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I can see these problems steadily becoming worse out here in Oz. They stopped teaching grammar here before I started school in the early 1970's, so now we have two generations that have basically no idea, and it shows. It isn't taught formally in primary school, and in high school it's just assumed that students already know as much grammar as they need. (The only attempt at a grammar lesson that I got in high school was a note on one of my compositions in English class telling me that I should investigate the use of colons and semicolons, as they would be well-suited to my style of writing.) Our universities are starting to complain very vocally about the poor standard of grammar and spelling in students' writing, and some are starting to insist on emergency grammar lessons for new students.
Apparently grammatical instruction was dropped because it was "too hard" and would make those kids who aren't academically inclined feel bad about themselves. It seems that no-one thought that grammar is a useful thing to understand when you're learning another language - which is ironic, given that Australia prides itself on being a multicultural society.
I really feel like I was short-changed by whoever put together our English curriculum.
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Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you wanna keep fighting evil today.
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