Health alert: how fronted adverbial disease (F.A.D.) took over.

For people wondering what the heck I'm on about with 'fronted adverbials' - and why it matters is this:

1. Very young children are having to learn what  'fronted adverbials' are and then to make their writing supposedly better, use them in their writing.
2. 'Fronted adverbials' is a fairly recent term to describe anything 'adverbial' (I'll come back to that) that comes before the verb e.g. 'On the hour, the bells rang out.'
3. It's not clear to anyone why writing in this way is better than writing 'The bells rang out on the hour.' As many have pointed out, this is not a 'grammatical' view. It's all about style.
4. My view also is that it's all based on a false view of what grammar is and how it can be described. That's because the grammatical terms (like 'fronted adverbial') are not connected to meaning and purpose.
5. So now back to 'adverbial' and 'adverbs'. In the 'old' grammar, we used to say things like 'adverbs' qualify or modify verbs. (I always forget which of 'qualify' or 'modify' it was, even though I was told 5000 times.) We used to say, 'adjectives' 'qualify' or 'modify' nouns. All nice and neat.
6. However, with certain verbs like 'to be' and 'to feel' and 'to sound' these qualifying or modifying terms ('adverb' and 'adjective') are not so clear. 'the bell sounded good' - er... so is 'good' an 'adjective' or an 'adverb' is it talking about the 'bell' or 'sounded'? Well, it's both.
7. Now, just as you can have an 'adverb', this old grammar says you can have an 'adverbial phrase' or an 'adverbial clause'. That was your 'on the hour' thing with the clock in number 3 above. Old grammar said that a phrase had no verb in it, a clause has a verb in it. Some modern grammars say there's no difference between phrases and clauses.
8. So, now have some subversive fun. Listen out for (or make up) some sentences that have phrases or clauses in front of the verbs, and see if you can work out exactly if that phrase or clause that comes before the verb, is 'adverbial' (qualifying the verb) or 'adjectival' (qualifying the noun that is the 'subject' of the verb). If you can't tell, or think that it's a bit of both, the terminology is at fault, not you. You are an intelligent reading, talking, writing person. If distinctions about such things are not clear and obvious, the system is at fault, not you.
8. My view, as I've said, is that the system is at fault because it is separated off from meaning and function. So, with this case of fronted adverbials, it's clear to me that sometimes (that's function) we put some stuff at the beginning of our 'utterances' which modify and qualify what's coming next. Whether it's adverbial or adjectival is often (not always) beside the point. To just focus on whether they're 'adverbial' is pedantry beyond belief or use. To lumber kids with it, even worse.
9. Now to function: yes, this is about 'style' but 'style' is about purpose: 'who am I writing for?' 'Why do I want or need to say this in this particular way?' As it happens (snort snort) the two main reasons for 'fronted' phrases are when we speechify and when we write poetry! Speechifying, it's sometimes handy to leave the main clause of the sentence till last for 'effect'. 'Never in the field of human conflict...' etc . Poetry often needs 'fronted' phrases and clauses because it helps to emphasise and you might need a rhyming word from that part of the sentence! For this reason, it often sounds a bit antiquated or pompous. (Did you see the fronted bit there?!)
10. By focussing obsessively on this kind of stuff, without it being connected directly to meaning, audience, purpose and function, we give children and teachers a false idea of what is good writing. Booklets and worksheets come out full of exercises in spotting these things, and of course test marks depend on them. That's bad enough. What's just as bad is that it pretends to be about something rule-governed, accurate and quasi-scientific. But it isn't. It's based on a bog of hybrids. Bogs of hybrids in language are actually what make language studies very interesting. You don't have to do it when you're 7 (the age when 'fronted adverbials' kick in in schools by order of Gove, Morgan and Gibb).

The nonsense of the 'expanded noun phrase' as a way of getting to children to write 'well'.

(fro

"Using mini whiteboards or strips of card, build a sentence that contains both a subject noun and an object noun, e.g. “The woman ran towards her car.”
a. Ask children to identify the simple noun phrases (the woman/her car). b. Ask for expansion of those noun phrases with adjectives, inserted on further mini whiteboards/strips. In each case, ensure children picture the scene created by the noun phrase expansion and assess the usefulness of the adjectives used.
Example: “The smart, young woman ran towards her sporty red car.” “The ill, exhausted woman ran towards her battered, dusty car.”
This process can be extended to stretch children’s vocabulary: where possible, challenge children to improve the nouns and so make some adjectives unnecessary (“her sporty red car” could become “her Ferrari”); useful adjectives might then be added (“her rusting, dented Ferrari”). Again, the scene should be pictured and considered."

Scholemeister Gibbe tries to stem the tide of change in language

In the Saxon monasterye ye scholemeister Gibbe hears yonge man seyinge "They ware goode the beans, they ware.'
Gibbe is much wrothe: 'What is thisse 'they' of whiche ye speke? It is a filthy danish worde. We Saxonen say 'he' for all. There is no 'they'.'
'I am full sorry Meister Gibbe,' say the yonge man, 'it will not happne agayne.'
'Indeede it will not,' say Meister Gibbe, 'we shall not hear it spoken in this lande ever agayne.' '


[update: in case you were wondering: "The third person plural pronoun 'they', is of Scandinavian origin (Jespersen)"]

Nick Gibb: Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into

The catchphrase most used by Laurel and Hardy on film is: "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"
If you see 'Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" in the question where the children are asked to identify an exclamation, this is NOT an exclamation. However, if you need a handy description to give a sense of where the government, Nick Gibb and the linguists they hire have arrived, then the sentence 'Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!' is accurate.

Exclamations, Nick Gibb, rubbish grammar, rubbish test.

Here is the letter that Schools Minister for schools in England has written to one of the national newspapers.

Below are my comments:
As many people have noticed, a) this is not very clear, b) it is really quite extraordinary that a Minister is laying down the law on something so precise and small as the 'grammar' of exclamations c) just because the Minister says that this is the grammar of exclamations, it doesn't follow that it is THE grammar, the only grammar, d) we are talking here about a test for Year 2 children who will be either 6 or 7 years old and in order to teach them this, it will be necessary to start on it when some of them will be 5 and still learning to use a pencil or pen.

As my first point, however, the key thing to remember here is that the reason why this is urgent for Nick Gibb to be pronouncing on it is because he and the government are driven by the need to have a 'reliable' (i.e. right/wrong answers) for a test on writing. That is the burden they have given themselves.

As a result of this, these tests for 6/7 year olds and 10/11 year olds have become a kind of gold standard for what makes good writing. I have witnessed it with my own children. In other words, teachers find themselves compelled to use these right/wrong structures from the exams as ways of saying that this or that piece of writing by the children is good writing. For anyone interested in encouraging good writing of all kinds - fiction, drama, poetry, non-fiction accounts, 'persuasive' writing and the rest - this is a key debate to have.

My own view is that the most appropriate and useful way to encourage good writing of all kinds  AT THIS AGE of child is to a) immerse children in texts that they are interested in b) where appropriate spend time investigating and comparing how writers make their texts interesting e.g. through, let's say, comparing the openings of 5 novels, or comparing ways of making things exciting, comparing how we say things with how we write things - and so on. It may well be that by the time most children are in Year 6 (10/11 year olds) that some terminology is appropriate but it's vital that the terminology doesn't turn into writing-by-numbers (i.e. writing-to-fit-the-terminology) - which is precisely what has happened. To be clear: this is not teachers' fault. It's a result of ministers recruiting one set of linguists to do their work for them - and, let's not forget, these are linguists not educationalists, even though some of them have started to pronounce on what children can and can't do, what children should do and should not do on the basis of....what? Their years of studying learning theory? Pedagogy? Face to face with classrooms full of children? No to all these.

Now to the specific matter in hand. If you read Gibb's letter or go online and read the Cambridge grammar on this matter, or the Oxford grammar or the Halliday grammar - you will see a range of ways of talking about exclamations. Here my thoughts:

1. The main reason for the Oxford and Cambridge grammars to be in existence is to help 'English as an additional language' students from all over the world. So, let's say you're French. You know how to 'exclaim' in French and so you might wonder (or you have homework) how to translate ONE of your exclamation structures into the similar or equivalent English exclamation structures (that's how I use my French grammar books). So where you might say 'Quelle surprise!' or 'Quelle jolie pelouse que vous avez!' I can find 'What a surprise!' and 'What a nice lawn you have!' Fine.

2. Young children immersed in English - either because they are native speakers or because they are first language speakers of another language but are immersed in English, do not need to be told how to exclaim. They just do it.

3. Now to the 'grammar'. You will notice from Nick Gibb's letter that the reason why it is confusing is because, like all grammarians, the words he uses to describe the topic (the 'semantic field') of exclaiming is the same word he uses for something very specific referring to one specific 'grammatical' structure - that is 'exclaim' or 'exclamation'.  So - to do him the favour of explaining his explanation - he is saying: 'if you want to exclaim all over the place, feel free to do so, but if we ask  you in a Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Test when you are 6 or 7 years old, do NOT feel free to say that anything with an exclamation mark is an 'Exclamation'. We are saying - in that context of that test - that there is an Exclamation Sentence structure for which there are only two correct answers 1) an exclamation sentence that begins with 'what' and 2. an exclamation sentence that begins with 'how'. Please, dear teachers, critics and children, don't bother me, Nick Gibb, with your criticism that there are many ways of making an exclamation. I know. We experts on 'grammar' are talking about The Exclamation Sentence Structure'. '

To which the grammarians add - 'And indeed there are some other Exclamation Sentence Structures like, for example, the 'Interrogative Exclamation Sentence Structure' as in 'Do I not like that!' but we won't worry you about this just yet.

4. I think this is mostly a) rubbish grammar b) a rubbish way to teach children - and let's never forget, it's only an issue and only an issue we are talking about because of the need by government to have right/wrong answers as a way of evaluating schools and teachers - and this impacts on the daily lives of children, parents and teachers with yet more pressure and anxiety.

a) why rubbish grammar? Because it is purely and simply 'structural'. It is a form of classifying language purely and simply according to what some grammarians figure out are the key repeating structures of a language. This is then put on a plinth ('reified') as a 'rule' and along come government who say, 'Great, we've got a rule, teachers must teach it, pupils must learn it, and we will test it.' This has very little to do with how we use language. We use language to express meaning and to help with our inter-personal needs (broadly 'to get things done in the social world we live in). There is another world of 'grammar' which says that grammar should take all this on board it should be 'semantic' - to do with meaning and 'functional' to do with interpersonal activity.

So, we might say that there is a topic or 'semantic field' of exclaiming. How do we exclaim? In many different ways, is the answer. We do use 'what' and 'how' structures but many, many others. Outside of the world of one particular kind of classification system, there is no need to divvy these up as being more correct or more necessary than any other. In fact, a nice topic for all children would be to collect exclamations and to look at these different ways WITHOUT MAKING ONE MORE SIGNIFICANT, MORE CORRECT, MORE NECESSARY TO LEARN than any other. At best, the only thing you can say about the what/how structure is that you can find equivalents very easily in many other languages.

5. We are left with a mess made up of governmental requirements for right/wrong answers as part of their punishing, judging, naming-shaming-blaming approach to teachers and children; grammarians' need to a) publish easy-to-consume materials for EAL learners; a very narrow way of describing grammatical structure that leaves out the issue of meaning and purpose in our interpersonal activities. If you are a teacher, you have to teach this stuff. All I can suggest is that you do it pragmatically. With the children make a list of what/how exclamations. Collect them from newspapers and books and speech. Say to the children, when it says in the test, 'which of the following is an exclamation?' there will be a list of sentences. If there is one that looks like one of these, tick it.'

Do I think there is any use or purpose for such an activity? Nope. Do I think it will help them analyse language in interesting and useful ways? Absolutely not, because it is misleading and will inevitably lead to new (or old) kinds of pedantry which say that what/how ways of exclaiming are 'right' or 'correct' or are the 'rule'. This is not true. There are 'what' ways of exclaiming. There are 'how' ways of exclaiming. There are 'what+sentence' ways of exclaining. There are 'how+sentence' ways of exclaiming, BUT as any person worldwide knows - and it really is the only interesting thing about this whole matter - there are many ways of exclaiming.

In an ideal world, we should be able to tell these people to get off our backs, to leave us alone, to stop trying to herd the language into categories that don't match meaning and function, and then using this as a means of herding children into categories that suit governments and make life miserable for children, parents and teachers.

This is at the moment a far from ideal world.

This Poem is a Paper Bag

This poem is a paper bag.
If you look inside
it may look as if there's nothing in it
but if you go on looking
you're bound to see something:
a few crumbs, maybe.
You can dig your fingers
down to the bottom
and gather up the crumbs
and eat them.
Mmmm.
Nice.


You can scrunch it up
or fold it up
and take it almost anywhere.
You might be walking along
and you have a thought about
a room or a thumb or a cave.
You could put that in the paper bag.
Or maybe you're walking along
and it's the paper bag you think of.
And the paper bag makes you
think of something else that's like
a paper bag...
like a cave, or a mouth, or a glove.

And you can turn a paper bag into other things
like a paper airplane,
a hat,
or a boat.
A boat that sinks.
Very
slowly.
Never mind.

If you make holes in it
and draw on it
it can be a mask.
Put it on.
Now your head's inside the paper bag.

This poem is a paper bag.

Poem: I Was Born in the Stone Age

I was born in the Stone Age.

When I was at school,

we didn't have chairs or desks,

we sat on rocks,

and we didn't have paper or pens

so Miss used to say, 'Get out your rock'

and then we wrote on rocks with a smaller rock,

or what's called a 'stone'.


Then, I went home

and we didn't have TV in the Stone Age.

We just had a rock.

Mum used to put a rock on top of the rock

and we'd say, 'What's on the rock tonight, Mum?'

She'd say, 'A rock'.

And then we watched 'The Rock'.

We just stared at it for hours.

Then we went to bed.

Which was also a rock.

We just lay on a rock.


Then the Stone Age came to an end.

We woke up one morning and

everyone said, 'The Stone Age's finished.'


You can see that when you look at your timeline

on the wall of your classrooms.

There's The Stone Age.

That's at the beginning of everything. 

The Stone Age is at the start of your timeline

and the Stone Age begins with a line. 

Then comes the Stone Age.

Then there's a line at the end of the Stone Age.

The Stone Age just ends. 

That's how it was for us.

Then along came the next 'Age'.

That one's the Leaf Age or Twig Age or something.

What IS the next 'Age' called?

The Mud Age, I think. 

I should remember...

Anyway,

I was born in the Stone Age.