Bernard Newsome and this question: What else is writing other than 'grammar'?

 I've just heard that Bernard Newsome, a former colleague of my father at the London Institute of Education, died in April.

He was a friend of the family and I met up with him when I was in Australia in 1997. 

I thought I would remind myself of some things that Bernard wrote and, as these things sometimes do, it instantly overlapped with my recent concerns with the SPaG/GPS papers for 10 and 11 year olds.

One of Bernard's concerns and areas of interest was 'narrative'. If we ask the questions, 'What is narrative?' and 'How can it be taught?', we get into some interesting areas: the main one being 'narratology' - how we make stories, whether that's in writing, script-writing, film, TV, non-fiction, ballet, opera, conversation and chat and much more. It's a huge and fascinating subject which, in spite of a century of research, has hardly percolated through to primary schools. 

I've written in my booklet 'Why Write? Why Read? (available through my website) how you can analyse the opening of 'A Christmas Carol' using narratology in an age-appropriate way for upper primary and lower secondary students. Flip that on its head and you can see how you can use it in order to help students write.

What's this got to do with Bernard Newsome? Well, in looking at what he wrote, I came across this: 

Talking, writing and learning 8-13: The report of the Schools Council English in the middle years of schooling project, Goldsmiths' College, University of London (Schools Council working paper ; 59)

by Bernard Newsome and M. Mallett.

I don't have it, but I suspect it's in my father's library, so I've ordered it from eBay.

Now pause a moment. You'll see that this document came out of the 'Schools Council English'. This means that it was a piece of paid government research, entrusted to former English teachers, who (in Bernard's case) were in teacher training, in and out of schools working with teachers in schools and also through NATE and LATE. 

That's how research into writing, reading and talk was done in the olden days! Then the results of the research were disseminated, discussed, adapted and applied. Since Kenneth Baker, later as weaponised by Michael Gove, this approach was junked, and the top-down, diktat approach was adopted. That's how and why we ended up with SPaG/GPS as the overriding theory and practice for Year 6 writing in schools in England. 

So back with my question in my title. Writing is a lot more than grammar - not that you would know this from the so-called analysis of the gov.uk pages on 'exemplification' of expected levels of Dani's writing (see my previous blog for the reference) . The model there is that a teacher's job is to only look at approved structures. In other words, we have the farce that writing consists of producing these approved structures or grammatical features (though some of them are in fact 'stylistics'). 

The major absurdity about this is that there is no evidence that the person or people doing this analysis know anything at all about how to write. What a bizarre situation! People who don't do something teach students how to do it! 

However, there is a theoretical problem too: what is writing? Is it slinging down approved structures one after another? Or something else? Clearly, anyone reading what I'm writing here will be an experienced reader and you will all have had pleasure from reading. You will have absorbed knowledge from reading. You may well have had a go at writing poetry, stories, plays, scripts as well as non-fiction reports, accounts and the like. You will have read articles in the newsapers and online for fun or even for masochistic reasons, when it comes to the daily news! This means that you will have a strong sense that writing is more than grammar and approved structures.

What might we talk of in this field then? What else might be in writing that we think of as important?

Emotion, understanding, ideas, speculations, imagination, investigation, evidence, use of the senses in order to evoke and convey.

Structurally, there'll be important matters to do with 'time' which can be expressed in many different ways: present, past, flash back, flash forward, continuous, non-continuous, in sequence, out of sequence.

There'll be matters of people's motives which are spread out in what script-writers call the 'story-arc'. 

There'll be matters of how scenes build and end. 

There'll be a antagonists and protagonists either for the whole piece and/or for particular scenes. 

There'll be 'helpers' and people who are 'obstacles'  or things/objects too of course like mountains, bogs, barbed wire or bombs. 

There'll be the matter of how we reveal and conceal at the same time, as we write, a method that keeps readers wanting to know more. This will keep readers predicting and guessing. As writers,  we may want to play with this by feeding in false hopes, false plotlines, red herrings and 'McGuffins'. 

There'll be a shape overall in which we build to some kind of point or climax, though in a longer piece there may well be a false-climax, where probably we'll be disappointed that things don't work out. 

We'll want to think about how we 'thicken' or 'deepen' characters. We can do that through flashbacks eg through ensuring that motives are clear. 

Hiding behind all this are the 'intertextual' models that we adopt without knowing we're adopting them: the archetypes and stereotypes like 'rags to riches',  hubristic hero, the lost soul, the haunted, the patriarch, the matriarch, the 'golden' spoiled child, sibling rivalry, the unrequited love (and 100s more). 

There are the genres that we adopt deliberately ('I'm writing a thriller') and the genres that we may only be vaguely aware of: the adventure, the school story, the coming of age story, the buddy movie, the road movie, the rom-com. These have 'grammars' of their own which we can use, adapt, reject  or subvert.  We can even mix them up just as JKRowling did with the Harry Potter books - a school story mixed with fantasy. 

There is the matter of evidence (and illustrative prose) whether that be in non-fiction or fiction. How much, how little, why and how?

 

So, the mystery is how and why did we end up with a dry, barren set of structures as the model of how to construct narrative when we have this huge resource at our disposal, all waiting to be given to children to help them write exciting, interesting,  or accurate or well-constructed writing? 

For an answer to that question we have to look at how it was that the ideas that people like Bernard Newsome, James Britton, Nancy Martin, Harold Rosen, Connie Rosen, Jane Miller and many more people who should be on this list, were thrown out and ruled out. That's the story of how people in the education department of Conservative and Labour governments wanted to take control of 'what is English?' 

The answer to why did they want do that was made clear over and over again by Michael Gove: he understood very clearly that teaching English is political. In his case, he stated how he wanted to tie English to a national project based on a set of ideas taken from the US to do with 'knowledge' preceding competence. To get these into schools, he and his predecessors had to get rid of the old checks and balances structures in education. They worked on top-down, diktat approaches, sidelining teachers' and teacher-trainers' experience and research. 

So when a child sits down to write a story, it's not about what they want to say. A teacher is not there to show them how the writers of the stories that the children love, write. The teacher is not helped to see how  'narrative' and 'narratology' can help children write - that's that fancy French and American stuff, we don't want that, do we?! And that all  comes from what was in a sense a coup, the story of how the politicians took over the English curriculum. 

When I get Bernard Newsome's and M. Mallett's book, I'll tell you what it says.  I've already read one of Bernard's short papers on narrative and it's a lovely exposition of how you can help a child expand a narrative on the basis of how narratives are about sequences. 

If you google "Bernard Newsome" and "Narrative", you'll be taken to an entry for a PDF at the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English and a great article by Bernard called: 'The Nature and Importance of Narrative'.

I highly recommend it.

This year's KS2 Grammar, punctuation and spelling test - analysed.

OK, it's time for my annual analysis of the Grammar test that is given to Key Stage 2 children (that's 10 and 11 year olds) in England. It's compulsory for children in 'maintained' schools (ie state schools financed from the government). Put another way, this means that private schools do not have to do the test. 

Please let's bear in mind right from the start that this test was NOT introduced because a group of grammarians and educationists said that it would be a good idea if 10 and 11 year olds knew this stuff. It was only introduced for one reason, as stated clearly in the Bew Report (2011). That is, that it would be a good way to assess teachers. Why? Because (again the Bew Report) 'grammar' has right and wrong answers. There is not a grammarian in the world who would or could seriously claim that. Language is not regular. The descriptions of language are not regular. As one simple example, as Professor David Crystal pointed out with the first of these Grammar tests, there was a question about the sun shining 'brightly'. The word the children had to insert was 'brightly'. If children wrote 'bright' that was wrong. It wasn't wrong, it's a 'variant usage'. Let's never forget that 'variant usages' are the nightmare of every examiner of these tests. In life, it's what makes us interesting. 

So, we test children in order to test teachers. This is a Michael Gove idea. I wonder even if this is legal! It's like punishing someone for something that someone else has done! (Meant, partly tongue in cheek.) 

In what I write about this, there may well be typos, and what are commonly called mistakes. There's no need to point these out to me as I'm someone who thinks that we all make mistakes. If I point out 'mistakes' in the test, that's because the people who set these tests are, de facto, exponents of the 'must-be-correct' school of thinking. I'm not one such person. 

'MR' indicates a comment by me. 

The front page of the test says this:

national curriculum tests

Key stage 2

English, grammar, 

punctuation and spelling

Paper 1: questions 

MR: You really couldn't think of a bigger irony than a test that is in part concerned with 'orthography' but on its front page has no capital letter for the first headline (ie for 'National'). This tells us that so-called 'rules' of orthography don't apply to headlines, signs, ads, social media, announcements and the like, if you don't want them to. 

1. Which sentence must end with a question mark? 

Tick one.

Do you know long it took for the trees to grow

We have planted rose bushes around the trees

How beautiful the flowers will be

I will ask my teacher if I can show you

MR: General comment: teachers will have taught the nonsense that there are 4 types of sentence: statement, question, exclamation, command. Once you've narrowed language down to this sort of thing, then of course you can demand that there is a 'must' about how it should be punctuated. Meanwhile, KS2 children are surrounded with written language that doesn't behave according to the claim that there are four types of sentence. You only have to spend time looking at ads, information signs, poems, song lyrics, film scripts, plays, slogans and social media, to see that writing is much more diverse than this crude description of what sentences are. 

Even so, the 'command' type is faulty in that this is a 'semantic' description not a grammatical one. We 'command' each other to do things in many different ways eg using words like 'must', 'I am telling you to do' and so on. What they mean is that a command is a sentence that uses the 'imperative' form of the verb (as with 'Go out' or 'Don't do that'.) 

Then again, the idea that an exclamation has to be a 'how' or a 'what' construction is a very strange and largely irrelevant selection from all the ways we have of exclaiming in English. It was fun listening to Nick Gibb, the then Schools Minister, struggling with this on the radio when this nonsense was first introduced. It is also a strange idea that there is any kind of 'must' (obligation) connected to a sentence like 'How beautiful the flowers will be' - that is, that it 'should have' an exclamation mark after it (not being asked for in this question but it's what teachers have to teach in the context of teaching for this question.)

2 Which sentence is punctuated correctly? 

Tick one.

After he ate the lion lay down, and slept for many hours.

After he ate the lion, lay down, and slept for many hours.

After he ate, the lion lay down and slept for many hours.

After he ate the lion lay down and slept, for many hours.

MR: If we interrogate why this question is being asked, we have to ask what this word 'correctly' actually means. Let's remember that punctuation was largely invented by artisans, not linguists or grammarians. It was printers who invented it. It's funny hearing people talk about punctuation as if it was produced out of some kind of higher learning and produced with the intention of being some kind of perfect system. In fact it was produced out of custom and usage: what worked for the kind of print produced by printing presses. If you look at, say, Elizabethan printing of eg Shakespeare's Sonnets or compare pieces of Elizabethan prose,  you can see punctuation at various stages of evolution. 

Even so, if you take my trip to look at notices, ads, social media and the like, you'll quickly see that there are people with the power of being allowed to write notices in stations or writing ads, making up their own rules of punctuation. How come? Why don't they obey the rule of 'correct' being demanded here? Here's an ad that I saw the other day:

"Priority boarding,

extra leg room, and

no delays. They hoped 

the flight would be first

class too."

THAT'S

EVERYDAY LUXURY

THAT'S ADDISON LEE

MR: Whoever wrote this made up their own punctuation rules. You may well note that the first 'sentence' has no 'finite verb' and uses a comma before 'and' that some people object to. Some people (not me) might query why the first five lines have quotation marks round them. The three lines in capital letters at the end has no full stops or commas. Let's remember that children see this sort of thing every day. Meanwhile, teachers are told to teach that this test's way of writing is 'correct' and 'must' be adhered to. 

3 Insert a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

It was raining heavily she had lost her umbrella the week before.

MR: Because they're telling us that it must be a semi-colon, then there is usually only one place it can go. The problem in my mind is that of course, it doesn't have to be a semi-colon. I only use semi-colons as a separator in lists where the items on the list are long. I would use a full-stop here. Yes, yes, I know that that isn't what's being asked here. My point is that the teaching behind this question is that using a semi-colon in this sentence is the 'right' or 'correct' or even, the 'only correct' way. Once again, I turn to the great bugbear of prescriptive grammar - 'variant usage'. 

4. Which sentence uses a comma correctly?

Tick one.

Sadly, the match had to be cancelled.

However, talented she will still need to work hard.

Therefore the answer, is obvious.

Before next weekend all our packing, must be finished.

MR: This question works solely on the basis that a comma is needed in any of these questions! If you didn't use a comma in any of these questions, it really wouldn't matter. The children are in effect being asked here to be copy-editors correcting mistakes that someone else has made. What are commas for? Mostly, they are for segmenting sentences in ways that help us read for meaning. However, they become fetishes for some people in other constructions. Hiding here is the dreaded fronted adverbial. 'Sadly' is one of these. The children are taught that after a fronted adverbial there 'must' be a comma. This is a nonsense. There is no must about it. In the first sentence (the 'correct' one), the meaning would be clear without a comma. There would be no ambiguity, no difficulty in understanding on account of a lack of a comma. This question is fetishism disguised as punctuation rules. 

5 Which sentence is a command?

Tick one.

The nurse will bandage your sprained ankle.

You have been told to stay at home and rest.

Putting an ice pack on it should help.

Hold the handrail to keep yourself steady.

MR: I talked about this in my comments on Question 1. Here it is again: 

Classifying one of the sentence types as a 'command' is faulty in that this is a 'semantic' description not a grammatical one. We 'command' each other to do things in many different ways eg using words like 'must', 'telling you to do' and so on. What they mean is that a command is a sentence that uses the 'imperative' form of the verb (as with 'Go out' or 'Don't do that'.) That's a grammatical description. 

It seems as if no one can be bothered to think through the fact that this piece of grammar terminology is imperfect. The joke is that there are people who maintain that learning grammar BEFORE you learn a foreign language is helpful. This is an example of where it's worse than helpful. It's misleading, because they've disguised a verb form with an imprecise term like 'command'. What we do when we learn a foreign language is learn the 'imperative forms of the verb'. The question of 'how we command' is a fascinating matter involving tone, register, dialect and many different grammatical structures. 

By the way, I learnt 'grammar' in the 1950s at secondary school and largely through comparing English, French, German and Latin. It wasn't a matter of learning it BEFORE. And anyway, some of the terms were different from one language to the next, and some terms were relevant in one language and not in another.  

6 Which sentence uses an apostrophe correctly?

Tick one.

The car's horn beeps loudly.

The cars' horn beeps loudly.

The cars horn beep's loudly.

The cars horn beeps' loudly.

MR: The 'correct' one is of course the first. However, I can just about think up a situation in which number two could be correct too. Here's a story I've just made up. 

Oh dear, all the horns on the cars have broken down. 

'Now what shall we do?' says Fred the Ford. 

'Oh dear!' says Paola the Porsche. 

'What a pity!' says Hamza the Honda.

'Mine works,' says Solly the Skoda, 'I can beep my horn for all of you.'

'Go on then, do it for all of us, said Hamza.

Solly beeped his horn.

'Solly's doing it for all of us,' said Fred, 'yeah, hooray, we're the cars and the cars' horn beeps loudly.'

Why have I made up this daft story? Because the moment I see that word 'correctly' in these questions, I ask myself, 'Really?' Is it really a matter that only one of these alternatives is correct? Isn't language much more flexible, useful and diverse than how these grammar examiners think of it? Why should we be trying to tie children down with the correct/not correct binary when that doesn't match how we use language? Well, I can answer that! It's solely because this is a test to test to test teachers and it can only be done by kidding children there are only right/wrong answers (Bew Report 2011). 

And this is all in the name of 'standards'! Lying to children in order to improve education - brilliant!

7. Rewrite the underlined verbs in the sentence below so that they are in the simple past. 

Oliver feels proud when he collects his medal after he wins the race.

MR: Have you ever noticed how dull, weird and irrelevant these made-up sentences are? They are examples that defy the very basis of language, namely that we use language in order to express ourselves and/or to communicate with each other, as part of our behaviour, our ways of life, our ways of making relationships. These examples exist in some kind of weird non-time-space continuum that has nothing to do with expression, communication, behaviour or relationships. They are just there as bogus examples of how we could write, might write. They are like inedible food samples. 

Now to terminology: the 'simple past' is one of several terms that grammarians have used to describe 'verb forms' and time. If you do French, the most common term you come across for this is the 'imperfect' ('imparfait'). Beware grammarians coming towards you telling you that this or that word 'is' something and saying a term! At any point in your life you will come across another grammarian saying, 'Oh no, that word 'is' something else.' 

Another problem here is that the sentence they've given the children could just about be in the 'past'. We tell stories to each other all day long, where we use the 'present' form of the verb, when talking about things that have happened in the past. It's 'colloquial' or 'informal' but it's very, very common, in particular in football commentaries that many 10 and 11 year olds hear. I could imagine a novelist wanting to express this for the sake of immediacy with this 'present verb form' even though it's in a novel in which most the verbs are in the 'simple past'. In other words, as a child, I could look at that sentence and think, well, in a way, it is in the past...is this one of those trick questions they like to give us? (See later for how some grammarians are thinking differently about tense.) 

8. Tick one box in each row to show whether the underlined word is a possessive pronoun or a relative pronoun.

That red helmet is mine.

I wear it when I ride the new boke which my uncle gave me.

My bike does much faster than yours.

[Next to the sentences are columns, one with 'Possessive pronoun' as the header, and the other with 'Relative pronoun' as the header. Any ideas what 'rule' decided that the first word in each of those phrases should have a capital letter, or was that something the examiners made up? See later where the examiners do not follow that rule. ]

MR: The naming of different types of pronouns is something that obsesses some grammarians. We can assume that virtually all 10 and 11 year olds who have lived amongst English speakers for at least 5 years will use words like 'mine' and 'which' all day long. When they write, I can't think of many situations in which they would confuse or get muddled between the two. What is the purpose of knowing the different names for these two kinds of pronoun?

Now for a laugh. Think of our 'possessives' - my, your, his, her, our, their. When I was at school, I'm pretty sure that we put these in with mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs and called them all 'possessive pronouns'. Ah no, someone said. The first kind can't be proNOUNS because they're not nouns. Arrggghh! What are they? I know, said some, they're 'adjectives', let's call them 'possessive adjectives'. OK, said others, but they are 'determiners'. Determiners? What are determiners? You know those things like 'a', 'the' and 'an' that come before nouns. Oh but they're 'articles', aren't they? They're 'article determiners'. You mean there are others? Sure there are. Like what? Like 'each' and 'any' and 'every'. What about 'both'? Is that one? Er....it might be. And what about numbers? Numbers! Oh well, they could be. So back with 'my' and 'your', what ARE they? Well, you can call them 'possessive adjectives' OR 'possessive determiners' but you must NOT call them 'possessive pronouns'. OK, I won't. I promise. And probably I've misremembered how I learnt them in 1958 anyway...I mean, how many terms are there? Don't make excuses. 

9 Tick one sentence that must end with a question mark.

Tick one.

If you don't mind, I'd rather stay at home today

He asked why his parents wanted to move house

If you finish your homework, are you able to stay

She wondered if she would ever find the answer to her question

MR: Oh sheesh, haven't we done question marks already on this paper? What is it about question marks that keeps these examiners awake at night. Last year it was 'formal'/'informal' English. This year question marks. 

I suppose they think that they've 'hidden' 'are you able to stay' in a longer sentence, so that children might not notice it? Or that they might confuse 'conditional' clauses ('if' clauses) with questions? Do they? Would they? 

By the way (or btw), I notice that many of us write texts to each other without using question marks. What happens? Does life come to a standstill? 

Also btw, who still writes 'are you able to stay?' Don't we mostly write/say 'can you stay?' Just a thought.

10. Tick the word that is an antonym of happy.

Tick one.

contented

bored

cheerful

miserable

MR: To be clear, this has nothing to do with grammar, punctuation or spelling. So this means that the heading at the beginning of the paper is false. This is entirely to do with meaning ('semantics'). Even so, there is a large body of theory that considers the very idea of antonyms and synonyms is bogus. That's to say, it's a matter of opinion, ideology and social norms that decide that words are or are not synonyms or antonyms. What's more,  words do not merely 'denote' ie simply or only describe things and processes and feelings etc, they also 'connote', that's to say we use them loaded with associations that depend on context, our culture, our personality, our personal or social history. This is a really important point about language and society, language and personality, language and culture. The very idea of antonyms and synonyms is an attempt to put a frame over words and determine that there is some essential or core meaning that is devoid of culture, ideology and social behaviour. It's a fib. 

Now to the question itself. Let's think of a context: parent and child. Parent wonders if a child is happy or....miserable (yes, 'correct' answer). But a parent could also make an alternative out of happy and bored. 'Are you happy or bored?' That's as 'antonymic' as happy or miserable. 

Beware grammarians coming towards you bearing words as if they have one core meaning and that they can match them for sameness or oppositeness, outside of context and usage in real situations. 

This question is bogus nonsense. And possibly something nastier than that to do with grammarians deciding what words mean on the basis of a false notion of what 'meaning' actually is and who 'owns' meaning. They don't own meaning. We do.

11. Which sentence is the most formal?

Tick one.

The school would save so much money, wouldn't it?

The school could end up better off financially.

The school would benefit from the financial savings.

It's a great idea to save school funds!

MR: If someone can tell me where in the materials given to schools the word 'formal' is defined, please could you tell me? I haven't been able to find it. 

I ask myself, is there a simple definition of 'formal' in relation to language anyway? There are formal situations but the notion of formality in language is highly problematic. We might say, 'formal language is the language used in formal situations' but I've been in plenty of formal situations where people are not using what they mean by 'formal language'. In fact, I'm not absolutely sure anymore what is a formal situation! I turned up for an event in a jacket (not something I do very often) and the boss at the event wasn't wearing a jacket. So I got that one wrong! 

So what do they mean? They mean that there are certain structures and phrases that have have come to be attached to these formal situations (which, I for one, am not sure what they really are anyway!). 

I guess that they want the children to tick the third sentence. What is the actual difference between two and three? Is 'better off' not 'formal'? In what situations would you not use the phrase 'better off'? Or 'end up'? In front of the King? In parliament? In court? In an article in the Times? I don't think so. 

 It seems to me that when  you put this question into imagined social situations, it becomes more and more meaningless. 

I would suggest (call me paranoid) that by asking children to do this, we are pushing them towards a view of language and status. We are saying in effect, that there is something superior or more important about sentence three, simply because someone has said 'benefit' rather than 'end up better off'. 

Ultimately, it's a matter of opinion anyway. There is no grammatical basis for this question. Wrong question, wrong place, wrong-headed. 

12 Insert a dash in the correct place in the sentence below.

I will not tell you any more about the film you'll have to see it for yourself.

MR: Like the semi-colon, the dash is an optional punctuation mark. In this example, I would weigh up using a full stop, a comma, a dash, or a semi-colon. I know that they are not saying that it is the only correct punctuation mark in this sentence but it's a highly nuanced point to make to 10 and 11 year olds, namely that 'you could use a dash, but if you use a dash, there is only one place you can use it.' And kinda pointless. We should be indicating that there are these pauses and additions we use when we write and we have a toolbox of marks we can use. Variant usage. Instead we load them as 'correct' with this kind of question. 

13. Which sentence used capital letters correctly?

Tick one.

In July, I will visit my grandparents in newcastle.

In July, I will visit my Grandparents in Newcastle.

In July, I will visit my grandparents in Newcastle.

In july, I will visit my grandparents in Newcastle.

MR: I suppose they want us to say that number three is 'correct'. My reaction is that there are times that I might want to put a capital letter for 'grandparents'. A capital letter can indicate a kind of emphasis, or a sense of respect. Variant usage. Who are these examiners to think that a child couldn't or shouldn't put a capital letter at the beginning of grandparents? After all, we might say, we write 'Grandma' and 'Grandpa' so why not 'Grandparents'? Am I the only person round here who finds this sort of thing infuriating? This is entirely prescriptive based on the prejudices of the examiners. At core, it's the repressive ideology that lies behind the word 'correctly'. Alternatively, I think of it as a mix of the trivial and the bossy. 

14. Insert a pair of brackets in the correct place in the sentence below.

The players both former world champions waited at the side of the court.

MR: Again, we know that you could use dashes, brackets or commas to do this job. Same thing applies: I know they're not saying that you must use brackets and I know that they're saying that if you use brackets  there is only one place you can put them. Even so, the phrasing suggests and implies (not tells) that brackets are the correct usage here. And let's remind ourselves - most punctuation was invented by printers. 

15. Look at the underlined pronoun in the sentence below. Circle the noun that it refers to.

Early bicycles did not have pedals, so riders had to push themselves along using their feet.

MR: There is a tragic sub-text to this. This question is about 'cohesion'. Cohesion is one of the ways in which we 'stick language together'. One of the forms of cohesion in our language repertoire is the use of pronouns. When we use a pronoun, we mostly (not always) hark back or refer to a noun that came earlier. There is, if you like, an invisible string between the pronoun and the noun - here it's 'themselves' and 'riders'. There's a trick element to the question (why are examiners such sadists?) because at first glance that 'referring back' might link to 'bicycles' or 'pedals' because they're plural nouns too. 

Why tragic? Because cohesion is a subtle and wonderful process by which we hook concepts and thoughts and feelings within sentences, between sentences, across passages, chapters or even whole books. Cohesion in a novel is a fascinating 'hidden grammar' of how we understand, feel and appreciate what we read. Because it's a test, they can only 'do cohesion' on a small scale, so the concept gets reduced to a simple right/wrong answer. Why? To test teachers (Bew Report 2011). This question is a perfect example of how the subtlety of a grammatical concept is reduced and strangled for the sake of a test - a test that was only introduced at the behest of Michael Gove. 

That's where we've got to in England with the 'study' of language in primary schools in 2024. 

16. What is the grammatical term for the underlined words in the sentence below?

The cat that was stuck in the tree belongs to my sister.

Tick one.

a noun phrase

a relative clause

a co-ordinating conjunction

a main clause

MR; Before saying anything about this, please see that this time, there are no capital letters at the beginning of these phrases, unlike the 'Possessive pronoun' and 'Relative pronoun' earlier. Why's that then? Examiners' whim? Variant usage? Hmmm. 

There's something beastly about this question. The phrase 'The cat that was stuck in the tree' is the subject of the sentence. What we do in speech and writing is 'expand' the key word - here, 'cat'. We have 'the' and 'that was stuck in the tree'. That whole concept 'belongs to...' In a way, as a learner I could easily think intelligently (but according to the examiners, wrongly) that 'The cat that was stuck in the tree' is an 'expanded noun phrase'. In a way, on account of the whole phrase being conceptually the subject of 'belongs to...' it is! But no, there is only one answer, 'a relative clause'. I must put away my speculations about how we expand our thoughts through language. I am 'wrong'. 

17. Tick one box in each row to show whether the sentence is written in Standard or non-Standard English. 

"You haven't done a bad job!" she told us.

'You ain't done a bad job!" she told us.

'You've done an excellent job!" she told us.

"You done an excellent job!" she told us.

[There are two columns next to these sentences, one headed 'Standard English' the other 'Non-Standard English']

MR: Note the use of capital letters: 'non' and 'Non'. Yes, the explanation would be that the first 'non' is because it's in a sentence and the second 'Non' because it's a heading. Even so, the capitalisation of initial letters on this test paper is really quite a mish-mash, right from that very first heading 'national curriculum tests'. Oh well, they're examiners. They can make up the rules as they go along. That's a little lesson in language and power, isn't it?

The question here is grammatically wrong. They refer in the question to 'the sentence'. In fact, in each of the examples the sentence is the quotation plus 'she told us'. In other words, they are all written in 'Standard English' because the main verb is 'Standard'. What's in quotation is another matter. (I'm being pedantic just for the fun of it.) What the question should have asked (if you're going to ask it) is which of the quotations is in Standard English (or some such.) Fun to see them being so clumsy about it, though.

Once again, we are in the land of tragedy. There is a vast and wonderful study to be made of varieties of English depending on who is speaking to whom, where, when and why. This is at the core of how and why we use language and the specific language that we use. Here it's reduced to simply a matter of 'Standard' and 'non-Standard'. This suggests that there is one proper way - Standard' and everything else is 'NOT' that thing. It's how binaries convey ideology. The point is that 'ain't' or 'You done' are not a matter of 'not being Standard'. They are ways of talking that are their own thing. They belong to communities of people who express themselves. They aren't in a state of not-being something! 

This way of thought bedevils this test, and the whole content and structure of the Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling curriculum.

18 Insert a full stop, a question mark and an exclamation mark in the correct places in the sentence below.

"Did you see that goal I thought it was incredible " exclaimed Elle

MR: Given that teachers are asked to teach children that they must put an exclamation mark after an exclamation beginning with 'how' or 'what', you could forgive a child for thinking that maybe there isn't a 'correct' place to put the exclamation mark in this sentence, even though it says that Elle 'exclaimed'. Let's remember that children often do this test in a state of nerves, worried or confused that they can't ask for help or that they can't consult books or the internet (which we all do!). 

There's even an argument for saying that if you used a comma after 'goal' you could put your question mark after 'incredible'. But no, this is about prescriptive usage so there is only one way to get this 'right'. In real life, there are various ways to get things right. Variant usage.

19 Which sentence is the most formal?

Tick one.

We'd appreciate it if you could put  your litter in the bin outside.

Please pick up your litter and put it in the bin.

We request that you put any litter in the bins provided.

Don't forget - litter goes in the bin.

MR: What is the purpose of this question? Why is the use of the word 'formal' in any way useful here? It is devoid of context, audience or purpose. The word 'formal' here in this question pre-supposes a context, or audience or purpose without stating what that context, audience or purpose is. That is precisely how you denude language of its function. Language - apart from these naff sentences - is always in use, in context, with audiences (implied or actual) and purposes. If you take those away, you deny what it's all for in the first place. To do that,  you have to use an ill-defined, or non-defined concept like 'formal' and just hope you can get away with it  - which of course they do,  because they're the examiners. Language and power on display and in practice again. Teachers and children with no power, examiners with some power, the Dept of Education with more power over them and the Sec of State for Education with more power over them. It's a ladder with the children at the bottom. 

20 What's the grammatical term for the underlined words in the sentence below? 

Tick one.

We discovered the dusty, narrow pathway behind the house.

Tick one.

a noun phrase

a relative clause

a main clause

an adverbial. 

MR: More obsession with grammatical terms, which we know are unstable and changing anyway. Interesting, back when I was at school we were taught 'box analysis'. It was a way of breaking sentences up into phrases and clauses. We would have 'boxed', 'behind the house' separately from 'the dusty, narrow pathway' and called it an 'adverbial phrase'. The 'noun phrase' would therefore be 'the dusty, narrow pathway'. 

What does this tell us? It tells us that how we 'segment' sentences is a matter of choice and opinion based on different methods of analysis. 

Either way, I am endlessly amused at the dogmatic way in which one era teaches 'grammar' and 'grammatical terms' and then ten or twenty years later, and just as dogmatically, another bit of grammar or 'term' is taught. 

Even now, I can hear someone in my ear shouting at me that the underlined phrase 'IS' a noun phrase and that 'behind the house' 'IS PART OF THE NOUN PHRASE'. 

OK. I still find my box analysis (thanks Mr Brown, Harrow Weald County Grammar School) useful for when I construct sentences and I'll go on using it, thanks. 

By the way, it's interesting to compare this question with Question 16 where we had to 'segment' the relative clause off from the noun phrase, but here the adverbial phrase is included in with the noun phrase. Why's that then? 

21 Which sentence is punctuated correctly?

Tick one.

"Please take out your books, said the teacher calmly, and finish your poems."

"Please take out your books," said the teacher calmly, and finish your poems.

"Please take out your books", said the teacher calmly, "and finish your poems."

"Please take out  your books," said the teacher calmly, "and finish your poems."

MR: More copyediting as a means of testing teachers through children. 

Note that the difference between three and four is the tiny matter of which side of the quote marks, the comma goes. Just think:  a teacher's career and an Ofsted report could rest on things like this.  

22 Insert a colon and a comma in the correct places in the sentence below.

We are pleased to announce the three winners of the art exhibition Samir Ben and Ella. 

MR: More copyediting. This tells us that a whole chunk of education in Year 6 is the subject: 'Copyediting'.

23 Tick one box to show whether the words are synonyms or antonyms.

rough, smooth

courageous, brave

vivid, dull

[Alongside these pairs there are columns headed 'Synonyms' and 'Antonyms']

MR As I've said before this is conceptual and ideological nonsense. The lexical and semantic relationship between 'vivid' and 'dull' can't be expressed by either 'antonym' or 'synonym' but, given the false concept of antonym then you could argue that the colours on a painting could be 'vivid' and paint on another painting, could be 'dull'. That would be one of their antonyms. But, that would be 'wrong'.   There is of course no context here. We only have binary choices ( between two non-grammatical concepts!). Why do they have to be binary? Because this is a test paper for the benefit of those who decide which teachers are 'good' and which teachers are 'bad'. So children who get this question 'wrong' are - apparently - badly taught, even though the thing being taught is valueless and wrong. 

As for 'rough' and 'smooth' - both words have multiple meanings - or, as I should say, 'we use them in many different ways'. A child could easily think of an older sibling saying 'I feel rough' but that same child might think of a 'smooth' surface. Not antonyms when used like that, are they? The concept of antonyms is itself false. 

Education. England. 2024.

24 What is the grammatical term for the underlined words in the sentence below?

If you get tired on the cycle ride, stop and have a break.

Tick one.

a relative clause

a noun phrase

a subordinate clause

a preposition phrase

MR Note that when I was at school, we didn't talk of 'preposition phrases'. We said that phrases were 'adjectival' or 'adverbial' and they 'began with a preposition'. Somewhere in the heart of grammarians' minds they thought that they could clarify things (really?) by making up a new term. Then they call it 'the' grammatical term. Just guessing, but by the time these 10 year olds are my age (78) they'll be called something else or they'll have gone back to being adjectival or adverbial phrases that begin with prepositions. I guess coming up with this stuff does pay the mortgage and for that we should be grateful. We should lay aside the matter that inflicting this stuff on children is done purely in order to assess teachers  (Bew Report 2011) and the diktat of Michael Gove. 

Btw where is Gove now? Just to be crude about it, he's done what rabbits do when you chase them:  sh** and run. (Sorry if that was non-Standard. Lols.) 

25 Insert a pair of commas in the correct place in the sentence below.

One of the world's most interesting plants the Venus flytrap catches its prey by snapping its leaves shut. 

MR: I have to say that the concept of a 'pair of commas' is a new one on me. I know what this means, but I've never referred to them as a 'pair of commas' and never will. There is also the interesting variant usage of a lower case initial letter for 'flytrap'. Some would give it a capital letter, some would not. 

More copyediting in order to assess teachers. Just how important do you think copyediting should be in the education of 10 and 11 year olds? I'll leave that one hanging there.

26 Which sentence is in the passive?

Tick one.

The manager has sent you an email.

Our dog lost her new collar.

The weather was very cold this winter.

The meal was enjoyed by everyone.

MR: The use and non-use of the passive is a wonderful and subtle matter of tone, purpose, audience - and sometimes, of politics and ideology. It's best explored in use and context because it's like that, we get some sense of why we use it. This is yet another example of reducing language to its structure, and reducing that to right/wrong answers. By now, if you've been reading this from the beginning, you'll know why I think this is being done, and it's nothing to do with the purpose of language or education or language-in-education, and everything to do with how the government controls and disempowers teachers and children. 

27 What is the grammatical term for the underlined part of the word below?

happiness

MR: There was a point in the debates about language and education where some of the people who said they were keen on teaching children grammar (it was never clear whether they meant primary or secondary children) insisted that this didn't mean that we would go back to 'parsing'. This was a reference to Latin lessons in Public (ie private) and Grammar schools in the past. Lessons or parts of lessons could be conducted by teachers barking at you to parse words. You had to reply by saying whether a word was 'accusative' or 'dative' or whether a verb was 'third person' and so on. Spotting prefixes and suffixes wasn't usually part of parsing but it has the same trainspotting methodology: naming of parts. 

There are interesting things to say about '-ness' and other ways we have of making adjectives into nouns. One of them is that we have French ways and Old English ways of doing it. I'm someone who thinks that if we spend time exploring language with 10 and 11  year olds that would be a more interesting way of finding out about 'stems', 'prefixes' and 'suffixes' rather than simply labelling them and testing them. 

28 What is the word class of the underlined words in the sentence below?

Although the battery on her phone was low, Amy managed to call her mum when she knew she would be late.

MR: Naming of parts. We used to call these 'subordinate conjunctions'. They're now called 'subordinating conjunctions'! I wonder if I would be marked 'wrong' if I wrote 'subordinate conjunctions'. I don't know. 

Interesting sentence: the second 'she' is actually ambiguous. Whoopsidaisy, examiners. Do you care? Nope. Perhaps you need to do more grammar. (Irony alert, see next question.) 

29 Explain how the comma changes the meaning of the second sentence.

1. We have cooked chicken soup and fresh bread.

2. We have cooked chicken, soup and fresh bread.

MR: This belongs to what I call the John Humphrys theory of language. John Humphrys, some people will remember, was the former presenter of 'Mastermind' and the 'Today' programme. I talked to him about language on several occasions and he seemed to live in a state of fear and loathing that the world of language around him was riddled with ambiguities caused by the misuse of commas and apostrophes. He had examples up his sleeve that indicated the dire consequences of such misuses. I suppose theoretically there are some possible dire consequences in, let's say, instructions in a military context and the like. In examples like this? Really though? What would be a possible context for this sentence? A letter?  An email? A text? In which case, wouldn't it be clear from the context of the sentences around it whether it was 'chicken' and 'soup' or 'chicken soup'? But this test is about context-free language.  That's to say, it's not real language. It's language abstracted from context so that there can only be right and wrong answers. Thanks Michael Gove. 

30 Circle the modal verb in the sentence below.

Hannah said I could share her snack because I had forgotten mine.

MR: Modal verbs and 'modality' are a fascinating topic. It's fun to explore all the different ways we can express intentions, possibilities, certainties, uncertainties, in English. Pupils who know other languages might be able to compare how they do it in another language - it's often very differently from how we do it in English. Why would that be? 

Notice also there's a trick element in this question. There is a modal verb in the sentence and an auxiliary verb. That's in order to distract the child in the hope that some will get it wrong. It's vital that some children get some of these questions wrong because only then will the test produce the 'bell curve' ie the shape of the test results across the whole cohort. 

There's another aspect of the way KS2 children are learning modal verbs: it's in a list. They're often given a list of modal verbs. Then there's the exam and they match the list with the question. What is the purpose of this as a piece of education? What is its value? How does it relate to the use of language that they read or hear, or the use of language as they speak it or write it? 

There is also a very good chance that within three or four years they will forget it. I can vouch for this. I taught one of my children to do this paper and he got 100%. A few years later I tried a little bit of a test on him. He had forgotten virtually all of it. He hadn't had to apply any of it to anything else he was doing. In the case of modal verbs, the foreign language he was learning was French. French has three modal verbs though 'il faut' would make it four! (pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, if you're wondering). In French, you 'do modality' mostly through verb endings and the subjunctive. 

31 Circle the four nouns in the sentence below.

The successful athletes were full of pride when they accepted their medals from the judges.

MR: I suspect that this is one of the questions they hope that everyone will get right. The examiners have to keep an eye on the bell curve. 

32 Tick one box to show the subject of the sentence below.

Every Saturday, Nadim takes his dog for a walk in the park. 

[Underneath Saturday, Nadim, dog, and walk, there are boxes.]

MR: I'm someone who thinks that 'subject' and 'verb' is one of the things worth teaching to primary age children. I think of subject-verb as the core or crux of a standard sentence (apart from the imperative!). I also think that the old ' box analysis' that I did is much more useful than all this obsession with naming of parts. 

Btw, were the examiners aware that they have touched on a sensitive matter in this sentence? Nadim is a Muslim name. Some Muslims regard keeping dogs as pets as not desirable. Fine to keep dogs as working dogs - hunting, guard dogs etc, but some Muslims think that keeping dogs as pets is not OK. Just thought I ought to say that. Perhaps it's an example of the examiners really, really, really not dealing with context!

33 Add a prefix to the word charge in the sentence below to show that the waiter did not charge too much.

The waiter was careful not to _____charge the customer.

MR: I'm guessing that the answer here is 'over'? Or can it be 'sur'? I wonder if either would be allowed? Variant usage.

Interesting social class question here too. What kinds of children do not know about waiters, charging and customers? I guess that would be children who use fast food joints. So this is one of those questions that gives a social advantage to those who know about waiters, charging and customers. Now there's a surprise. Are there ever questions in these tests that favour the social class that doesn't know about such things as waiters and bills? 

34 What is the word class of the underlined words in the sentence below?

We had a drink after our swim in the pool.'

Tick one.

adjectives

adverbs

nouns

verbs

MR: I'm getting déjà-vu here. Didn't we do nouns a few questions earlier? I suppose they think this time they'll be tricksy and give us nouns that can also be verbs. Imagine the minds of examiners figuring out how to trick 10 and 11 year olds! Then they go home and they're nice to their own kids. Weird.

35 Insert a hyphen in the correct place in the sentence below.

There was a build up of litter around the bins in the school playground.

MR: Ah, I can see another 'distractor' here. 'Build up' is the one they want but 'school playground' is one of those compound nouns that sometimes has or could have a hyphen. It's just sufficiently possible to be a distractor, particularly under exam conditions. 

36 Circle the co-ordinating conjunction in the sentence below.

The journey proved difficult as they had to travel by night, but they made good time once the stars came out to guide them.   

MR: I'm out on a limb here. I'm someone who believes that 'but' shouldn't be a co-ordinating conjunction. I was taught that co-ordinate clauses are stand-alone, equal in status and the meaning of one doesn't depend on the meaning of the other. 'But clauses' seem to me to not do that. A 'but clause' contradicts another clause. It doesn't stand alone. It's OK, I know I won't convince anyone of this matter. So be it. 

37 Which word class is hand-operated in the sentence below?

One person turned the hand-operated wheel while the other steered the boat.

Tick one.

a verb

an adjective

a noun

an adverb

MR: A tricksy sort of question this: the adjective here is made up of a noun and a past participle of a verb. What is the purpose of asking a 10 or 11 year old such a tricksy question? How much teaching of the way in which we can create one word class out of words belonging to other word classes, do you have to do, in order to get this right? How much time is needed, Mr Gove, in order to teach this? And why? Oh yes, it's to assess teachers. I remember. So the grammar involved is not as important as the assessment of teachers. Got it.

38 Draw a line to match the first part of each sentence to the second part so that each sentence is correct.

[first column]

The teachers

The teachers'

The teacher's

[second column]

staffroom was full of books and old armchairs.

new mug was a present from her class.

were taking part in the school play. 

MR: What is it about apostrophes that gets grammar examiners so excited? Why do they think they're so important? They're like people who walk past greengrocers and go apoplectic when they see "carrot's". And then they inflict their state of mind on 10 and 11 year olds. What a worrying thought. 

39 Add a prefix to the underlined word to make its antonym. Write the whole word in the box.

Aisha had a very mature attitude to life.

MR: Another tricksy question. The easy negative prefixes to remember are things like 'dis-' 'un-' and 'in-. It's easy to forget or not know 'im-'. 

So here we have the bogus idea of antonyms, which are not grammar and are invalid anyway. Then we have a tricksy prefix on top. All this in order to prove that some children don't know the word 'immature'. Yes, because actually this is not really a grammar question at all. It's a 'vocabulary' question! Or at the very least, you can only really do the question if you know that the 'correct' word is 'immature'. You can't deduce it from the prefixes you know, even if you remember 'im-' is one of them. If you don't know the word, you could think it's 'unmature'. Why not? 

40 What is the word class of the underlined words in the sentence below?

After school, Jack takes his little brother to the park.

MR: For those of you older than about 30, you may not know that the 'correct' answer is 'determiner'. That's because when someone of my age (78) did grammar till it was falling out of my ears (English, French, German, Latin, Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English...), we didn't call them 'determiners'. If there were people calling them determiners at the time, they didn't come up on my radar. To which the grammarians of today say, ah yes, you would have called them eg a 'possessive' and a 'definite article' but nowadays we group these together under a heading called 'determiner'. 

This bit of juggling pre-supposes that 'his' and 'the' are doing the 'same sort of thing' in that sentence. My olde fashionede viewe is that 'his' is telling us things about the relationship between Jack and someone else whereas 'the' is about referencing that this park is a presence in the life of Jack. They are doing similar things but not the same. 

But hey, this is more terminological diarrhoea with not much purpose. Ideal for inflicting on 10 and 11 year olds if you want to assess teachers. Of very little use to anyone, anywhere, ever again. 

41 In which sentence is dance a verb?

Tick one.

Our class took part in an Irish dance workshop.

After he sprained his ankle, he could not dance. 

The dance involved moving very quickly.

Ballet and hip-hop are favourite types of dance.

MR: The fact that we can switch the 'word class' of words according to their function is a delightful and flexible thing. We can explore it in playful and interesting ways through poems and games (I've even written a poem that explores this!). Here, though, it's reduced to a dull matter of getting the name right. Teachers may have time or inclination to avoid teaching it in a way that is similar to this question. They may not. The chances are that they're pressured by time to have to teach it in a short, snappy way. The shorter and snappier it is, the less meaning and use it has. Would the people who set this stuff care about that? Absolutely not. This is about right/wrong, not about usefulness in how we write and talk. 

Btw, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought hip-hop was an early form of rap, not a dance. Have the examiners got their cultural antennae in a knot? Or is that me?  Happy to be proved wrong, if I am! 

If I'm right both about Nadim having a dog (earlier question) and hip-hop not being a dance, then this paper would reveal two cultural gaffes. As I say, I may be wrong about either or both. 

42 Write the contracted form of the underlined word in the boxes below.

If nobody is at home, your parcel will not be delivered.

MR: It's convenient to call these forms 'contracted'. That said, it doesn't really make sense as far as language-use is concerned. When  somebody says 'Nobody's' or 'won't', they're not 'contracting' anything. They're just using a form that is available to them in the repertoire of possible words, phrases and constructions. It's only 'contracted' in the mind of the grammarian who has extracted 'Nobody is' and 'will not' from context, taken them away to the grammarians' den, compared them with 'Nobody's and 'won't' and decided that they're contractions. 

This is a perfect example of how grammar can be made separate from usage. And that's a problem if we want to understand how language works, how we use language and how language changes.

43 In which sentence is fast an adverb?

Tick one.

Although he ran fast, Tom did not win the race.

Although he was a fast runner, Tom did not win the race.

Tom did not win the race, despite his fast time.

Tom's time was fast, but he did not win.

MA: One purpose of this question is to catch out 'lazy' teachers who've taught the children that adverbs are '-ly' words. They must (irony alert) also teach children that in English there are non '-ly' adverbs, 'fast' being one of them. However, teachers must (irony alert) spend time teaching children that some words that don't end in '-ly' should end in '-ly' if we want them to be adverbs. You must not (irony alert) say that Tom ran quick. You must say (irony alert) that Tom ran quickly. 

The aim here is to catch out both children and teachers. Job done. Bell curve assured.

44 Rewrite the underlined verbs in the simple past.

Joseph hurriedly draws the man's portrait, but then tears the page out of his sketchbook.

MA: Subtext here: it's easy to remember the simple past form when it's just an '-ed' ending as with 'walked'. Harder to remember and confuse are the so-called 'strong' verbs where we change the vowel sound in the middle of the verb, as here. And remember there are some where we don't change it at all! I hit (present), I hit (simple past) I have hit (present perfect). These are all what we might call 'sites of confusion' or 'sites of uncertainty'. I hear people being uncertain or using irregular variants,  every day. And remember that there's the past participle to remember too: write, wrote, have written. People sometimes get them 'wrong'. How much does this actually matter? And if it matters, how do we teach it? Through use, through exposure to loads of reading and writing? Or through formal lessons with a test at the end of it? Or a mix of both? What do you think?

45 Circle the two prepositions in the sentence below.

After playtime, you must stay inside the classroom until it is lunchtime. 

MR; Oho ho ho. This is the one that flummoxed Nick Gibb, the former Schools Minister. He couldn't sort out his prepositions from his subordinating conjunctions. That's why 'until' is there which can be either (according to this system of 'grammar') depending on its function in a phrase, clause or sentence. It's there in order to catch the children out. Great, eh? And 'inside' can also be an adverb in some circumstances, say the grammarians, so that could be a distractor too.  

Bell curve. Examiners' work done. Teachers assessed. 

46 Rewrite the underlined verb so that it is the past progressive. 

Alexandra walked home.

MA: Another bit of terminological revisionism. In all my grammar lessons this was called the 'past continuous'. Then someone decided it 'is' the 'past progressive'.  You must get these names right and get them right before the name changes (irony alert).

By the way, serious grammarians are reluctant to use these rigid descriptions of verbs in which a given 'verb form' is matched with 'time frame'. The point is we have various ways in English of indicating time: 'I'm going out tomorrow' is so-called present progressive tense but clearly what's going on is someone talking about the future. Grammar should describe what's being said and written, not what some formal list of conjugations tell us! So some grammarians are talking about 'time aspect'. It's fun to play with too. Much more interesting than conjugations! 

47 Rewrite the sentence below in the passive.

Remember to punctuate the answer correctly.

The noise of the traffic disturbed us.

MR: More stuff on the 'passive'. Wow, it's hard to keep being interested, don't you think? I guess the answer is, 'We were disturbed by the noise of the traffic.' I've put a full stop at the end. Do you think that's what they meant by punctuating it  correctly? Or should there be a comma? Am I going to lose my mark because I missed out a comma? Isn't it optional? I don't know now. I'm all in a fluster. And my teacher is going to get done over for it, if I get it wrong...help! Get me out of here!

48 Which sentence is an exclamation?

Tick one.

It's surprising how little is known about deep-sea creatures

It amazes me that anything can live so far under the sea

How do they survive without sunlight

How strange some deep-sea creatures look

MR: Oh no, it's the types-of-sentence question again! Several tricks here: if teachers have taught the children that 'how' sentences are exclamations, then number one and number three have got the word 'how' in them without them being exclamations. Hard luck. 

The exclamation-sentence theory, remember, is that these must be 'how' or 'what' exclamations. If you have any spare time, you might like to sit and invent some exclamation sentences that are not 'how' or 'what' sentences. If you can, you've proved the worthlessness of this question.

Joke: in order to ask this question the examiners have had to punctuate all the sentences wrongly. Love it.

49 Underline the adverbial in the sentence below.

We put on our PE kits before the match.

MR: An 'adverbial' didn't exist when I was at school. We talked of adverbs, adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses. Then someone lumped them together and called them 'adverbials'. Why? Did we need a higher order category? And then, when grammarians had invented it, why did it have to be taught to 10 and 11 year olds? I managed without, and I'm a language and grammar freak. Why does everyone else need them too? 

50 Circle the two adjectives that are synonyms in the sentence below.

The street was lined with grand houses; the modest cottage stood out amongst its imposing neighbours.

MR: I guess the examiners were getting tired by this time, so they ask yet again another word class question. The trick here is that a present participle has been recycled (as it were)  as an adjective: 'imposing'. In other words, some children will think that 'imposing' is not an adjective.  The hope is that sufficient numbers of children will get this wrong, so that the bell curve can be produced. Of course, if your school has too many on the wrong side of the bell curve then Ofsted must be called in and there may be evidence that the school can be put in special measures. After all, standards must be maintained and how else to show 'standards' but through asking right/wrong answers about an imperfect system of describing language (this 'grammar') and through claiming that there are right/wrong answers to questions about a non-grammatical, non-valid concept (synonyms),  wheeled out for test purposes? 

Btw, what sense is there in the word 'synonym' if 'imposing' and 'grand' are synonyms? The word 'imposing' has in many contexts a sense that the person or thing doing the imposing is  being disapproved of eg 'You've imposed on me!' (This is the interesting topic of 'transitivity' - ie how we express attitude towards things through the words we use.) On the other hand 'grand' in most contexts has a sense of approval - 'What a grand house!' 

And these are synonyms?!

Maybe the examiners are just not very good writers. Too much grammar, not enough reading. 

 

My thoughts on this year's Key Stage 2 Grammar, punctuation and spelling test (which used to be the SPaG test)

I am looking at the 2023, 'Key stage 2, English grammar, punctuation and spelling test.

Paper 1: questions'

My first thought, as ever, is to wonder about how many hours of work are required to put Year 6 students through this? And for what benefit? I ask this because I know that one of my offspring did this test, did very well at it, and when I ran though some of the terms with him a few years later, he had forgotten them all. 

Ok - brief thoughts on some of the questions:

Question 1 asks 'Which sentence is a command?'

I've talked about this before as an example of how what this kind of grammar calls 'grammar' is very slippery. The word 'command' is not a grammar word. It's a word to describe how we say things to each other. We can command each other to do things in several ways: eg 'You must do this now!'. 'No running in the playground'. 

So what's going on here? 

What they mean, but don't say, is that for the sake of this exam, a 'command' is a sentence that uses the 'imperative' form of the verb. We all know such words and usages eg 'Go out!' or even 'Please don't do that' which of course doesn't sound like a 'command' at all! 

So what you have is a typically fuzzy definition based on a non-grammatical word, when really they mean something else. 

What ends up being tested here is actually not 'grammar' but a fuzzy mix of semantics (meaning) and 'grammar'. 

Question 2 continues with the GPS obsession with 'sentence types'. I can't figure out why they should be obsessed with this. Why is it important to give sentences a name, especially as some of the labels are 'fuzzy' anyway (as with 'command'). Question 2 asks 'Tick one box in each row to show whether the sentence is an exclamation or a question.'

What follows are four sentences (with no punctuation mark at the end of them!) all beginning with 'How'. 

One of these is 'How disappointing it was that it rained on sports day'.

You have to laugh. Who writes this stuff? This is straight out of 1950s middle class talk. Is there anyone left who ever says or writes such things? 

This is supposed to be an 'exclamation'. Again, this is not a 'grammar word'. We can 'exclaim' in many different ways using different grammatical structures eg 'Oh no, I've lost my wallet!' Anyone having to subject themselves to this test knows that the word 'exclamation' here is being squeezed into being a 'grammar word' by linking it to a sentence structure. 

Big irony here: in order to be able to ask this question, the sentences are not completed with a punctuation mark. Think about that. This test and the syllabus belabour children and teachers with the need (desperate need) to finish sentences with the 'correct' punctuation mark - question mark, full stop etc., and here is the test that is supposed to test such things, putting four sentences in front of children without the end mark. 

Of course, we know why they haven't. It's because they would have had to have put an exclamation mark after the exclamation! People will remember the hapless Nick Gibb coming on the radio trying to explain to millions of listeners how and why they were testing children on exclamation marks and clearly failing to do so. 

Again, you have to laugh: the harder they try to be 'correct' the more likely it is that they'll end up putting something incorrect in front of children.  

Question 3 asks the children to 'Draw a line to match each word to a suffix to make four different words. Use each suffix only once.' The four words are 'social', 'relation', 'child' and 'season'. The four suffixes are 'ish', 'al, 'ise', 'ship'. 

I sat up at this one because my 'school grammar' and 'university grammar' comes from the 1950s and 60s. Any of us taught these terms as if they were set in stone are always surprised to see that the terms can change. Anyone who cares about such things as suffixes, will notice that the four suffixes are not the same in kind. Three of them are additions turning them either into another noun (eg 'relationship') or into adjectives (eg 'childish'). One of them is an adjective that you have to turn into a verb (ie 'socialise'). 

I was taught to think of verbs and verb endings as being 'conjugations' rather than being a stem+suffix. But, hey, there you go. If they're suffixes now, let'em be suffixes. It's all part of the arbitrary terminology diarrhoea that afflicts this subject. Someone reading this will blow a gasket longing to 'correct' me to tell me that they 'ARE' really suffixes, as if labels are more important than language. 

Question 4 involves an Oxford comma twitch. People who write this stuff are obsessed with whether the 'Oxford comma' is right or wrong. (Imagine being such a person!). Some people nearly die if they see a comma before the word 'and'. If I was teaching Year 6s I would tell them that if they care about the health of others, they must remember that if any question asks you to insert a comma into a sentence, never, never, never put it in the front of the word 'and', or far off, someone may pass away. 

Question 6 asks 'Which pair of words are antonyms?

Antonyms are not grammar. They are semantics. They have no place on a grammar paper. Grammarians know this. The fact that they are in a grammar test is testament to the fact that grammarians were cowed by Michael Gove when it came to devising this absurd syllabus. In fact, 'antonyms' are a weird concept drawn from tests and syllabuses from the 19th century. Linguistics has taught us over the last 50 years or more that there is no such thing as a synonym or an antonym. That's not how language works. Words are so full of lovely variation and 'connotation' that we can't tie them to such concepts as 'antonym' and 'synonym' - except of the sake of tests and TV quizzes. 

The answer to this question is 'proper' and 'improper'. 

I'll state the obvious: 'proper' can be used in many different ways: eg 'he's a proper little devil', 'the proper way to learn a part is to cover the page', 'she was very polite and very proper'. The word 'improper' may or may not match the many ways we use the word 'proper'. Logically speaking then, they are only antonyms for the sake of this question! 

I quite often talk about how far from 'language-use', these grammar test go. This is a prime example. Language-use tells us that 'proper' is a word we can use flexibly, variously with nice, subtle differences. The word 'improper', less so. In order to answer this question, we invite children to dispense with the flexibility of language-in-use, and come up with a bit of absurd, non-grammatical labelling.

Question 9 - another non-grammar question. It asks 'Which sentence is the most formal?' 

Others may help me here. I've struggled to find in course materials a reasonable and rational explanation of the word 'formal', as used in these tests. It's quite clearly not only a matter of grammar because these questions often slip in a slightly slangy noun or verb which is being used in a 'standard English' way (ie 'correctly') but is presumably not 'formal'. So here we have the sentence 'Please pack up all your stuff before you leave.' I guess that the examiners think 'stuff' is informal. This is not a matter of grammar. It's a matter of 'register'. They've decided that 'stuff' is not 'formal'. (Go figure!) 

The formal sentence is, presumably: 'It is essential that you take all  your belongings with you.' For this to be 'formal' it's through its 'lexis' (ie choice of vocabulary) and not through grammar. 

This is how 'grammar' gets afflicted with mission creep. 'Grammar' creeps into 'style' and telling children how they 'should' write. 

Question 10 is a 'synonyms' question. More non-grammar in a 'grammar' test. 'Overjoyed' and 'delighted' are supposedly synonyms here. They are similar. Or they are in the same 'lexical field'. They each have different connotations. 

Question 13 throws me completely:

'Insert a colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

Dipti is keen to practise the drums she wants to play in the school band.'

Wot? I can't think of any circumstance where I'd put a colon in that sentence!  Call me uncouth, but I wouldn't put any punctuation in that sentence, let alone a colon. I use colons in one restricted way only. I use them following a general word and before a list of things that are part of that general word, or as a mark to indicate 'like this'. So I might write, 'There are a few supermarkets round here: Sainsbury's, Asda, Lidl, Waitrose etc.' Or I might write, 'The rule states clearly that you can not run in school: 'Do not run in the corridors or classrooms'.' 

Well, I didn't get my mark for that question. 

Question 14 is 'Which question is the most formal? 

What is this need to be 'formal'? Again the reason why one of the sentences is more formal than another is semantic not grammatical. 'I asked him to phone me when he got here' is presumably meant to be less formal than 'I requested that he telephone me on arrival.' 

Somewhere deep in the minds of the examiners is the notion that 'request' is more 'formal' than 'ask' and - here's the exciting bit [irony alert], the construction 'that he telephone me' contains what they say is....a 'subjunctive'. 

Note: not all grammarians are convinced that this IS a subjunctive. Some think that it's some strange bit of English usage that can be ring-fenced and labelled but best not to dignify it with the term 'subjunctive' because it doesn't 'conjugate'. This means that it can't really be compared with, say, the subjunctive in French, which is really an extraordinary, subtle, complex form that can be used to indicate a mix of doubt, caution, suggestion, tentative thought and so on. 

However, Michael Gove said that he wanted the subjunctive in the test. The grammarians said they weren't too sure about that. Michael Gove was sure. That's why the children learn it. That's why this sentence is included in the test. 

Question 18 asks the children to spot the use of the 'present progressive'. I include this one because once again it gives me a laugh. Back in the 1950s and 60s, we were taught that there is a tense called 'the present continuous'. That's what it IS, we were told. That verb form IS the present continuous. The present continuous IS that particular verb form - usually expressed by '-ing' endings on the end of the stem of the verb. 

One reason why it was interesting, they told us, is that French doesn't have that verb form. It's expressed with a phrase that looks like 'in train of..' ('Je suis en train de manger un croissant' 'I'm eating a croissant') 

Then at some point, some grammarians decided that it ISN'T the 'present continuous'. It IS the 'present progressive'. 

Why? Why did it change? Who decided? Why did that then become THE term? What bit of new knowledge about this verb form has necessitated this new term? I dunno. 

Question 29, sees a visitation of the dreaded 'fronted adverbial'. However, it's in its most diluted form. (I sense a retreat from this monster.) All that the students are asked to do here is punctuate it with a comma in the right place. As it happens, there is a trick in the question. Many of the children will have learnt it in a mechanical way - there's only time to learn it mechanically. One of the sentences is 'Luckily for us the ball rolled slowly past the goal.' 

The trick here is that many children would bung a comma in after 'luckily' because that's how they were taught the dreaded 'fronted adverbial. Trouble is, on this occasion, the f.a. is 'Luckily for us...' Boooo! Trick question. 

Question 31 is another bite at the exclamation cherry. Why so interested in exclamations and exclamation marks? Do they matter that much? When you think of all the amazing, exciting things to say about language, or all the exciting language activities you could be doing with children, and you end up with talking about exclamation marks! Doh!

Question 33 asks 'What are the underlined words in the sentence below?'

You have a choice of answer: a relative clause, a subordinate clause, a main clause, a noun phrase.

This is a perfect example of the dull cul-de-sac that grammar takes you into. You have a phrase 'The girl with curly red hair' and all that grammar is interested in is what you can label it with. The question asks 'What are the underlined words..' as if the label IS that use of language and that use of language IS that label. 

Again, there are all sorts of things we could say about that use of language, the least significant and least useful for 10, and 11 years olds is what label you can stick on it in order to test teachers whether they can teach 10 and 11 year old children that this label is important. Older school students perhaps, but 10 and 11 year olds? Really?

Question 39 asks the children to 'Complete the sentence below with an appropriate subordinating conjunction.' 

In an ideal world, how vital is it for 10 and 11 year olds to know the difference between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions? Let's say that the great god grammar decides that they should all know that there are such things as 'conjunctions' (I think we called them 'joining words' when I was at primary school in the 1950s). How vital is it that they need to know that there are two kinds of conjunction and that there'll be a test which will try to see if you can get it right? 

As an aside, and nothing to do with this question,  I have never bought the idea that 'but' is a coordinating conjunction - 'and' and 'or', fair enough, but why 'but'? A clause following 'but' is often dependent in meaning on the clause that comes before it. Maybe it should be called a thing of its own - 'a depending conjunction'. See! You can play the grammar game too!

Question 40 is a nasty, trick question. The examiners know that hard-pressed teachers say that adverbs are often '-ly' words. So of course here's a question where the adverb is not a '-ly' word. 

'The boy had seven brothers, each one quite different from the others.' 

This reminds us that the term 'adverb' is stupendously useless. 'Adverb' sounds like it does something to verbs. Sometimes it does. Hooray. But it also 'does' something to adjectives, as with the word 'quite' here. And it can also do something to whole sentences, as with 'However, he couldn't find his keys.' That used to be called a 'sentence adverb' but now we have to call it a 'fronted adverbial' and we're all so much more intelligent and able to deal with the problems of the world, as a result.

Question 41 is a beast. 

 'Complete each sentence with a word from the same word family as proud.'

The graphic shows two sentences with a blank and the word 'proud' under the blank. You have to change the word 'proud' so that it can fit in the blank. The two sentences are:

'We [BLANK] represented our school in the competition'

and

'We took [BLANK] in representing our school in the competition.

The first is, presumably 'proudly' and the second, presumably, is 'pride'.

Why do I say it's a beast? 

I don't know this term 'word family'. People will have to tell me if that's taught these days as a concept. It's a new one on me. I must keep up. I've staggered through at least 11 years of grammar education without knowing this term, so I'd better add on a bit more work in order to keep up. 

It makes sense to grammarians to think of a word like 'proud' in such a way that they can turn it into 'proudly' and 'pride'. If you look at language-in-use, we can ask ourselves, how often do we 'turn' a word like 'proud' into 'pride'. That isn't how we construct sentences. 

We create language-in-use according to who's speaking and writing, who's listening and reading (ie the participants); according to the subject-matter of what we are saying and writing (sometimes called the 'field'); and according to the type of talk and the type of writing that we are performing (often called 'genre'). We hardly ever do what this test question asks us to do, which is shunt between grammatical forms to slot them into blanks.