| August 15, 2005 Many lack spelling and grammar skills because their teachers do, too Most NSW teenagers are reaching high school with poor grammar and spelling because their teachers never learnt the basics, education experts say. Nearly 90 per cent of year 7 students could not get punctuation "mostly correct" in the NSW Government's English Language and Literacy Assessment last year. Almost a third failed to use all basic sentence punctuation, including the capital letter, comma and full stop. One in five had not mastered subject/verb agreement. In spelling, only one in 20 year 5 students could spell "less common" words including "absolutely", "building" and "concentrate" in the 2003 Primary Writing Assessment. The director of Educational Assessment Australia at the University of NSW, Peter Knapp, said the situation was compounded by the lack of explicit grammar and spelling instruction in high schools. "From 1974 grammar was removed from the syllabus for 20 years, so teachers who went through school then have little or no formal understanding of it and find it hard to teach," he said. They also had an "irrational aversion" to memorisation and drills. "If you don't get grammar properly in primary school, you're in trouble, because there's no explicit teaching required by the high school English syllabus." A Department of Education spokesman said teachers had access to a writing handbook called Aspects of Grammar and other professional support. In 2001, education academics wrote to the NSW Board of Studies to criticise deficiencies in the proposed secondary syllabus, introduced last year. The board's English inspector, Don Carter, told the Herald grammar was an "essential component" of the secondary syllabus. "[But] rather than having a big, long checklist of things, teachers look at a student's strengths and weaknesses and address them that way. We've moved away from the one-size-fits-all approach," he said. Megan Watkins, an education lecturer at the University of Western Sydney who wrote Genre, Text, Grammar with Knapp, said there needed to be a "balanced approach with considerable teacher direction, as opposed to the reliance on group work and student-directed learning". Educational Assessment Australia tests about 200,000 NSW students in English, writing and spelling, among other subjects. Its findings reinforce the government tests - "large numbers of year 7 students do not understand basic components of sentences, such as articles, plurals and prepositions," Knapp said. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/many-lack-spelling-and-grammar-skills-because-t heir-teachers-dotoo/2005/08/14/1123957949803.html?onfiltered=true |