LEFTIST CONTEMPT FOR LITERACY

Three current articles below

Grammar guide for English teachers 'full of basic errors'

Amazing illiteracy. A "postmodernist" displays her utter ignorance of her subject. She tries to portray the points mader by Prof. Huddleston as peculiar to him but the reverse is the truth. What he says has been basic to English grammar for hundreds of years -- basic in fact to an undertstanding of any European language (with the possible excerption of Euskara). What hope is there for the kids when this twisted soul is teaching them? -- JR

A teachers' guide to grammar circulated by the English Teachers Association of Queensland is riddled with basic errors, leading an internationally respected linguistics professor to describe it as "the worst published material on English grammar" he has seen. A series of articles on grammar published in the ETAQ's journal intended as a teaching resource is striking for its confusion of the parts of speech, incorrectly labelling nouns as adjectives, verbs as adverbs and phrases as verbs.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston, one of the principal authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, said it took the association about one year to correct the errors, and even then it confined most of the corrections to its website rather than in the journal and did not republish the guide. "These articles contain a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion," he said. "They constitute, without question, the worst published material on English grammar by a native speaker that I have come across. "(The author) clearly does not know enough about English grammar in general to take on work of this kind. "Anyone who analyses 'won't' and 'capable of' as adverbs, 'a pair' and 'set of' as adjectives, or 'Sam's' as a possessive pronoun has no business to be preparing a resource on English grammar for teachers."

The articles, published with the general title Grammar at the Coalface, were prepared by Lenore Ferguson, the editor of the ETAQ journal Words'Worth and published over a series of months last year. Dr Ferguson printed three examples of the errors in the March edition, saying they were "the result of the usual mishaps with work that undergoes several drafts and is proofed and edited by the original writer".

Last night, she told The Australian the points Professor Huddleston identified were differences of opinion rather than mistakes. "They weren't all mistakes as he described but differences of opinion and that's the way of the world," she said. Dr Ferguson said Professor Huddleston did not follow traditional grammar but had invented his own type, called the Cambridge grammar, which was unique and had reclassified terms, such as calling prepositions conjunctions. "It's a totally different perspective and a totally different way of organising and thinking about language," she said.

Dr Ferguson is an education consultant, a former president of the association and has worked as a senior education officer for English in the Queensland Education Department. A CV included with a paper presented at a conference by Dr Ferguson says she has taught in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and has a long history of involvement in curriculum development and professional development at state and national levels.

ETAQ president Garry Collins said the mistakes were "relatively minor" and the association had published an article on grammar by Professor Huddleston in the journal and alerted readers through a newsletter to his longer critiques published on the website. "Ideally the errors wouldn't have been there but these things occur in the best-regulated households," he said. "If coming upon these couple of minor inaccuracies caused teachers to be having conversations about grammar in staff rooms then I would see that as not a bad thing."

Mr Collins accused The Australian of reporting educational issues with a particular slant, representing minority views, and said highlighting the Words'Worth articles would hamper teachers' engagement with grammar. "It would be useful if the paper didn't seize on minority views but try to report in ways which are relevant to what really does happen in classrooms," he said.

Professor Huddleston provided The Australian with a list of 20 defects that summarised the errors in the ETAQ teachers' guide, which take 10 pages of explanation in his reply article on the ETAQ website. "A lot of them are very elementary," he said.

In Dr Ferguson's first article, The Structural Basics, published in March last year, she says "won't" in the sentence "The small boy won't eat his lunch" is an adverb when, in fact, it is a verb. "Sam's" in "Sam's folder" is classified as a possessive pronoun when it is the possessive form of a proper noun; "what" in "They saw what lay before them" was called a conjunction but it is a pronoun; and "a pair" is classified as an adjective instead of a noun group comprising a determiner "a" and a noun "pair". In the sentence, "The small boy is capable of eating his lunch", the term "capable of" is called an adverb when it is not a grammatical unit of any kind but an adjective followed by a preposition.

Similarly, in "a set of bowls", Dr Ferguson calls "set of" an adjective when it consists of the noun "set" and preposition "of". Syntactic constructions such as "have a peep" are classified as verbs, while "something" is classified as a pronoun and "everything" as a noun.

Professor Huddleston said he believed teachers would be discouraged from reading his corrections because it was described in the journal as being "complex, requiring readers to have extensive knowledge of traditional, structural and functional grammars". It also repeatedly refers to traditional grammar as "his grammar".

Source





Class-hatred invades English grammar

The debacle surrounding the resources developed by the English Teachers Association of Queensland, designed to "help teachers to defend and explain the place of grammar in the school curriculum and in our classrooms", underscores our dumbed-down education system. In the words of Rodney Huddleston, a retired professor in linguistics, the material contains "a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion. They (two of the resources) constitute, without question, the worst published material on English grammar by a native speaker that I have ever come across." The errors Huddleston uncovers include confusing adverbs with verbs, adverbs with adjectives and conjunctions with pronouns.

That the material is flawed is partly because of the priority given to a functional linguistics approach to grammar. Functional grammar, similar to critical literacy, is imbued with the view that language has to be analysed in terms of power relationships. Students have to be taught how standard English is used by more powerful groups in society to oppress others. With functional grammar, children are no longer taught things such as parts of speech or how to parse a sentence; instead, the focus is on so-called real meaning and real contexts where language is defined as a socio-cultural construct.

Nouns become participants, verbs are described as process and adverbial clauses and phrases are changed to circumstances. Such is the dense and arcane terminology associated with functional grammar that former NSW premier Bob Carr had it banished from the curriculum. Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford boasted last year in relation to the new English syllabus: "Curriculum waffle is out, clear English is in." It's a pity, however, that he didn't follow Carr's example.

The in-service training for English teachers organised by Education Queensland, while mentioning traditional grammar, gives priority to a functional linguistics approach. In notes titled Getting a Grip on Grammar, verbs, clauses, phrases, nouns, subject and predicate are secondary to descriptions such as processes, participants, circumstances, mood, modality, cohesion and theme. The result? Not only are teachers bamboozled but parents are unable to help with their children's work.

Many of those responsible for training English teachers and writing syllabuses are committed to a progressive, cultural-left approach to English as a subject, represented by functional grammar and critical literacy. As a consequence, not only do most Australian syllabuses fail to include a systematic treatment of formal grammar but many teachers lack the knowledge to deal with thesubject.

No wonder thousands of primary school children start secondary school illiterate, many Year 12 students enter university incapable of writing a lucid essay and employers complain about the language skills ofworkers. In The Literacy Wars, Monash University academic Ilana Snyder condemns me and The Australian for promoting a "manufactured crisis" in English teaching. One wonders what she will make of the latest incident.

Source





Silencing grammar

A mocking editorial from The Australian below:

The precision of our language must be preserved. The "arguability of a text", the English Teachers Association of Queensland told its members in its journal last year, "can vary according to the degree to which the speaker/writer closes down the dialogue to suppress or limit divergence, or opens it up to divergent positions."

Regardless of whatever discourses are foregrounded, marginalised or silenced, however, it cannot be argued, after a dominant or resistant reading of any text, that an adverb is a verb. And while not wanting to privilege traditional grammar rules over a sociocultural critical appraisal model, no amount of licence can turn a pair into an adjective instead of a noun.

Such elementary mistakes, unfortunately, are among the string of errors in articles published in the ETAQ journal last year. Written by consultant Lenore Ferguson, "Grammar at the coal-face" was presented to help when "colleagues, parents, employers and politicians ... accuse us of not knowing or teaching grammar."

Retired University of Queensland professor Rodney Huddleston, one of two principal authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, said it was the worst material on English grammar by a native speaker he had seen. He identified "a huge amount of error, inconsistency and confusion". "Set of" in "a set of bowls" was classified wrongly as an adjective, instead of a noun and preposition. The word "what" in "They saw what lay before them" was described as a conjunction. And "Sam's", in "Sam's folder", was labelled a possessive pronoun instead of a possessive noun.

ETAQ president, Garry Collins, is unconcerned about such "relatively minor" mistakes, and derides The Australian for reporting the matter. However, parents - tired of school handouts dotted with bad spelling and confusing "there" and "their" - will take a more serious view. They and their children will not be surprised at the erudition of some of the learning activities proposed in the articles. These suggest that students identify nouns and verbs by analysing newspaper previews for Home and Away and Neighbours. Pathetic.

Regrettably, what is "silenced" in the ETAQ material is the lifelong importance, for their wellbeing and career advancement, of students from all backgrounds learning to write and speak correctly. Preserving the precision of our language is important, regardless of the ravages of texting, slang and even critical literacy jargon. While language evolves, it needs to do so within acceptable parameters of semantics and rules. "Alternative readings" of what is acceptable risk English degenerating into woolly and imprecise meaninglessness.

If the ETAQ magazine reflects grammar and English teaching generally in Queensland, the state's Education Minister, Rod Welford, should instigate remedial classes - for teachers. Suitable instructors, however, might prove thin on the ground. The ETAQ journal, Words'Worth, would be the last place he should advertise.

Source






Bungling quarantine bureaucrats

A BREAKDOWN at the highest levels of Australia's quarantine system was ultimately responsible for last year's outbreak of horse flu, says the scathing official report into the disaster that cost the racing industry $1 billion. Former High Court judge Ian Callinan QC has delivered a merciless and brutally frank assessment of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services' systems for handling imported horses.

Mr Callinan's recommendations ensure that the running of this year's Melbourne Cup, which was in doubt earlier during his inquiry, can go ahead.

It is understood that the report, to be released today, is critical of AQIS procedures under the Howard government, and has pointed the finger at the Eastern Creek Quarantine Station, in western Sydney, as being the source of the outbreak of equine influenza that swept through NSW and Queensland last August. It is also understood Mr Callinan has been highly critical of senior management of AQIS, and the failure to include the horse industry in disease control laws.

The recommendations from Mr Callinan had the potential to shut down this year's Melbourne Cup if he recommended banning horse imports through Tullamarine, as earlier indicated. But it is expected Mr Callinan will not suggest a ban on Tullamarine horse imports until new quarantine facilities are built at Melbourne's Sandown Quarantine Station. The Rudd Government's response to the Callinan inquiry will also be released today.

After the EI outbreak - tracked back to five mares airlifted from Japan and then spread beyond the Eastern Creek Quarantine station to horses in NSW and Queensland - all Australian racing was stopped for a week. It led to the cancellation of the Sydney Spring Carnival and the Queensland Summer Carnival, threatened the 2007 Melbourne Cup, and stopped breeding and exports, which meant losses of $1billion.

In NSW and Queensland, no metropolitan horse racing was allowed for three months, bans were put on horse transport and the horse industry was disrupted for several months. In NSW alone, 193 thoroughbred race meetings were cancelled and 250 trotting and pacing events were stopped.

John Howard appointed Mr Callinan last year as horse disease legislation to levy the industry to cover the costs of disease containment was introduced in the federal parliament. The horse industry had not been a signatory to animal disease control levies, and Mr Callinan was told of systemic failures in Australia's pre-quarantine assessment procedures and handling of horses.

Mr Callinan gave his report to the Agriculture Minister Tony Burke at the end of April. Mr Burke on Tuesday announced the industry would not have to contribute to the $108 million costs of cleaning up and containing the outbreak. Mr Burke said it would be unfair to make the industry pay through a levy because he would not ask it "to pay for the former government's failures".

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics estimated that the direct costs of the flu outbreak were $500,000 a day for disease control and $4.6million a day in lost business. The total cost of containing the spread of the horse flu and cleaning up after the outbreak, as well as the financial and income assistance provided to the industry and workers, came to $342million.

Mr Burke said the industry had proposed joining the animal disease levy scheme long before the outbreak and the former government had failed to act. But Mr Burke has urged the horse industry to sign "without delay" a scheme for a levy on the industry to pay for future disease outbreaks.

Source





Early warning system delayed, and delayed

Once again we see the stupidity of not buying already proven and running stuff off the shelf. Blind Freddy knows how badly and how regularly new defence projects blow out

PROJECT Wedgetail, Australia's $3.5 billion airborne early warning project, is now officially running three years late. Boeing confirmed yesterday that the first of the six planes would now be delivered in 2010 -- 36 months behind schedule. The Wedgetail project is designed to provide the RAAF with a highly sophisticated airborne surveillance system. When integrated with combat aircraft, refuelling tankers and the Jindalee radar, it will form the critical element of Australia's future air defence.

Australia has been the lead customer for the Wedgetail aircraft. The first aircraft, based on the Boeing 737-700 airliner, were due to be delivered in January last year. Wedgetail is one of four Boeing-managed programs currently on the Defence Materiel Organisation list of troublesome projects. They include a $600million project to modernise the defence force's high-frequency communications system, and Project Vigilare, a $130million contract to create a new air defence command and control system for the RAAF.

Source