[etni] Grammar needs hip operation

Grammar needs hip operation
The Australian - January 28, 2009

FOR many over-50s, the word "grammar" conjures memories of stultifying 
lessons in parsing and analysis, red marks over a composition, the faint 
odour of unhappiness in classrooms. For younger ones, it suggests the lost 
knowledge teachers reach for in moments of difficulty with a sentence. 
Either way, she seems a dated dame.

As the national curriculum party gathers, grammar arrives, blowsy in her 
'50s-style dress, keen to reacquaint herself with old friends in English. 
There are few familiar faces: media teachers raving about the performance 
poetry of Taalam Acey or the YouTube cartoon called "Beached Whale", 
functional linguists talking to critical literacy "experts" and 
post-structuralists arguing about problems of logocentrism in English.

The old girl might dismiss them as riff-raff but even she would recognise 
that English has changed since she was last at the party. Students study 
Shakespeare's plays in folio and film, essayist argument and the blog, the 
novel and the website. It's crowded inhere!

But it's not all beer and skittles at this party. Australia is distinctive 
among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for 
its long tail of students who are unable to process - much less understand - 
the texts of which English brags. And problems of access are not confined to 
students in low socioeconomic enclaves. Even middle-class parents find it 
increasingly difficult to help their children produce successful assignments 
in a discipline so different from the one they studied. And, so, grammar is 
back; hauled out of retirement to help, no, to party.

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24971662-12332,00.html  )



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