‘When I done my degree….’

nanna8

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants.

Since when???

As for numbers rather than letters, makes no difference. The English/Welsh A'Level system is very very narrow and specialised. It has advantages and disadvantages- but it does mean that only a tiny minority (as a 6th Form specialist for such a long time) take English language (which is mainly litterature) for A'Level.

My grandson is doing all sciences in Year 12, no English.

I no longer know if people are misspelling 'satirically' on this thread or not

‘I’m escaping, I’m just on the boarder now’
Callistemon, I hope he enjoyed the experience, you are naughty.

I give up. I'm board of this thread now...

LauraNorderr

‘I’m escaping, I’m just on the boarder now’
Callistemon, I hope he enjoyed the experience, you are naughty.

Fleurpepper

nanna8

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants.

Since when???

As for numbers rather than letters, makes no difference. The English/Welsh A'Level system is very very narrow and specialised. It has advantages and disadvantages- but it does mean that only a tiny minority (as a 6th Form specialist for such a long time) take English language (which is mainly litterature) for A'Level.

My grandson is doing all sciences in Year 12, no English.

Yes, DGS is getting board wiv English now, nanna8 but I told him he has to carry on in Y12. He give a big sigh.
He likes his maths and sciences.

It's strange I can spot spelling errors at a glance but any numerical errors completely pass me by. My husband gets really frustrated trying to explain tax or bank issues to me.

Callistemon21

Fleurpepper

nanna8

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants.

Since when???

As for numbers rather than letters, makes no difference. The English/Welsh A'Level system is very very narrow and specialised. It has advantages and disadvantages- but it does mean that only a tiny minority (as a 6th Form specialist for such a long time) take English language (which is mainly litterature) for A'Level.

My grandson is doing all sciences in Year 12, no English.

Yes, DGS is getting board wiv English now, nanna8 but I told him he has to carry on in Y12. He give a big sigh.
He likes his maths and sciences.

Fact- students in England and Wales do not have to continue with maths or English in Year 12.

Doodledog

eddiecat78

I'm 66 and was never taught English grammar at school. In fact my grandchildren are taught it more than I was. For me, it made learning another language more difficult because I didn't understand what different tenses were etc.
Most of my understanding of how to "speak correctly" was picked up automatically because I read prolifically and was surrounded by people who spoke well (including those on the TV at that time)

There is a quotation that I can't find as I don't know who said it and can't get enough of it right to look it up, but the gist is that when someone pronounces something unusual incorrectly it means that they have only seen it written down, which shows more intellectual curiosity than having learnt it from someone else.

I think there is a lot of wisdom in that, although believing it requires a humility that many just don't possess.

I know exactly what you are talking about here. Having written for a living for my entire working life (and having to correct others' writing too), I can spot mistakes from a mile off, but I also recognise that people can have poor grammar or spelling for any number of reasons. What did irk me, however, was when we had potential job candidates applying for roles who simply couldn't even get the basics right. Quite a number had degrees or other qualifications in journalism or media studies (or similar), but still didn't have even the most basic requirements for the role. It was like someone applying for a mechanic's job who didn't know one end of a spanner from the other.

That may well be true; but that doesn't mean that no journalism graduates can string a sentence together (unlikely) or that graduates in STEM subjects are all wordsmiths, as seems to be being suggested in some posts on this thread. There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on.

Poking fun at people for not having been taught something is the sort of thing that teachers should be discouraging IMO, and is highly unpleasant coming from anyone else, too.

Fleurpepper

Callistemon21

Fleurpepper

nanna8

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants.

Since when???

As for numbers rather than letters, makes no difference. The English/Welsh A'Level system is very very narrow and specialised. It has advantages and disadvantages- but it does mean that only a tiny minority (as a 6th Form specialist for such a long time) take English language (which is mainly litterature) for A'Level.

My grandson is doing all sciences in Year 12, no English.

Yes, DGS is getting board wiv English now, nanna8 but I told him he has to carry on in Y12. He give a big sigh.
He likes his maths and sciences.

Fact- students in England and Wales do not have to continue with maths or English in Year 12.

Fleurpepper, nana8 is not in the UK, hence the differences.

Your all so funny. I wish their was a like button on here

Fact- children in Victoria and as far as I know the rest of Australia, do.

Not English lit, just English. Many a student does brilliantly at maths etc but fails English. It limits their uni choices. Just as that horrible Latin requirement cut down our choices, back in the day.

Fleurpepper

Callistemon21

Fleurpepper

nanna8

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants.

Since when???

As for numbers rather than letters, makes no difference. The English/Welsh A'Level system is very very narrow and specialised. It has advantages and disadvantages- but it does mean that only a tiny minority (as a 6th Form specialist for such a long time) take English language (which is mainly litterature) for A'Level.

My grandson is doing all sciences in Year 12, no English.

Yes, DGS is getting board wiv English now, nanna8 but I told him he has to carry on in Y12. He give a big sigh.
He likes his maths and sciences.

Fact- students in England and Wales do not have to continue with maths or English in Year 12.

Fact
Children in Australia do.

Perhaps you didn't realise, but nanna8 lives in Australia.

No, I didn't. And I was clearly speaking about England and Wales.

Fleurpepper

No, I didn't. And I was clearly speaking about England and Wales.

You were responding to nanna8 Fleurpepper, who quite clearly was referring to where she lives:

Everyone has to do English in year 12 hear, but. Youse can study up the paddicks if youse wants

I understood it, even if it was in Strine!

Doodledog

That may well be true; but that doesn't mean that no journalism graduates can string a sentence together (unlikely) or that graduates in STEM subjects are all wordsmiths, as seems to be being suggested in some posts on this thread. There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on.

Poking fun at people for not having been taught something is the sort of thing that teachers should be discouraging IMO, and is highly unpleasant coming from anyone else, too.

There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on.

That's interesting. Why was it considered so unimportant?

I'm not very proficient in the one (and only) foreign language I speak - but if I hadn't had a grounding in English grammar, I think I would've struggled a lot more than I did (I'm not a 'natural' linguist).

I don’t understand how someone can go through school and graduate from university yet still think ‘I done my degree’ is correct. Did they never read? Did they never hear anyone speaking correctly? Do we have to be taught everything, even how to speak correctly in our native language?

That's interesting. Why was it considered so unimportant?

I'm not sure, but I think it was to encourage children to be creative rather than concentrating on parsing sentences and so on. I was taught grammar, and I'm 64, so it was after my school days, assuming it was rolled out across the country all at once.

I think it was fairly soon after 'my time', and they brought in a different way of teaching reading and writing at the same time, called ITA, which was loosely based on Pitman shorthand. It was responsible for a lot of children falling well behind, I think.

I have certainly taught very able students who didn't know what a subjunctive or even an adverb was, because nobody had told them, their parents or their teachers - it's not the sort of thing you learn instinctively, is it?

Regional differences are not necessarily 'wrong' either - just non-standard. Many regional speech patterns are closer to Middle (and even Old) English than the standard patterns used today. The fact that one type of speech pattern became 'Standard English' is entirely based on social, rather than linguistic criteria - the regional ones are every bit as good at conveying meaning.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t understand how someone can go through school and graduate from university yet still think ‘I done my degree’ is correct. Did they never read? Did they never hear anyone speaking correctly? Do we have to be taught everything, even how to speak correctly in our native language?

Of course we have to be taught our own language - otherwise there wouldn't be different ones across the world.

On the whole, people learn from their parents, and speech patterns are laid down quite early, which is why young children pick up language easily. Of course we can 'unlearn' one way of speaking and learn another, and many people do just that when they move to a less regionally-based environment. Nevertheless, it is very easy for people to return to their old accent/dialect when they are around others speaking similarly, or when they've had a few drinks, or just when they feel (obviously mistakenly in the case of many of the examples on this thread) comfortable in the company they're in.

I can think of no good reason why we should all speak the same, although it is important that there is a shared understanding when it comes to official documents and so on. There does have to be a standard as a yardstick, but that is far more important in written English than spoken.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t understand how someone can go through school and graduate from university yet still think ‘I done my degree’ is correct. Did they never read? Did they never hear anyone speaking correctly? Do we have to be taught everything, even how to speak correctly in our native language?

Both my parents’ spelling and grammar were perfect and yet they both left school at 14 to start work. The three R’s were obviously taught well in the 1920s. I wish they were still here as there’s so much I wish I’d discussed with them. 😢

I agree Juliet. My parents too. We seem to have gone backwards, accepting words such as ‘done’ instead of ‘did’ and ‘were’ instead of ‘was’, both I would say regional tendencies, rather than correct English. My paternal grandfather came from rural Yorkshire and my maternal grandparents were born in a poor area of London. Nobody would have guessed that from the way they wrote and spoke - and they left school at 14.

Dickens

Doodledog

That may well be true; but that doesn't mean that no journalism graduates can string a sentence together (unlikely) or that graduates in STEM subjects are all wordsmiths, as seems to be being suggested in some posts on this thread. There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on.

Poking fun at people for not having been taught something is the sort of thing that teachers should be discouraging IMO, and is highly unpleasant coming from anyone else, too.

There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on.

That's interesting. Why was it considered so unimportant?

I'm not very proficient in the one (and only) foreign language I speak - but if I hadn't had a grounding in English grammar, I think I would've struggled a lot more than I did (I'm not a 'natural' linguist).

There was a long period during which grammar just wasn't taught, and a whole generation of teachers never learnt it either, so couldn't pass it on

Nor were incorrect spellings corrected as it might have stifled the childs creativity.

child's !!!