I was born in the '70s.
When I attended school (both primary and secondary) in the '80s, the focus on grammar then, I believe (I was a rather 'blur' pupil), was more of incidental learning.
Sure, the teachers taught grammar (if they knew grammar) but they spent more time drilling us on the basic things like subject-noun agreement, present tense and past tense. Nothing too fancy. Anything more advanced than subject-noun agreement or tenses were only mentioned in passing. Those who understood, good and well for them. Those who didn't -- well, it was no big deal as we were supposed to learn grammar incidentally.
I was one of those who didn't get grammar. But I was fortunate in that I was really into reading, and that helped me a lot during my examinations.
Then I became a teacher and I realised that some knowledge of grammar is necessary if I want to be able to explain to my pupils clearly and simply why certain sentence structures are acceptable and others aren't. And thus began my interest in English grammar.
After some time, I realise I'm not alone. That there are a sizeable number of people out there who are interested in this topic too. Call them grammar nazis, grammar nerds, whatever; it's good to know that I'm not alone. (It's always good to know that having a particular interest, even if it's grammar, does not make one weird.)
To my fellow grammar nerds, I came across this article on Huffington Post about a trick to analyse one's sentence structure. It gets a little complex, especially towards the end, but the overarching principle is general enough to apply to primary school English.
Click this link to read the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/diagram-sentence-grammar_n_5908462.html.
I hope you find it as illuminating and interesting as I do. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment