friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

What I would have liked to have learned in English classes at school:

  • Grammar.
  • The history of how the language evolved from one with a rich conjugation and case system into the vastly structurally simpler one we have now.
  • Points of convergence and divergence with other languages, closely related or not. How did that happen?
  • How to speak and write beautifully and precisely with rhetorical flourishes if needed

What I actually learned in English classes at school:

  • Thomas Hardy really hated women.

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in reply to James Baillie

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Alexandra Lanes

@James Baillie @Ozzy The OU is my first academic institution to attempt to teach me how to write an essay. School seemed concerned that it had five paragraphs but didn’t care much beyond that. And Cambridge just assumed you either already had every academic skill required or would figure it out.
@Ozzy @James Baillie
in reply to Sarah Brown

mastodon - Link to source

simon gray

When I was at school English language lessons were firmly separated from English Literature, and it wasn’t until English language A Level (which I didn’t do) that you got the really interesting linguistics stuff. It was always a running joke at the time that in 11–16 education one learned most of one’s proper English grammar from doing foreign languages.
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