Many teachers 'lack a grounding in grammar'

Bluegene

Many young teachers lack a proper grounding in English grammar, a leading independent school head has said.

Girls' School Association president Alice Phillips said many teachers were "at sea with aspects of proper usage".

She also warned, in a Times Educational Supplement article, that teachers needed to be rigorously educated to deliver the new national curriculum.

And she predicted the demands of the new maths curriculum would lead to a shortage of teachers in the subject.

Ms Phillips, head of St Catherine's in Surrey, said: "Many of our brightest, most enthusiastic teachers have little or no grounding in English language or grammar - through no fault of their own - and are completely at sea with many aspects of proper usage."

'Huge dividends'
She added: "Wide reading and a familiarity with formal expression and grammar work to a certain extent, but won't help you in front of a class of 14-year-olds when you are tasked with delving into the mysteries of subordinate clauses."

She said that in her own school, she had introduced a grammar course for first-year pupils after seeing a need for this in language classes.

"It has paid huge dividends," she said.

"In the process of introducing the course, we quickly established that some of our younger teachers have not been taught English grammar in the 90s and [2000s], when they were at school themselves, and, consequently, they feel less confident as they teach, as relatively new learners themselves."

Grammar is a greater issue than previously as from last year separate marks were awarded for spelling and grammar in GCSEs.

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Ms Phillips highlighted the difficulty in recruiting good teachers, those with decent English literature degrees and maths specialists.

On maths, she said: "While we undoubtedly have teachers who know the maths, there are not enough of them around to teach the extras.

"If you simply 'do the math' of the requirements for additional teaching time for this extended curriculum, then it is clear that there will be a shortage nationwide of appropriately qualified maths teachers."

This could lead to schools using student teachers who have not studied maths to degree level.

Ms Phillips called for a reduction of university debt for graduates who qualify to teach and complete a minimum of three years of teaching.

Those who stayed in the profession should have all their fees waived after 10 years of working as a teacher, she suggested.

Currently, financial incentives of between £4,000 and £20,000 are offered to those on one-year postgraduate teaching courses.

Bursaries of £20,000 are available for students with first-class degrees who go on to teach physics, maths and chemistry in secondary school.

In medium-priority subjects, such as modern languages, students with a first-class degree receive £13,000. For primary or other secondary subjects, they receive £9,000.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-29044322

Bluegene

西人不騮唔重視文法，不過老師冇理由唔識喎，

talknwrite

西人英文教師唔識文法有乜出奇, 學校一直都無教. 自己一路無學. 唐人中文老師對中文文法有幾多認識, 我都好懷疑.

joyjoyparent

回覆 talknwrite 的帖子

我識朋友在美國讀英文碩士時, 有不少美國同學找他問grammar!

sonkhl

回覆 talknwrite 的帖子

國內中文老師好強的,有些到了香港也是好高一批.

shadeslayer

I think it is a misunderstanding.

Western people naturally know grammar.  Grammar is fundamental to using a language.  Whether somebody has learnt grammar explicitly at school does not change the fact that these people can use the language properly and therefore their grammar must be at a certain level.

The article was "not" talking about grammar as a whole, it's specifically the ability to explain grammar subtleties to children who are learning the language in classrooms.  Not knowing a grammar rule is not the same as not knowing the grammar.

What we Asian are very good at, is actually grammar "rules".  We are just educated that way, from grammar rules.  That does not mean our English is generally better than westerners.