One father's plea (For English grammar to be taught)

A Toronto father was relate toed that his adult daughter attended public place of educations to Grade 13 but was at no time taught English grammar and syntax.

She learned by what mode to express herself and by what means to emote, but she not ever learned that sentences must have the one and the other a subject and a predicate," writes Robert D Katz in a Globe and Mail article. "She received A's in her English courses, on the other hand she never learned that apostrophes create possessives or that commas with dots upon top are punctuation marks. Not until university did she meeting professors who demanded that she write English."

Mr Katz goe upon to explain that none of his daughter's teachers were dolts. "Some earnestly believed that grammar, punctuation, and argumentation would stifle students' creativity; others were young teachers whose be in possession of educations had omitted English structure"

When his younger daughter started junior high place of education he wanted to enroll her in a place of education that taught English. When he asked educators which institute to choose he was told: "We don't teach English grammar; it's against board policy."

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There are intelligent working nation who will never receive a promotion because they cannot write a disciplinary memorandum, a business alphabetic character or a job description. There are eager salespeople who cannot close deals because they cannot prepare clear, unambiguous contracts. Conscientious clerical workers are confined to boring, routine piece of works because they lack sufficient grammatical skills to become secretaries.

Grammar does matter!"

Copyright Canada and The World May 1994

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