Yesterday, we received this email from Elle Wild, author:
I am home schooling my child, who is in Year 4 in Canada, and have been following your very useful notes for Moortown school to keep my son on track with the UK curriculum, as he was schooled there for the last 4 years.
I just wanted to give you a heads up that you’ve included a grammar error in your homework for Nov 4th.
The sentence should read, “My cat is seated on the sofa”, not “is sat”. The cat sits, the cat is seated, the cat sat, but the cat should never “be sat”. It’s a confusion of present and past tense.
I hope you won’t mind the comment terribly, and please permit me to say that I am very impressed by the careful planning evident in your weekly reports.
We’ve replied with the following:
Thank you for your email. In particular, thank you for using our site to support the home education of your son. The grammatical issue to which you refer is quite a tricky one, in that it is becoming more and more wide-spread, and I’m sure you’ll know that language is an ever-changing thing!
Part of the cause here is that Moortown Primary and most of the staff are from the north of England (Moortown is in Leeds), as raised here. To exacerbate this, the teacher in question – who’s a fantastic teacher, and one who is passionate about grammar, providing professional development for staff in other schools – is from the north east (not quite Geordie, but heading in that direction), a point raised here. And it may also relate to the deeply embedded class system, ‘sat’ being more working class, as noted here.
That’s not to say you weren’t right in highlighting this to us because of course you’re completely correct here. We do like to be accurate and this will certainly provide food for thought!
Grammar can be tricky, but the internet is a great way to clarify confusion! One of our favourite sites is Grammar Monster.
Find out more about Elle Wild’s new book, Strange Things Done.
PS We’ve corrected the homework article!