Linguists have long considered grammar to be the glue of language, and key to how children learn it. But new prose-writing AIs suggest language experience may be more important than grammar.
It isn’t a matter of choosing between teaching grammar or teaching students to use their imagination in their writing. In fact, it makes sense to show them how grammar can enhance their creativity.
Humans are constantly changing our languages in terms of sounds, words, meanings, and grammar, so much so that it becomes increasingly difficult to understand our own distant relatives across time and space.
(Unsplash/Lucrezia Carnelos)
Our children should no longer be taught formulaic writing. Writing education should encompass skills that go beyond the capacities of artificial intelligence.
Children begin to learn grammar well before they start school, when they craft their first short sentences.
RonTech2000/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Grammar isn’t a way to bully people for making mistakes, says a longtime English instructor. It is a way to understand how our language operates, in all its many written and spoken varieties.
Grammatical metaphor is different to what we understand to be “metaphor”. It’s a way of converting words and shortening clauses, so more information can be packed into fewer characters.
A new book, which weaves fiction into the origin story of the Oxford English Dictionary, was declared a hit even before its release. Readers will judge whether it lives up to the hype.
The conventions used in texting and tweeting are fundamentally altering how people communicate, but many language apps still rely on old-school English-language grammar.
Philip Pullman thinks this coin needs another comma. What do you think?
HM Treasury/PA