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Win's comments struck a nerve
"I didn't learn any formal grammar until I studied German in high school.
I was introduced to the parts of speech and sentence diagramming then.
While I don't remember much German, the English grammar I learned stuck
with me."
I too learnt most of my grammar from French in high school, my primary
school grammar only taught me the absolute basics, eg a noun, verb etc.
The theory was that if we read widely we would pick it up automatically,
I don't believe this is true. I read voraciously (at least 10 books a
week of different types) but I don't think it improved my grammar, only
my vocabulary. However I was lucky and had a great English teacher who
helped me out of class in her own time, towards the end of high school to
improve my grammar a little.
Unfortunately my grammar is still shaky in places and I have been looking
for a suitable course to top it up. I feel frustrated that a good
schooling didn't give me an adequate preparation for normal business
writing. I don't mean tech writing but rather just normal report writing
etc.
It sounds like the American and Australian educators have been using the
same theories, what about other countries?
Colleen Dancer
dancer -dot- colleen -at- a2 -dot- abc -dot- net -dot- au
The opinions expressed are mine and not the ABC's.
