How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 2, Example 2

Towards the end of How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 2, Example 1, I mentioned a very simple sentence,  'Alan and George work / works as a team'. If I tell you that the Speak Good English Movement is unable to get this sentence right, you probably won't believe me.

Here is a shot I took of the page from the Speak Good English Movement's book aptly titled, English as it is Broken.

This is what the Speak Good English Movement teaches in its grammar book. To them, the plural verb work is not the only correct answer but the singular verb works 'is acceptable' as long as you look at both Alan and George as a team. Using the plural verb is not mandatory but it's only 'easier for your listeners'. And they liken 'Alan and George' to 'bread and butter' and 'fish and chips'! I dealt with this error at greater length in a previous blog post. 

I hope you can understand my despair when I try to correct the grammar of the Speak Good English Movement. It's so bad that I usually don't know where to begin.

If you see such a book in the hands of your child or if he or she has a teacher who is as ignorant of basic grammar as this grammar book is, there is only one course of action you should take. Discard the book and dismiss the teacher. If you don't, you can forget about your child scoring an A-star in English at the PSLE. He'll be lucky if he even passes the paper. This is a fundamental rule that you must observe without compromise.

The Speak Good English Movement is notorious for not understanding the rules on basic grammatical concord. They have made many other such mistakes in their book alone. I'm reminded of a blog post I once wrote that shows their startling lack of knowledge of this aspect of grammar. 

If I still haven't convinced you that the Speak Good English Movement's knowledge of English grammar is no greater than your knowledge of Inuit grammar and your children should never be allowed to look at their grammar book or visit their website, I'll drop one more bombshell - they can't even get simple tenses right. You are probably saying to yourself, 'Surely the Movement can't possibly be ignorant of simple tenses? That's as basic as you can get!' My reply to you is simply - read on.

1. The Speak Good English Movement and the present perfect tense.

In the same grammar book, there is a question asked by the public as to when you may use the following sentences:

1. I had written to my friend.
2. I have written to my friend.

Since I'm on the topic of the present perfect tense, I'll focus only on sentence No. 2. Here is the answer given in the grammar book:

Situation 2 is called the present perfect tense. It's used to describe events that occurred at a non-specific time in the past and continues into the present. For example, I have written my friend (in the past) a letter a day since she left (you are still writing even now).

They are asked how the sentence 'I have written to my friend' may be used and their reply is when the present perfect is used, you are still writing the letter even now! It's obvious they have no clue what the present perfect is all about and the example they give is not only totally different from the question asked, it's ungrammatical! It's obvious they have not the foggiest when sentence No. 2 should be used and so they changed the sample sentence drastically and in the process, their entire sentence is ungrammatical.

2. The Speak Good English Movement and the past perfect tense.

In the same grammar book, the Speak Good English Movement is asked whether a sentence containing the past perfect tense is used correctly.

I cannot believe anyone who has even a sketchy knowledge of English tenses would possibly write the answer above. That answer is enough to support my assertion that the Speak Good English Movement clearly does not know anything about the past perfect tense. I hope you can now see how justified I am when I say that the Speak Good English Movement has major problems with their tenses and they find it impossible to give simple examples of the use of the present perfect and the past perfect without making grammatical mistakes themselves.

Perhaps you think that the Movement has taken steps to brush up its grammar and it's not as bad as it used to be when the grammar book was written? Sadly, that's not the case. Just last year, the Movement posted on their website their List of Partner Programmes 2014.  This is what they wrote for one of their partners:

After all these years, they still don't know how to use the present perfect tense correctly.

I hope you are now convinced that you must write the Speak Good English Movement off if you are serious about helping your children do well in their exams. Let me be fair to the Speak Good English Movement. Its members are, I believe, wonderful people who genuinely want to help Singaporeans speak and write better English. But alas, they are not equal to the task. Their ignorance of basic English grammar is astounding. If my kids had in their earlier years been at all influenced by the books and website of the Movement, I very much doubt if they could have even come close to an A-star in their PSLE English. Parents must do all they can to ward off the pernicious influence that the Movement may have on their children.  Because the Speak Good English Movement has the support of the Ministry of Education, they cast a wide influence over all our schools. You don't have to be antagonistic. Just go through the books and stationery. While the Movement may not have much knowledge of English grammar, they are certainly quite resourceful in other ways and they may distribute colourful stickers and stationery which are perfectly fine except that if there are words on them, you should read through everything carefully and if there are grammatical errors, you should bring them to your children's attention. A pencil that has on it the sentence 'Alan and George works as a team' is still a good pencil. I've seen Japanese stationery with meaningless words. I once saw on a Japanese pencil box the words (and I kid you not) 'Smile are the heart of flower'. It was quite a good pencil box too, I'm sure. As long as your children think of the Speak Good English Movement as nothing more than a stationery provider  like a Japanese stationery manufacturer, they should be fine.

It is obscene to let the Movement continue to ruin the nation's command of the language. They may be a source of amusement to us but think of the harm they cause to students who may not know better and may actually defer to their opinion. There are clear instances of such harm done to students in their grammar book which I will talk about in my subsequent posts.

But right now, I have to proceed with How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 3, Example 1 (under construction). In this post, I will explain what you should do when you encounter a seemingly convoluted grammar rule cited by a teacher or a book but you have this niggling suspicion that it's all bunkum. How can you tell that the rule is made up by the teacher and there really is no such rule in English grammar? For a change, I will leave the Movement's grammar book for the moment and pick an example from the English language blog of Ludwig Tan, the Vice-Dean of the School of Arts & Social Sciences at SIM University and, I believe, a consultant or former consultant to (surprise! surprise!) the Speak Good English Movement.

If you want a summary of all the articles I've written in this blog about the ridiculous language errors of the Speak Good English Movement and others, visit my one-page blog post that has the links to all these articles neatly categorised.

How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 2, Example 1

This How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond series will, I hope, provide an antidote to students against the pernicious effect of the outrageous errors of the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore.

RULE 2 - If an educator (whether he's a teacher or a writer of a grammar book or a member of Singapore's Speak Good English Movement) is unable to get the basics of grammar right, you know he's not fit to teach you grammar.

You will remember that in Rule 1, you are told to stay away from a grammar book written under the auspices of the Speak Good English Movement. I have warned you that you can neither depend on the book nor on the website of the Speak Good English Movement for any pointer on English grammar and usage.

The Movement is notorious for getting just about every aspect of the English language wrong, even if it's a simple point of grammar and they have a 50% chance of getting it right. I have shown this elsewhere in my previous blog (please go to the link below).

In this post, the example I will give is a common mistake - the confusion over when to use 'who' and 'whom'. It is forgivable if a student is confused over these two simple words but English teachers and certainly the Speak Good English Movement have no excuse to get it wrong especially when we are dealing with a situation where a sentence is given to them for their consideration and they have a long enough time to consider it before publishing it in a book that has undergone as many as 10 editions; this disgraceful book is a national bestseller and school children are all encouraged to buy it.

Here is an excerpt from the book I've warned you in Rule 1 about:

This is the shocking answer given in the Movement's grammar book. Whenever you see such a grave error in a language book and over such an elementary point of grammar too, you should forthwith dismiss the book.  I'm not demanding perfection. I would readily overlook such a mistake in an unprepared conversation or an impromptu speech but this is a book on grammar and usage and the person who answered this question (touted to be a 'language specialist' from the Ministry of Education) would have had ample time to think over the question carefully. 

But this is not the only time the Speak Good English Movement blunders on whether to use 'who' or 'whom'. They seem strangely plagued by the who/whom problem and many other language problems which you will see if you follow this series in my blog.

Here is a screen capture from the Speak Good English Movement's webpage of an excerpt of an official speech made by its Chairman, Goh Eck Kheng, at a Press Conference. This is quite obviously a prepared official speech. There are other errors in the speech but I'll single out only the 'who(m)' problem for the purpose of this article.

You will see above that I have underlined 'whom' in red where it is incorrectly used. I would not have bothered to bring this up if not for the fact that their grammar book has the same mistake. This proves my point that this simple 'who / whom' problem is one of the MANY problems in grammar that the Speak Good English finds insurmountably difficult.

It's not difficult to spot this error. You just have to apply your mind to the passage as you read it.  My advice to students and parents is simply to stay away from any book on English or any English teacher who can't get 'who' and 'whom' right. The Speak Good English Movement is notorious for their bad English. Their grammar book contains many other examples of similar errors which I have pointed out elsewhere in this blog. Consistent with their confusion over 'who' and 'whom' is the Movement's apparent inability to sort out what is called the grammatical case, ie when to use the correct pronoun eg 'he' or 'him', 'they' or 'them' and so on. There are quite a few examples of this problem in their book and I dealt with one such instance in my blog in this post.

To summarise, Rule 2 is to avoid those who can't even get their basic grammar right. I have shown you the example of this inexplicable confusion the Movement seems to have over when to use 'who' and 'whom'. Together with this problem is their confusion about when to use 'they' and 'them' which I won't enlarge on here. Click the above link if you are interested.

But I'm not done with Rule 2 yet. In my next post, I will show how bad the Movement really is. I promise you that you will hardly be able to believe what you will next see with your own eyes. Do you say, 'Alan and George work / works as a team'? Surely this is something even our kids at kindergarten are unlikely to get wrong. Can you guess what the grammar book of the Speak Good English Movement says the answer is? Be sure to read my next post and that will be:

How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 2, Example 2

If you want a summary of all the articles I've written in this blog about the ridiculous language errors of the Speak Good English Movement, visit my one-page blog post that has the links to all these articles neatly categorised.

How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 1

This How to Excell in English at PSLE and Beyond series will, I hope, provide an antidote to students against the pernicious effect of the outrageous errors of the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore.

RULE 1 - Stay away from the worst book on English grammar and usage that the world has ever seen. And it's not just one book. The work comes in two volumes. Here it is:

I've written in this blog about 60 articles against English as it is Broken Parts 1 & 2. Almost every page of both volumes contains a serious error and it may very well be an error even a ten-year-old child would not make. If you are interested in reading what I have written more fully about the many blunders of this work and other educators, please click here for a one-page user-friendly post with all the links to my articles on the subject.

Who is responsible for this disgraceful book? This is what the back cover of one volume proudly says:

The Speak Good English Movement is very much to blame. For the same reason, you must avoid their website on the English language like the plague. I have shown in my blog on numerous occasions the kind of mistakes they make in their website. These are basic errors that nobody who can even speak simple English should make.

In this series, I hope to explain how you may spot errors made by the likes of the Speak Good English Movement and the language specialists from the Ministry of Education who also had a part in writing the aptly named English as it is Broken. It's only when you've trained yourself to spot errors made by ignoramuses who are falsely touted as 'experts' that you are able to tell your kids if a teacher is right or wrong. And you won't do what Nadine Yap did - she posted what she thought was an error by her child's teacher on her Facebook wall which attracted hordes of morons from all over the world who knew nothing about grammar but were quite eager to crucify the teacher who happened to be correct. If you are interested in reading more about that shameful incident, I wrote 3 posts on this blog: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

To summarise, Rule 1 is you must avoid rotten language books and websites especially when they are riddled with grave errors on every page. If you should see either volume or worse, both volumes in your child's room, remove them with a pair of tongs and discard them immediately. And don't visit the Speak Good English Movement's website unless you want to have a good laugh and you want to see the hilarious mistakes they make.

But how do you know when a book or a website is full of errors? That's what I will deal with in great detail in my subsequent posts. In How to Excel in English at PSLE and Beyond - Rule 2, I will explain how you can be alert to errors made by people who really don't know much about English grammar but for reasons I can't understand are eager to teach the entire nation what they have no clue of.