FTA
(Focus is on Australia, but definitely has general applicability)
The teaching of language skills, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling have always been a part of the curriculum in primary schools in Australia. But, as recently observed by Dr. Yaegan Doran and Dr. Sally Humphrey, “Once the curriculum moves to high school … much of the connection between language and meaningful writing disappears.”
The sad reality is that many Australians cannot properly spell, write, or read. This malaise is probably a consequence of the remarkably prominent position of Systemic Functional Grammar in the field of English-language education in Australia.
Systemic Functional Grammar, which is based on the work of Professor Michael Halliday of the University of Sydney, does not require mastery of the traditional rules of grammar.
Instead, it is assumed that the study of these rules inhibits students’ spontaneity. Students are encouraged to make linguistic choices from a range of options, which may be used when communicating in writing with other people.
As students fail to study traditional English grammar, they may not be able to distinguish between an adverb and an adjective or the present and the past tenses; they certainly would be challenged by a request to explain the uses of the conditional and the subjunctive moods of a verb.
There is no doubt that many Australian students—and teachers and the general population as well—are struggling with literacy. According to an OECD Survey of Adult Skills (pdf) conducted in Australia in 2012, 12.6 percent of Australian adults only attain Level 1 or below in literacy proficiency.
According to this Survey, at Level 1, a respondent would only be expected to read a short digital or print text to locate a piece of information. In an updated document, Skills Matter (pdf), published in 2016, the OECD found that 48.3 percent of adults operated at Level 1 (14.4 percent) or Level 2, which assumes a limited ability to paraphrase or to make low-level inferences (33.9 percent).
Low levels of literacy also persist in the university sector where very few students are exposed to the great books of Western civilisation but instead are required to read inferior works that meet the expectations of our progressive elites.
FTA (Focus is on Australia, but definitely has general applicability)
The teaching of language skills, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling have always been a part of the curriculum in primary schools in Australia. But, as recently observed by Dr. Yaegan Doran and Dr. Sally Humphrey, “Once the curriculum moves to high school … much of the connection between language and meaningful writing disappears.”
The sad reality is that many Australians cannot properly spell, write, or read. This malaise is probably a consequence of the remarkably prominent position of Systemic Functional Grammar in the field of English-language education in Australia.
Systemic Functional Grammar, which is based on the work of Professor Michael Halliday of the University of Sydney, does not require mastery of the traditional rules of grammar.
Instead, it is assumed that the study of these rules inhibits students’ spontaneity. Students are encouraged to make linguistic choices from a range of options, which may be used when communicating in writing with other people.
As students fail to study traditional English grammar, they may not be able to distinguish between an adverb and an adjective or the present and the past tenses; they certainly would be challenged by a request to explain the uses of the conditional and the subjunctive moods of a verb.
There is no doubt that many Australian students—and teachers and the general population as well—are struggling with literacy. According to an OECD Survey of Adult Skills (pdf) conducted in Australia in 2012, 12.6 percent of Australian adults only attain Level 1 or below in literacy proficiency.
According to this Survey, at Level 1, a respondent would only be expected to read a short digital or print text to locate a piece of information. In an updated document, Skills Matter (pdf), published in 2016, the OECD found that 48.3 percent of adults operated at Level 1 (14.4 percent) or Level 2, which assumes a limited ability to paraphrase or to make low-level inferences (33.9 percent).
Low levels of literacy also persist in the university sector where very few students are exposed to the great books of Western civilisation but instead are required to read inferior works that meet the expectations of our progressive elites.