RVUED> ATEG members:

RVUED> In your opinion, is it necessary to have
RVUED> direct grammar instruction at the
RVUED> elementary school level, ...?

Perhaps it isn't directly relevant, but my children, seven and five,
are Arabic/English bilinguals. They are in an Arabic medium school in
Riyadh and receive eight hours French instruction per week.

I have noticed that formal grammar rules form an integral part of both
Arabic and French (native and foreign language) instruction at their
school and this appears to be the general practice in the Arab world.
By the third grade children can already distinguish verbs from nouns,
describe the function and use of adverbs and adjectives, and they know
the technical vocabulary of grammar in both languages.

I am teaching English grammar at one of Riyadh's universities. This
task is made considerably easier by students' unfailing knowledge of
the core concepts of formal grammar and by their familiarity with the
Arabic terminology used to describe it.

English is, of course, not the same as French or Arabic and it is
quite impossible to write either of these languages correctly without
a sound understanding of "traditional rules of grammar". English is,
nevertheless, very subtle and it seems to me unreasonable to expect
anyone to use it well who has not been taught how it works.

There are degrees of literacy. One of the cultural problems of the
English speaking world is that it is cut away from its sources, from
the common experience of the English speaking peoples spanning some
seven centuries. That experience is contained, for the most part, in
books, and most of those books are inaccessible to all but a fortunate
few. The reason for that is obvious, at least to me.


Omar

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