Friday 21 March 2014

Self Study Suggestion - Reading: The Importance of Grammar

"A 15-year-old boy made headlines last week after writing a passionate letter of complaint to Tesco regarding bad grammar on its bottles of orange juice. Tesco claimed it used the "most tastiest" oranges, rather than "tastiest", "most tasty" or "distinctly average".
The fact it was deemed newsworthy shows how rare it is to see enthusiastic pedantry at such a young age (especially if there's no strong family history of it). But before any grammar enthusiasts get excited, he admitted language was not the only motivation – he expected some Tesco vouchers for his ordeal.
Grammar rarely makes headlines, and when it does it's often due to conflict over something the size of an apostrophe. But there's a much greater issue that needs addressing. We complain that children cannot construct a sentence as they used to, but this nostalgic attitude towards literacy abilities has always been around. What we need to focus on is grammar's reputation among the young."

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