[lg policy] Scotland: Grounding in English grammar essential to learning of languages

[Harold Schiffman]

Grounding in English grammar essential to learning of languages
  Tuesday 3 March 2015

I WELCOME the representations being made by the German, Austrian, and Swiss
Consulates ("SNP languages policy 'risks killing off German teaching'", The
Herald, March 2) and, a little earlier by the Russian Ambassador, regarding
the decline in uptake of German and Russian in Scottish schools.

In this connection I wish also to mention your article late last year on
the neglect of French as well as German. The common factor is the decline
in the teaching of English grammar over more than four decades. Without
that grounding school students are less likely to have developed a basic
ability to learn languages.

The teaching of English grammar was actively discouraged in Scottish state
primary schools as early as the 1970s by visiting inspectors, a policy
whose effects therefore extend to adults as old as 50, including members of
the teaching profession. While the SNP cannot therefore be held solely
responsible for this state of affairs, I must reluctantly quote one very
able member, who served both as a local councillor and as an MSP. Roughly
10 years ago I had devised a scheme for in-service training of primary
teachers as a means of enabling them to prepare children for language
learning and asked for his help in promoting it. He refused, saying that
there was nothing that could be done, as careers had been built on the
present system. When, later, I wrote to Michael Russell's ministry I
received a cheery reply from a civil servant that they had lots of ideas
and didn't need any more.

Unless this fundamental deficiency is addressed, I see no prospect of
improvement. In the case of German, the problem is acute. A grounding in
the analysis of more complex English sentences is of huge help, in my view
of fundamental importance, for an understanding of spoken, as well as
written, German.

J Gordon Howie,

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/grounding-in-english-grammar-essential-to-learning-of-languages.119728769




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