What a Disaster! – 81% failure in reading for meaning in Grade Four.
To help with this situation, Busy Bee Editing is presenting a Free basic course in fundamental principles governing English Language usage.
(This course is intended to help teachers and parents to demonstrate and explain the workings of the English language in words that children can understand.)
- A noun is a word referring to a thing, a person or an idea , such as a ball, a table, a book or even an idea.
- e.g. the boy picked-up the ball. Ball is a noun.
- A sentence is a collection of words that describes what is happening. e.g. the boy picked up the ball.
- Man is a noun.
- Picked-up is the verb and ball is a noun.
- The fundamental building block of the English language is a sentence, comprising a noun, followed by a verb, followed by another noun.
- It conveys a precise meaning that cannot be misunderstood and cannot mislead the reader.
8. (Straightforward sentences such as in the above example should form the basic building block of all English writing. These principles can be taught easily by teachers and parents. (see item 10 below). If learners do not have sufficient access to books at home or in school, ebooks on Amazon can be downloaded, viewed and taught by teachers and parents at a very reasonable cost.)
Moving on:
9. Pronouns: A pronoun stands in place of a noun, because it is unnecessary and irritating to the reader to quote names repetitively if readers and writers know which pronoun to use in place of a noun.
Pronouns include words such as he, she, it, they etc.
e.g. if a writer has earlier referred to a person such as Mr Brown, he can be used to replace Mr Brown.
Mr Brown, a very nasty man kept the ball that had been accidentally thrown over the wall, just because he wanted to be spiteful.
10. Vocabulary
If your family is lucky enough to live in an area where there is a book exchange or a second-hand bookshop, then parent and child can go there together and buy children’s books at a reasonable price. Alternatively, your child could swap books with friends, to save costs. Reading children’s books pitched at the right age is the best way to improve vocabulary.
11. Prepositions: are words that introduce the location of something. such as; on, under, through, and even words referring to time such as during or after …
12. Adverbs: are words that provide additional information about verbs, and phrases such as overnight, extremely, clearly, horribly, and so on …
13. Adjectives: are words that describe nouns such as beautiful, creative, beneficial, lively etc.
If you are lucky enough to be born into a family of readers, you should take advantage of that by following in their footsteps and reading as much as you can; because being proficient in English will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life.
We will continue publishing blogposts like this one because it is totally unacceptable for children in South Africa to be so deficient in English reading and writing skills.
Recent Comments