US Edition Teacher: Il n'avait pas mangé – what tense is this in?
Pupil: Past?
Teacher: Perfect.
Pupil: Thanks!
Teacher: No, it's past perfect.
Pupil: What?
It's quite probable that, for many students, the first time they hear about the present or past perfect (pluperfect), is in a foreign language class. Suddenly, new grammatical terminology appears, seemingly out of the blue, to dazzle and perplex.
'Past perfect', what's perfect about it, when do I use this strangely named tense and why is French so difficult?
I have little doubt that if I had come across these terms in English first, I wouldn't have been half so daunted by the grammar.
The revised National Curriculum, due to be introduced into classrooms in September 2014, goes some way towards addressing this problem.
Year 1 pupils will be introduced to plural noun suffixes, suffixes that are added to verbs and the associated changes in spelling that are needed.
I'm no grammarian, in fact I – along with the majority of my French class – found the study of grammar intimidating and, on the whole, fairly inaccessible. But was this simply because I had little knowledge of English grammatical terms?
Our sixth form English class could construct (fairly) coherent essays analysing the language of Chaucer but – as our teacher found out to his despair one afternoon – we couldn't pick out the subject and object in a sentence. If we couldn't do this in English, what hope did we have in French?
Struggle with 'who' and 'whom'? If you know that 'whom' is an object pronoun – and you know what the 'object' of a sentence is – the whole aggravating issue becomes much easier to cope with.
Obviously, much of what we know in English becomes second nature as we learn the language, meaning there is, arguably, little need to know the grammatical terminology. However, I can't help thinking that foreign language learning would have been easier if our teacher hadn't had to teach the basics in English first.
As primary schoolteacher, Sara Wernham, writes: "If you are going to have any hope of writing a sentence in German using an interrogative adverb, or even one using an interrogative adjective, then it helps if you know what an adverb or an adjective is in the first place."
In the revised curriculum, Year 2 pupils will be introduced to the correct use of the present and past tenses and the use of the progressive form of verbs in the present and past. They should be able to recognise adjectives, adverbs and noun phrases.
By the time they reach the end of Year 6, pupils should be able to use the passive and the subjunctive and in May last year, pupils this age sat the new spelling, grammar and punctuation test for the first time.
It's too late for me, but maybe, just maybe, this new curriculum will deliver an added bonus of making foreign language grammar a little less daunting.
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Quiz questions were created using An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage by Leech, Cruickshank and Ivanic