up for Art. I now go to a monastery where Gregorian Chant is the order of the day and my knowledge of Latin enhances my enjoyment of that. Can't do direct translation but can make sense of it.