I have long lamented the decline of ‘grammatics’ (oh, the irony) and the wider ambivalence toward the use of the English language in today’s society, especially amongst our “yoof”. Of particular personal irritation is the increasing prevalence of “sms-speak” as written language.

I abhor this – a guy I know is the editor of a prominent industry publication and whilst his published material is great, his emails are written in this ‘text’ language and it shits me no end. I can understand the argument of it being a less onerous form of communicating, I really can, but I think when your everyday writing is of a sub-standard nature, it won’t be too long before your other writing begins to suffer.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect and even enjoy the evolution of language and communication, but I think lines need to be drawn and this is where I would draw a line if I was able.
Moving on from that rant, I came across this today and enjoyed the discussion it provoked:

Grammar can be fun, academics insist

If only learning grammar wasn’t so dull. It comes with a dour technical language and visions of students plodding through sentences, tagging this word and that phrase.

“A lot of grammar teaching is as boring as bat shit,” says Monash University lecturer Baden Eunson frankly. “That’s why it got ditched in Australia about 30 years ago.”

He would like to see a return to the assessment of English language on exam papers and a beefing-up of VCE English’s language component.

Currently English is taught using “The Books I Like to Teach” approach, he says. “The osmosis theory is that if you study enough books, you’ll learn how to write – and that works to a certain extent.”

However, grammar can be taught in an enjoyable way. “If you talk to students about misplaced prepositional phrases, their eyes glaze over,” says Mr Eunson. “But if you show them the humorous side of poor construction, they laugh, and you say: ‘OK, you don’t want people to laugh at you. Now, let’s talk about how it all works’.”

He suggests using real-life examples, including his old favourite – “A man was fined today for speeding in court.” Was he really fined for sprinting in a courtroom?

Or this newspaper gem: “Prince Andrew finally broached the subject of leaving his wife with the Queen in January.” Was he dropping off his wife for a visit – or for life?

“If you present problems like these to students, they love it, particularly boys, because it’s a problem-solving approach,” says Mr Eunson.

According to Victoria University’s Mary Weaven, learning grammar “doesn’t need to be frightening or even difficult”. Nowadays it’s also very easy to access information about it, including via the internet.

Last year she taught Approaches to Writing, which included a component on grammar, to bachelor of education students. They were aged from about early 20s to late 40s, and their knowledge of grammar ranged from rusty to very good, but all were keen to brush up on their skills.

Over the semester, each student researched a part of speech – transitive/intransitive verbs, colons, conjunctions, apostrophes, direct/indirect speech – then “taught” it to the class.

It led to lively discussions about how these should be used and the most appropriate ages to teach them to children. (Dr Weaven even “threw in the gerund for fun”).

“I believe you may be a better teacher of reading and writing if you have some knowledge of grammar, but ‘drilling’ it didn’t work,” she says. “Also, being literate is more than being able to use a colon in the right place . . . and teaching English is about more than the mechanics. It also involves an understanding of literature.”

In 2005, a study by Professor Richard Andrews from the University of York found no evidence to suggest that the teaching of traditional grammar, specifically word order or syntax, was effective in assisting writing quality or accuracy of five- to 16-year-olds.

Found this, and chuckled a little:

Whilst my timeline of January 31st wasn’t met, I have made some progress on the outline and planning for my novel.  I have a protagonist and a lovely set of challenges for him to face – though his reward at this stage is still undecided. His associates have been sketched and they’re an interesting bunch for sure!

I’ll try and post on the progress of this project as I get through it, though I do intend to take the full year to write the first draft so don’t be getting too excited just yet…

So… my laptop has been out of action for quite some time, around a year. During that time I was using my fiance’s which is a great little unit in itself, but, well, it wasn’t my laptop.

It didn’t have my stuff on it. It wasn’t set up the way I like mine. It wasn’t always around when I wanted to use it (she uses it for her work as well as home).

So I bit the bullet and arranged for mine to be repaired. After extending the warranty, four (yes, FOUR!) service technicians came over one by one, all replacing different parts, until finally the last bloke managed to fix it. Basically they replaced all the major parts (motherboard, fan, CPU, RAM, DVD drive, video card, palmrest) and now it’s good as new! I did a reformat and have rebuilt from scratch, just to make a fresh start.

The point of sharing all this is that I now have my setup back, and the flexibility to do things when I think of them rather than holding on and then forgetting. This means good things for you, dear readers, as I will be able to ‘play’ with this site a bit more and maybe do some fun things. Don’t exactly know what yet, but fun will be had, to be sure!