Jazz, you said: She says that the problem is that most teachers find grammar utterly boring
This is probably true. It's not the most interesting subject in the world to teach. And pupils generally don't want to learn it, either.
Often, I think, pupils think that because they can speak the language they know all they need to. I think everyone on this board would know better, including you.
A lack of interest in teaching and learning in any subject means that you wind up with a situation where the teacher pretends to teach, the pupil pretends to learn, and honour is satisfied.
The downstream effects are pretty obvious.
When I was teaching business analysis and design, I would not pass any student who couldn't write a sentence, capital letter, full stop, commas in appropriate places and all. I made any student who didn't plan a report do it again. The most dreaded thing I could do, I've been told was to scrawl across the front page of an assignment: "Incomprehensible and illiterate - see me". Not my usual approach to teaching, but most students felt that they were pretty crash hot at writing. It took shock treatment to make them see otherwise.
Since in any given academic year of two semesters I would have had, perhaps, twenty students who were in this category, the Remedial English Department had a lot of customers.
It didn't make me popular, but it means that those students will be less embarrassed in the work place. A lot of them have thanked me since, but there are a few who still snarl when they see me ...
You said further on: The problems that she finds aren't usually spelling (that's fixed by computer spell checks now)
Sorry, disagree. As an example, a spell checker will tell you if you have misspelt a word, but it won't tell you if it's the wrong word - e.g. hare, hair and here to provide a simplistic example. Spell checkers should be banned until the user is able to spot their own mistakes! Did you see Faldage's take on Little Red Riding Hood? That's spell-checking for you.
OP
