Grammer at your school?

[allaboutyou3678]

so I am at Canadian grade 11 student. Currently enrolled in English B 30. In class we were taking up the novel "Lord of the flies" as well as the grammar section of the year. Not one of my strong points as I'm sure this and some of my other posts have pointed out to you. But back on topic, we recently had a test on identifying the parts of speech. ( Nouns, verbs/verbals, adverbs, ect.)

today we got that test back. I got a 62% . Well thats what I thought till our teacher began lecturing us on how bad the classes test scores were. Apparently the class avg. was below 50% in a class of 30 some kids. I asked all the students around me what there marks were. I asked 6 students 5 failed and the other 1 got a 65%.



so onto my question

How poor is grammar in your school?



( I feel so stupid I misspelled grammar right in the title )

[Hideki Motosuwa.]

The kids in our school are all about talking and writing slang. I'm one of the few with good grammar, unfortunately. Alot of people in the English class for Mr. O'Neil simply don't try. My english class is okay, everyone gives it a try atleast.

[MomijiTMO]

Well back in my days (oh boy do I feel old) English was a subject I hated until my final years. Students found it passable and the majority were receiving B's. Now I don't know if that is enough to conclude that the level of English is higher than in other countries BUT English is the only language spoken here. Do you study French? (I have absolutely no idea) My cousins in Malaysia have a basic vocabulary but that is because they speak English, Malay and Mandarin. Some speak Cantonese and Hokkien on top of that. Obviously they aren't going to have the depth to English as I have.

[allaboutyou3678]

No I don't study French. No desire to learn the language. Nor is it compulsory. I do study Japanese casually(my spare time).

[Asriel]

You mean how everyone at my school talks like this? "Ay! Wassup bluh?! Damn, that n***er was f***in' crazy las night!" I cursed for the simple reason to show an example.

Yeah, grammar is the last thought on everyone's mind. Pretty piss poor.

Same way at my school.
I hate it and if you talk right your singled out like,your suppose to talk like a freaking idiot 24/7

[MomijiTMO]

Well that's pretty interesting then. The education syllabus is constantly changing over here. A new curriculum is imposed every 2 years and sometimes it fails the students. Maybe Canada is getting a tad slack and not looking after it's students like it should?

[allaboutyou3678]

Well that's pretty interesting then. The education syllabus is constantly changing over here. A new curriculum is imposed every 2 years and sometimes it fails the students. Maybe Canada is getting a tad slack and not looking after it's students like it should?

Wel therea have been a ton of changes lately alsso due to a assimlation of the school divisions here in Saskatchewan things have been pretty rocky. I live in a small town as well. when I was in elementary school we had to take 3 years of French in grades 4, 5 and 6. Then in our highschool (7-12) You only have to take gr.7 and then after that it becomes and optional course. Due to my unintrest to learn and a poor teacher (stories for another day) during the first 3 years I didn't do so hot in gr. 7 (60's or 70's) So no longer continued tailing it. Just this year though the gr 4-6 French is not even in the elementary school anymore. I'm not to sure how the compulsory gr.7 credit stands, but I think is is no longer manditory.

[Sanosuke23]

I'm not in school right now, but I have an interesting tale to tell.

A friend of mine was at his aunt's, and his cousins were all hanging around and making fun of how he speaks, because he speaks properly and they're ghetto.

So one of them gets the phone and starts talking to me, and when I responds with, and I quote, "What language is you be speakin?"

I said "English, you ignorant street urchin!" and my friend took the phone back before it escalated because she was apparently pissed.

[Aizmov]

I always sucked at grammar, and if it weren't for spell check on Safari, you'd be seeing a whole lot of weird stuff.
Grammar never been my thing, but if I proof read, I can notice some sentences that don't make sense and I've just written down.

[TheAsterisk!]

I don't really know for sure how poor the grammar is in the general student population seeing as I'm in vicinity only to the highly specialized smart-alec nerds most of the time, all of whom could appear right at home on CNBC. These are the nuts who request Soylent Green for lunch.
From overhearing snippets of lunchtime "conversation," though, I can tell that English is becoming a far uglier runt of a language than it already is. I have an English teacher who misuses the word "paradigm" nearly everyday, thinking it means something different each day. When there was a lab activity in Physics I to measure the efficiency of an electric winch, half the class turned in assigments referring to an electric wench. Even after the instructor made a wisecrack about the fabled electric wench being sighted behind a service station at night, those fools had no idea they'd confused two very disparate words.
The biggest abuses are word swaps, in which an elegant word's meaning is sloppily pasted onto a word that's easier to say. The random v. spontaneous hang-up of mine is one example.
The school's English and Literature department even contributes to this with printed materials. There's this hideous little thing made for basic and remedial level courses called the "Raider Writing Checklist (we are, sadly, the "Raiders"). One of its "tips" is "Spell write wright right," with "write" and "wright" crossed out. Don't any of the baboons teaching English realize that "right" is an adjective, not an adverb, and so unsuitable for such a use? Shouldn't it be "Spell correctly!?!?"

[rf switch]

I'm not in school anymore. But the grammar of the students was never really that great at the schools I went too.



I always liked Lord of the Flies.


Too bad about Piggy though.

[Wio]

The school's English and Literature department even contributes to this with printed materials. There's this hideous little thing made for basic and remedial level courses called the "Raider Writing Checklist (we are, sadly, the "Raiders"). One of its "tips" is "Spell write wright right," with "write" and "wright" crossed out. Don't any of the baboons teaching English realize that "right" is an adjective, not an adverb, and so unsuitable for such a use? Shouldn't it be "Spell correctly!?!?"

I lol'd. I guess they wanted to take things one step at a time: that is two steps forward and one step backward.

I remember getting a bunch of nerds in my economics class to argue over whether the sentence "The guy looked good" or "The guy looked well" was grammatically correct.

Does anyone really use whom anymore? Do they cleverly put prepositions at the front of their questions or before which? The English language is evolving to have less tedious grammar rules and more sexual innuendo.
By the time I have children, sitcoms will simply be people saying stupid things, as pretty much 80% of everything said will have sexual innuendo in it.

[Sanosuke23]

By the time I have children, sitcoms will simply be people saying stupid things, as pretty much 80% of everything said will have sexual innuendo in it.

Yeeeaaaahhh, you're a little late.

[Wio]

Yeeeaaaahhh, you're a little late.

I've never seen that show, and I have no clue whether it is completely innuendo or not.

[chappie1989]

Well i am currently in college right now but I get the feeling some of the students here are pretty bad with English Grammer though they make obvious mistakes. But some students are pretty good. The average is around the 70% i think.

[TheAsterisk!]

I lol'd. I guess they wanted to take things one step at a time: that is two steps forward and one step backward.

I remember getting a bunch of nerds in my economics class to argue over whether the sentence "The guy looked good" or "The guy looked well" was grammatically correct.

Does anyone really use whom anymore? Do they cleverly put prepositions at the front of their questions or before which? The English language is evolving to have less tedious grammar rules and more sexual innuendo.
By the time I have children, sitcoms will simply be people saying stupid things, as pretty much 80% of everything said will have sexual innuendo in it.

I can't laugh, there are now students that tell I'm wrong about "right" only being an adjective thnks to the evil flyer.
Well...If he was well groomed and attractive, he would look good. If he examined somthing thouroughly then he looked well. Good, being an adjective, can describe the guy, a noun. Well, being an adverb, is suited to the action of looking.
Whom is simple to use. Who is used for subjects and whom is used for objects (I think). The easiest way to decide whether to use who or whom is that who is used in place of he/she/them and whom is used in plce of him/her/them.
As for prepositions...I was always told to never end clauses with one...that's all.

[Wio]

Well...If he was well groomed and attractive, he would look good. If he examined somthing thouroughly then he looked well. Good, being an adjective, can describe the guy, a noun. Well, being an adverb, is suited to the action of looking.

Basically, looking is referring to the use of a fundamental sense, just like sounding, feeling, smelling, and tasting. You can legitimately use and adjective like good because it obviously refers to the subject (just as any adverb would refer to said adjective rather than the verb).

Well is also an adjective, so if someone "looked well" it would imply that they didn't look ill. You would be required to use "to watch" or "to see" if you wished to be understood.

Whom is simple to use. Who is used for subjects and whom is used for objects (I think). The easiest way to decide whether to use who or whom is that who is used in place of he/she/them and whom is used in plce of him/her/them.
As for prepositions...I was always told to never end clauses with one...that's all.

The point is that no one uses that anymore.
What's more colloquial? "Who are you looking at?" or "At whom are you looking?" (I managed to hit two bird with one stone here)

[Thingle]

Some of my classmates have difficulties speaking the English language.

[None of the above]

Well that's pretty interesting then. The education syllabus is constantly changing over here. A new curriculum is imposed every 2 years and sometimes it fails the students. Maybe Canada is getting a tad slack and not looking after it's students like it should?

Ha ha, no one can beat this educational system - Curriculum changes pretty much every month. It's called 'the ultimate flexible idiotic study style'.

As English isn't that importantly regarded as the other 2 native languages... I don't find grammar problems relevant.

They've abandoned pretty much grammar since 8th grade, although we still need it.

Everyone with his own style of speaking.

Interferences, 'false friends' are frequent.

What I actually find sad, and really annoying are those basic grammar mistakes. They can ruin your day.

[demonplight]

Grammar was never a real problem of mine, verb, nouns, pro-nouns, and vocabulary I always did good in it, with the exception of spelling. Something to this day that I am still working on.

[TheAsterisk!]

Basically, looking is referring to the use of a fundamental sense, just like sounding, feeling, smelling, and tasting. You can legitimately use and adjective like good because it obviously refers to the subject (just as any adverb would refer to said adjective rather than the verb).

Well is also an adjective, so if someone "looked well" it would imply that they didn't look ill. You would be required to use "to watch" or "to see" if you wished to be understood.


The point is that no one uses that anymore.
What's more colloquial? "Who are you looking at?" or "At whom are you looking?" (I managed to hit two bird with one stone here)

Ah, thank you. It seems I'd momentarily forgotten that use of well. You are correct. Still, I'd need to know what context the geeks in economics class had planned to use. As for watch & see v. look, that's based more on connotation than denotation, though you are correct again.

As for whether or not using whom and prepositions properly is colloquial, I ask you: Do I speak normally or colloquially? I've an inclination to say, "No."

On a side not, why doesn't PETA try to eradicate thee prhase, "Hit two birds with one stone?"

[allaboutyou3678]

Sorry to go off topic , but peta is all a sham. It really stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. they just want all the tasty animals to themselves.

No back on topic. It is truly disgusting how low among grammar abilities vocabulary abilities are just as bad. There area some extremly everyday words that many people I know have no idea what they mean.

[Gizoku]

I have better grammer than most people I know...and hearing the grammer at school makes my ears bleed D:

[Ryth]

Grammar surely isn't my strongpoint, but I am certainly capable of speaking the language. My peers, however, do not have the ability to speak coherent English. I can't understand half the things they attempt to communicate to me, but I seem to be the only one around here with this problem.

[dream magician]

hmm.I think our grammar in schhol ain't that bad. weve been studying it since kindergarten.Unfortunately, as well, saying it is a must in our school.