We probably all do. It's one of those "use it or lose it" things, and since we rarely use grammatical terms or even grammatically correct sentences anymore (except in papers), it's no wonder so many people forget the rules. They're also not taught as early or as thoroughly as they used to be, and our kids are not expected to consistently write using grammatically correct English unless they're in English class. When I was in school (way back in the dark ages - graduated high school in 1988), ALL of our homework and papers were expected to be grammatically correct whether they were for Biology, American History, Geometry, or 20th Century Literature. Texting and email are also partly to blame for our poor English skills in my opinion, but I'm not advocating ditching those :). Any of you in the education field, have you read any of the Junie B. Jones books? I know lots of folks love them, and teachers in our school systems read them to their first-graders, but I wouldn't let my daughter have them because Junie's sentence structure, grammar, etc. are atrocious, and the books are written from her perspective: they're written the way a first-grader speaks. How are our kids supposed to learn grammatically correct English when the books they're reading are chock full of first-grade English???? There's a fine line between encouraging our kids to read by exposing them to material to which they can relate, and feeding our kids literary garbage because they like it, and it has a good story line. We talked in class about the importance of language exposure in language development. To me, Junie B. Jones is a case in point.
I agree!! I feel like a failure!
ReplyDeleteWe probably all do. It's one of those "use it or lose it" things, and since we rarely use grammatical terms or even grammatically correct sentences anymore (except in papers), it's no wonder so many people forget the rules. They're also not taught as early or as thoroughly as they used to be, and our kids are not expected to consistently write using grammatically correct English unless they're in English class. When I was in school (way back in the dark ages - graduated high school in 1988), ALL of our homework and papers were expected to be grammatically correct whether they were for Biology, American History, Geometry, or 20th Century Literature. Texting and email are also partly to blame for our poor English skills in my opinion, but I'm not advocating ditching those :). Any of you in the education field, have you read any of the Junie B. Jones books? I know lots of folks love them, and teachers in our school systems read them to their first-graders, but I wouldn't let my daughter have them because Junie's sentence structure, grammar, etc. are atrocious, and the books are written from her perspective: they're written the way a first-grader speaks. How are our kids supposed to learn grammatically correct English when the books they're reading are chock full of first-grade English???? There's a fine line between encouraging our kids to read by exposing them to material to which they can relate, and feeding our kids literary garbage because they like it, and it has a good story line. We talked in class about the importance of language exposure in language development. To me, Junie B. Jones is a case in point.
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