You Are Not Alone

Berit Aberg, an elementary school teacher from Skovde, Sweden, was one of 28 teachers to receive the European Union’s “Tongue Stories” award for highlighting linguistic diversity.  A report in the local newspaper, The Local, wrote that, “… she said she was troubled by a trend she sees in her classroom of six to seven-year-olds: Too many young people fail to grasp the language basics they’ll need in order to succeed in their future.”

This is a key concern of many American teachers (at all levels, not just elementary) today as well.  This post is does not propose an answer to why this is happening, but to pose the question.  How could it be that students in many countries are not learning the “language basics” which are so important to their abilities to read, write, and speak, and thus to their future success?

linguistics, linguistics in the classroom, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, Syntax, teaching grammar

Historical Linguistics, Miscellaneous, Syntax