languages

From: Jim Strickland <jim_at_calico.litterbox.com>
Date: Thu Mar 9 12:01:22 2000

*snip*

> I think the reason our kids don't learn languages well is because the tools
> that should have been taught with English, e.g. organization and structure
> in sentences, to underscore basic grammar, and organization in writing,
> which certainly appears to be a dying art, are lacking, so there's no point
> of reference. Try asking a recent high school graduate what a gerund or an
> infinitive is. Then ask what the different between a present participle and
> a gerund is. Don't even bother to discuss sentence diagrams, since the
> teacher themselves don't know how to apply such tools. Foreign languages
> all have their own sentence structure and grammar. If a teacher can't make
> reference to a model their pupils must know, there's nowhere for them to go
> in order to teach those same characteristics in another language.
>
> It's a sad situation.
>
> Dick

I agree with the fundamental premise of this post, but I have to disagree with
the example of grammar. See, classical grammer, what most of us DID learn in
high school, was actually lifted from latin grammar. It never fit English very
well. In the last 20 years or so there have arisen new systems of grammar
which understand a word order language like English far better than latin
grammar, which was designed for a word-ending language where word order is
irrelivant, ever could. Of course, THESE grammars are not well taught either,
but the fact that a modern high school student doesn't know gerunds and present
participles may well be because that whole system of grammar is no longer
taught. It never was that useful to begin with.


Jim Strickland
jim_at_DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
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Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 12:01:22 GMT