10 questions on grammar

bigmat

I got the sibling one wrong because, if I'm honest, I didn't read the question properly as I was rushing through it. Gave up at 7 or 8 (had got the rest right but was starting to guess) as the questions were no longer about how well you can use language but whether you know the names of grammatical terms - I didn't get taught that stuff at school and have never needed to know it.

discurio

5 out of ten. Promising pedant

TheStone

Someone once told me to never use a semicolon.
Even if you get it right, you look like a tw*t.

DonDaddyD

;--)

wandsworth

7/10. I got all the usage questions correct but flunked all the "what rule is this" questions. I was never taught those at school and frankly never saw the point in knowing what the rules are called, either in my native language or in learning a foreign language.

bigmat

TheStone wrote:

Someone once told me to never use a semicolon; even if you get it right, you look like a tw*t.

FTFY

tgotb

TheStone wrote:

Someone once told me to never use a semicolon.
Even if you get it right, you look like a tw*t.

I disagree. Sometimes you want to create a link between two sentences; a semicolon is the perfect tool for doing this.

I also failed on the sibling question, 9/10.

I think a good command of grammar gives you a wider range tools with which to express yourself clearly. That doesn't mean you can't express yourself without good command of grammar, but having those tools makes it easier.

You don't necessarily have to have been taught this stuff; you can pick up a lot of grammar (and spelling) through reading. This won't teach you the meanings of terms like gerund and subjunctive, but it will teach you what you actually need to know. You just have to make sure you read proper books and newspapers rather than just web forums (and, in the case of spelling, avoid back copies of the Grauniad)...

mrfpb

Headhuunter wrote:

When GCSE started, this was the aim, I think the theory was that babies/children don't learn language through learning grammar, they just learn phrases and expressions and the go on to use them. GCSE sought to replicate this supposedly natural way of learning.

Problem is children actually learn rules rather than parroting phrases back.

For example my stroppy toddler once shouted at me as I strapped her into her car seat "Strap me out", most toddlers at some point will look out a car window and say "look, sheeps".

These are examples of the toddler applying the rules of language and coming up with a word or phrase they have never heard an adult use. It's a big learning step. Similarly lots of preschool and infant school children will rite funetically and an adult will be able to understand what they've written even though the spelling is, strictly speaking, all wrong.

essex-commuter

TGOTB wrote:

TheStone wrote:

Someone once told me to never use a semicolon.
Even if you get it right, you look like a tw*t.

Sometimes you want to create a link between two sentences; a semicolon is the perfect tool for doing this.

tw*t

sketchley

I don't care. I really don't. If they want to come up with some proper consistant rules without any exceptions then I might play. c#, vb.net, pascal, delphi, fortran, cobol and basic all make much more sense to me......

greg66_tri_v2.0

essex-commuter wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

TheStone wrote:

Someone once told me to never use a semicolon.
Even if you get it right, you look like a tw*t.

Sometimes you want to create a link between two sentences; a semicolon is the perfect tool for doing this.

tw*t

tl;dr.

tgotb

mrfpb wrote:

For example my stroppy toddler once shouted at me as I strapped her into her car seat "Strap me out", most toddlers at some point will look out a car window and say "look, sheeps".

When we were feeding my daughter and she became full, she used to say "Bye bye more". We'd got quite used to this, and then I got her up from a nap one morning and she came out with, "Bye bye more sleep..."

essex-commuter wrote:

tw*t

mrfpb

A classic example of mangled English is the Creature Comforts tortoise saying "it's easily turn off-and-onable" The ad-makers just interviewed ordinary people and animated what they said - no-one could have scripted that line!

tgotb

Sketchley wrote:

I don't care. I really don't. If they want to come up with some proper consistant rules without any exceptions then I might play. c#, vb.net, pascal, delphi, fortran, cobol and basic all make much more sense to me......

I assume you mean C#, VB.NET, Pascal, Delphi, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC?

Cleat Eastwood

More to the point did any of yous get the number of the car that was speeding - its hit loads of people

sketchley

TGOTB wrote:

Sketchley wrote:

I don't care. I really don't. If they want to come up with some proper consistant rules without any exceptions then I might play. c#, vb.net, pascal, delphi, fortran, cobol and basic all make much more sense to me......

I assume you mean C#, VB.NET, Pascal, Delphi, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC?

No i don't care about that either......

Green Brompton

6 ... WTF!!

Green Brompton

Double entry.

DonDaddyD

Sketchley wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Sketchley wrote:

I don't care. I really don't. If they want to come up with some proper consistant rules without any exceptions then I might play. c#, vb.net, pascal, delphi, fortran, cobol and basic all make much more sense to me......

I assume you mean C#, VB.NET, Pascal, Delphi, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC?

No i don't care about that either......

Ooooo Ooooo OOOooo I know!

Isn't Basic the language spoken by humanoids in the Star Wars galaxy, the written language is called Aurebesh.

8)

rjsterry

Sketchley wrote:

TGOTB wrote:

Sketchley wrote:

I don't care. I really don't. If they want to come up with some proper consistant rules without any exceptions then I might play. c#, vb.net, pascal, delphi, fortran, cobol and basic all make much more sense to me......

I assume you mean C#, VB.NET, Pascal, Delphi, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC?

No i don't care about that either......

Although I would imagine that programming is far less tolerant of grammar or syntax errors than written or spoken language.

I've often thought that English is a particularly good lingua franca because it can be understood even when badly spoken or written (by native or non-native speakers). Less flexible languages require the speaker or writer to be more precise in order to be understood.


EDIT: Some interesting stuff on the history of English Grammars on Wikipedia: principally the to and fro between those that wanted to try and make (pretend?) English follow the structure of Latin, and those that wanted to describe it as they found it. Prescriptive versus Descriptive.

andyb78

rjsterry wrote:

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

9. I was tripped up by the "other sibling" logic puzzle, masquerading as a grammar question.

fark. That means I dunced logic as well.

Cunty ars* balls. <-oooh! Swear filter dodge!

+1 on the other brother question. At best that sentence suggested that there might be another brother, but it was hardly conclusive. And question 6 was more historical trivia than grammar.

+ another one. Hilary's errant comma got me too. (Although must say I was peering into the depths of the past with the gerundive...)

UndercoverElephant

7 out of 10. I had no idea about the names of the rules, nor the sex of the brother, but OK other than that.

As someone who went to the antithesis of Greg's 'right' school, at the wrong time and actually had to cheat to pass GCSE English: I feel well chuffed.

Ian.B

andyb78 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

9. I was tripped up by the "other sibling" logic puzzle, masquerading as a grammar question.

fark. That means I dunced logic as well.

Cunty ars* balls. <-oooh! Swear filter dodge!

+1 on the other brother question. At best that sentence suggested that there might be another brother, but it was hardly conclusive. And question 6 was more historical trivia than grammar.

+ another one. Hilary's errant comma got me too. (Although must say I was peering into the depths of the past with the gerundive...)

I join the ranks of those denied a perfect score by the sibling logic question.

I think it was a gerund, rather than a gerundive, though to be honest I can't remember the difference and don't feel any strong urge to find out.

rjsterry

Slightly OT (but not all that OT, as the publicity for the new 'spag' test for Year 6s is where this sudden interest in grammar has come from), I was reading about another of that walking ar$ecrack Gove's 'initiatives' that is based on two-fifths of f***-all: He wrote a piece for the Mail on Sunday claiming that study after study showed that Britain's teenagers were woefully ignorant of basic historical facts.

Well, someone put in a FOI request to the Department for Education, to ask which studies these were. It turned out that they were in fact market research surveys for UKTV Gold and Premier Inn, and an article in London Mums magazine, among others. "Study after study" indeed.

greg66_tri_v2.0

rjsterry wrote:

He wrote a piece for the Mail on Sunday claiming that study after study showed that Britain's teenagers were woefully ignorant of basic historical facts.

But is anyone claiming that Britain's teenagers have a good knowledge of basic historical facts? I'm inclined to doubt that they do...

roger_merriman

DonDaddyD wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

A lot of this is taught when learning foreign languages.

Grammar changes over time anyway. Not sure quite why it's the education holy grail.

Its the educational holy grail because there is a clear generation of people who, if they didn't go to the right school, weren't taught the correct usage of grammar.

In truth the only thing that ever held my career back was my inability to command or grasp grammar.

Thought you where Dyslexic? If so when you got Stamented surely you'd of got some sort of extra help?

I got Stamented early and had 1 to 1 tusion, various bits of kit. And generally had a lot of time and money spent on!

And what did I get? 1 and a half! In that I was fairly sure about the sibling question but couldn't for the life of me work out why.

rjsterry

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

He wrote a piece for the Mail on Sunday claiming that study after study showed that Britain's teenagers were woefully ignorant of basic historical facts.

But is anyone claiming that Britain's teenagers have a good knowledge of basic historical facts? I'm inclined to doubt that they do...

Did they ever? I'd guess that it has always been a subject for which teenagers have struggled to see the relevance, but i'd also guess that they have a greater knowledge than people expect. I suspect what Gove and his acolytes like about their idea of what history 'is' is that it's nice and easy to devise a simple test, much like the idea that there is a single correct form of English grammar.

greg66_tri_v2.0

rjsterry wrote:

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

He wrote a piece for the Mail on Sunday claiming that study after study showed that Britain's teenagers were woefully ignorant of basic historical facts.

But is anyone claiming that Britain's teenagers have a good knowledge of basic historical facts? I'm inclined to doubt that they do...

Did they ever? I'd guess that it has always been a subject for which teenagers have struggled to see the relevance, but i'd also guess that they have a greater knowledge than people expect. I suspect what Gove and his acolytes like about their idea of what history 'is' is that it's nice and easy to devise a simple test, much like the idea that there is a single correct form of English grammar.

FWIW, I think the theme of that poetry blogger-chappie - that grammar is virtually unteachable because it is too amorphous and riddled with exceptions (not to say simply too difficult for children) - is utterly unpersuasive, and way off the other end of the spectrum.

jedster

But, like the rest, we didn't do grammar at school. I know a noun is a naming word, a verb is a doing word, and an adjective is a describing word. That's it.

Yep, that's about what I got taught at school (last year of O levels). I got 6 and I've read a lot and was pretty good at English (didn't do A level but probably should have done - entertaining cat fight between my maths and english teachers about what I should do :-) ).

I agree with Greg, it is pretty easy to teach yourself and mine was temporarily better when I used to write more with work (for a bunch of over educated folk from all the right schools!). But it didn't come naturally - I had to work at it all the time.

At the risk of making a political point, I think it's fair to point out to those who think that teachers are all well intentioned professionals, with all the right answers, who should just be left to get on with things, without interference, that the profession (in state schools at least) rather failed my generation in this respect...

tgotb

rjsterry wrote:

Did they ever?

Think you have a point here. I certainly had no interest whatsoever in History at school, in fact I hated it with a passion. Not sure whether that was to do with the way it was taught, or just my teenage perspective, but I left school knowing very little history. 25 years later I consider myself far more knowledgeable, and find huge areas of history (including parts I hated at school) fascinating...