How SPaG wastes space and wastes the mind.

Q. 38

Write a sentence using the word 'point' as a verb. Do not change the word.

Remember to punctuate your sentence correctly.


Write a sentence using the word 'point' as a noun. Do not change the word.
Remember to punctuate your sentence correctly.



Directions to those people marking this question according to the 'Mark Scheme':

Award 1 mark for a grammatically correct sentence that uses point as a verb and that is correctly punctuated, e.g.

I saw the teacher point at the board.

Do not accept responses that use an inflected ending of point, e.g. Ushma pointed at the book she wanted.

Award 1 mark for a grammatically correct sentence that uses point as a noun and that is correctly punctuated, e.g.

I sharpened my pencil to a fine point.

Do not accept responses that use an inflected ending of point, e.g. The red team scored more points than the blue team. 

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In real life, we use some or many or all of the forms of the word 'point' : e.g. points, pointing, pointed.

As the mark scheme says, if, say,  you put 'a' or 'the' in front of it, you could - depending on the use - say, 'point' or 'points'. If you use it with a 'subject' in front of it, you might say, 'She pointed at the chair', or 'They were pointing at the ceiling'. 

But these would be WRONG because the instruction in the question says that you MUST NOT. 

Now, remember that this paper is supposedly about 'grammar'. The grammar point being shown by this question is that the word 'point' is available to be used as a noun or a verb. 

So, if this was really a question about finding out what children know (as opposed to being part of a test to measure teachers' ability to teach this stuff) then those 'inflected endings' would be acceptable if the 'grammar' was right. 

Really, then, what's being tested is a) the ability to use 'point' as a noun and as a verb BUT ONLY IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE QUESTION. In other words, this is as much a test of whether the child reads and understands that pointless (excuse pun) question, as it is of 'getting' that bit of grammar. 

Of course, you could also use 'point' as a command - and therefore a 'verb': as in 'Point!' or 'Point.' I would seriously doubt that the examiners would allow that. 

Why not? Because we are in the crazy SPaG-world of language taken out of context where the word 'word' (!) is easy to talk about as if it is something real and 'point' and 'points' are supposedly different words. When linguists want to talk about words in real use (and not in imaginary SPaG-land), linguists prefer to talk about 'lexemes' to talk about a word like 'point' being used in real sentences as, say,  'points', 'pointing', 'pointed'. 

But in SPaG-land, for no useful reason, 'points', 'pointing' and 'pointed' are WRONG. 

FURTHER:

According to SPaG-land, (and this year's test) the Oxford or 'serial' comma is WRONG. It isn't wrong. It's an alternative use. If you see "I can't find the bats, balls, caps, and stumps' THAT IS OK. SPaG is wrong to say that it's wrong. It's just one way to write it.

FURTHER:

1. According to SPaG-land, the word 'fierce' has a 'true opposite'. Quite simply this is nonsense. No single word, isolated on its own has a single 'true opposite'.  We can never totally predict how a word might be used. In fact, in another part of the school, teachers will be working hard to help children see that in literature, writers use words in ambiguous and fresh ways that deliberately make writing interesting and surprising. In SPaG-land, they isolate a word like 'fierce', pretend that it has one meaning, pretend therefore only words meaning 'e.g. gentle or calm' (see mark scheme) are 'true opposites'. 

How about 'We were taught by Mr Jones. If we talked in lessons, he  got really fierce'? 

Whatever the 'true opposite' of 'fierce' is in this context, it certainly isn't 'gentle' or 'calm'. The sense here is of someone being loud and punishing so if we really want to waste time on opposites, the opposite would be 'quiet' or even 'kind' or 'nice' - words that children use to describe teachers who are not 'fierce'! 

Apart from anything else, all this really has nothing whatsoever to do with grammar, punctuation or spelling. The only reason why children are doing this particular bit of rubbish is because that's what the Victorians did. 

If it's supposed to be a window on semantics (meaning), then it's a useless, irrelevant and misleading way to do it. 

The more we rip language out of context, the more difficult we make it to study how it is really used and how language itself changes. 

2. Remember the only reason why there was a question on the 'subjunctive' is because Michael Gove said there had to be one. No other reason.  

Next week, Jeremy Hunt will tell surgeons what clamps to use when operating on bowel cancer.