This blog discusses grammar and punctuation in general, but particularly shares ideas for sentence level work in primary literacy. I started it when I was a literacy adviser; however, I am now retired and have moved abroad. I will no longer be adding to the blog or publishing comments but will leave the content on for those who are interested
One of my readers recently sent me a link to a report undertaken
by Website Planet, which highlights the importance of using correct grammar
when writing and also checking for typos before publishing.
The research found that grammatical errors and typos cost
money to businesses and individual bloggers relying on income from online
advertising.Visitors arriving on your
web pages are more likely to bounce out due to bad spelling and grammar, which
means your ad quality score is affected and Google lowers your organic page
ranking. Anything which adversely affects the number of visitors to
your site and the impression they have of your product has to be worth consideration.
Children don‘t always realise why we are teaching them to
write correctly and check their work for mistakes, so any real-life reason
might help. I’m posting the link to the report here for those of you who are
interested. https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/grammar-report/
Do these sorts of quizzes really help teachers or students or do they add to confusion about the way the English language is structured?
While I have no problem with many of the questions, why have they included the two below?
Question 5 Which of the following sentences uses a subordinate clause at the beginning?
1. Male penguins keep warm by huddling together 2. In order to stay alive, male penguins keep warm by huddling together 3. Huddling together helps male penguis to stay alive and keep warm
I do hope this is not what we will find in the Year 6 grammar and punctuation test!
I also have concern about question 12. Identify the main clause in the following sentence: The rescuers, who were drafted in by the officials, were stunned by the destruction. 1. The rescuers 2. The rescuers were stunned 3. Who were drafted in by the officials
Why do they not include the instrumentative 'by the destruction' as part of the main clause? Surely the whole sentence, with the relative (subordinate) clause removed, would read 'The rescuers were stunned by the destruction.' This is a passive equivalent of the sentence 'The destruction stunned the rescuers.'
Testing children's knowledge of grammar is not going to make them better writers and, in my
opinion, we shouldn't be wasting valuable teaching time on grammar
tests. Far better to explore, discuss and experiment with the wonderful variety of structures that English provides and consider how we can use these to create and vary effects for our readers. Our language is very complex and to try and simplify it for tests is a complex business in itself. Those who are driven to provide test materials and worksheets for teachers and children have a real responsibility to make sure that the aspect they are testing is unambiguous and the question only tests the structure they intended to test.
Well, if you're here, you must have entered the 'G' word! This is my first blog and, as I've been focusing on grammar and punctuation quite a lot recently, I thought I'd see what gripes and niggles are out there. Come on, get it off your chest and let's share ideas!
