Why We Can't Read

[kalon]

I didn't know the best title to give this thread, so that's what I came up with. To quote the President of these United States:[QUOTE=President Bush]?The illiteracy [B]level[/B] of our children [B]are[/B] appalling.?

?And when we find children trapped in schools which will not teach and will not change, as a society we must demand something better, because there [B]is[/B] [sic] no second-rate [B]children[/B] in America.?
[/QUOTE]

Why are there so many illiterates in the US? I adore the English language; English and Latin are the only subjects I like. I know that makes me a biased, but I can admit it is a weird language with many awkward rules. I can completely understand why someone who has to learn it from scratch has trouble with it. That being said, I still don't understand why people who speak English all their lives have so much trouble with it as adults.

No offense to the teachers, but I think some of the problem lies with them. My eighth grade teacher spent the entire year teaching us what nouns and verbs were. My Latin teacher had to spend most of her time teaching us our own language so we could do the Latin. Few teachers have ever mentioned infinitives, gerunds, or proper formation of verb tenses, and if they touched on those subjects it was not at all in-depth.

To quote the President again:[quote name='President Bush']?To those of you who receive honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say: you too can be president.? [/quote]

He went to Yale and received an MBA from Harvard, yet he himself cannot speak proper English. That scares me a little.

I would like to know your thoughts on this subject. Why can't the Americans who haved lived here all their lives read, write, and speak properly in English? I'm not trying to pick on anyone; I just want to know what the problem is.

EDIT: I just realized, the fact that there is not one single bookstore selling new books in Columbia, TN, may be part of the problem. Walmart *shudders* is our biggest source for reading material. That depresses me.

[Starwind]

Now, I'm not saying that this may be the only reason, but this is the first one that comes to mind for me. Perhaps it's if in face of up bringing. The poverty levels in America are also appalingly high, so many people, teens inparticular, are turning there backs on school at an early age to try and make money. Now obviously, not all are criminals, but a good majority are. Or live in and around high crime areas.

Am I saying that we need to help all those pan handling 30 somethings you see on the street. No. But that's not the discussion here. What I'm getting at is taht we need to try and help the kids. Those who have no other real opportunities for self advancement. If your biggest worry as a kid is: When's your next meal? Then your not gonna be very school oriented if you catch my drift.

This is just my opinion on the matter, and I realize there are many other possible factors in play, but this is just the most disstressing one for me.

[Caine]

When it comes down to it, the president didn't go to Yale and Harvard because he was smart, he went there because he was rich. Ther rich can buy there way in and many of the poor don't care and don't have any decent education offered to them.

[kalon]

[quote name='Caine']When it comes down to it, the president didn't go to Yale and Harvard because he was smart, he went there because he was rich. Ther rich can buy there way in and many of the poor don't care and don't have any decent education offered to them.[/quote]

True, Bush senior paid for his son to get into school, but you would think he would absorb some learning. I am extremely disappointed by him not speaking proper English.

Although they usually have a big influence on each other, money and grades are not always related. I think it is what you are exposed to. My mother loves to read and is very intelligent, so I grew up learning lots of random facts from her. Your environment impacts much of what you learn.

My mother only makes $15,000 a year, and she is a single parent. Meaning if I do not get a scholarship, there is no way I am getting into a really good college. Personally, though, it has not made my learning ability decrease. I took Advanced English and made 103. I have a right to expect the President to speak his language correctly.

[Dagger]

[QUOTE=silver_blade]
Few teachers have ever mentioned infinitives, gerunds, or proper formation of verb tenses, and if they touched on those subjects it was not at all in-depth.[/QUOTE]
In my experience, it's sort of assumed that you'll develop some kind of natural knowledge of grammar. By the time they actually get around to teaching it, most people are beyond hope. Maybe they should introduce some of these concepts at a much younger age, but that would require curriculum changes and a lot of extra work at a time when many school systems are struggling just to stay afloat.

I remember what a gerund is, but my sentence-diagramming skills have been completely lost to the sands to time. I still don't have a handle on the who/whom issue, and I only recently realized that I can't simply use [i]which[/i] whenever I feel like it (although I tend to guiltily throw one or two in when my [i]that[/i]s start getting excessive). But in the past, I always scored well on grammar-related stuff, even though I was answering everything with my intuition. I think that's mainly because I grew up as a huge bookworm; seeing grammatical rules in action gave me an ingrained sense of what's grammatically right and wrong.

I still make my fair share of mistakes, but I can tell you that the lessons I absorbed unconsciously through reading are what stuck with me, whereas I've been told the who/whom rule countless times and still seem unable to retain it. Sitting down and having grammatical terms & rules methodically banged into one's head is probably a necessary part of the process for adults learning English as a second language. However, I don't think it's particularly effective with English-speaking students, and that type of instruction tends to come too little and too late.

So I think it would be most effective to make sure that elementary and middle school teachers are trained in how to deal with struggling readers and to promote a love of reading. As you become comfortable with reading, you become increasingly comfortable with the language, and the essential grammatical rules should unconsciously slip into place. Then teachers can start reinforcing the more esoteric rules at a later age.

Of course, that's all very idealistic... and as pedagogy is by no means a subject with which I can claim to have any serious familiarity, I can only hope that what I've said isn't foolish.

Lastly, in fairness to President Bush, it's quite possible that his speaking issues may not carry over into his writing. English is my mom's second language, and although she's almost lost her accent, there are times when she still uses the singular when she should use the plural (e.g., saying, "Let's carry in the bag" instead of "Let's carry in the bags"). I've heard it so much that there are times when I make the same type of mistake, but never on paper or in Word. Some people who stutter all over themselves in public can be incredibly eloquent when they write. I'm not saying that President Bush is secretly a master of prose or anything, but the way people speak doesn't always reflect their knowledge of the language.

~Dagger~

[Epsilon]

[COLOR=SlateGray][SIZE=1] I have to agree on some of that points stated by, Starwind and Caine. Out side influences do help to determine if a child will care enough or not learn a certain subject. A National Governors' Association Task Force on Adult Literacy reported, illiteracy is an inter-generational problem. Fallowing a parent-child pattern, poor school achievement and drop out before completing high school are common among children of illiterate parents. The idea of knowing where your life might lead, depending on finical status, can lead to negative trains of thoughts. Effecting school work.

However, that is not a limited reason. Children in other countries do not have problems with learning to read or to write. People learn a language is made up of sounds, specific letters stand for various sounds of the language. The first thing to learn is the letters of the alphabet. The next thing to learn is to link the sounds indicated by the letters to make words and sentences. So phonics may also have a problem. The way they are or are not taught in school. Also some children either pick up on the English writing in terms or writing or reading, other might just not understand how to use it properly.

I have a very heavy and odd accent. English is my first language and I have live in the United States of America for most of my life. At the same time I've spent a lot of time out of the country in Jamaica and china and so my accent and how I pounce English words does not sound proper. Although, I do my best to correct when I write in any language.
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[visualkei]

I'm not saying that President Bush is secretly a master of prose or anything, but the way people speak doesn't always reflect their knowledge of the language.

~Dagger~


Yeah, I agree. Just because someone speaks English a certain way doesn't mean they don't know what's the correct way. I think most people are aware of how they speak English, this includes grammar. It seems unfair to me that someone would take some quotes from someone else and base a whole thing against them regarding America's literacy. I think what's more important here is how much of an [B]effort[/B] our president and government has put into improving the literacy of the people.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with making a few grammar mistakes. Language should come naturally when speaking, and I think that nit-picking about people's grammar is getting in the way of them trying to convey their message and you understanding what they're trying to say.

Take ebonics for example. Many people who speak ebonics are well aware that the way they speak isn't standardized. And many of them choose to speak the same way, though it will definately interfere with their future, because people will judge them for it. You mentioned the responsibility of the teachers. Well, the teachers, they can teach and teach and teach grammar in school, but how can they change the way someone speaks? The way someone speaks is mostly determined by their parents and people they're close to, and you just can't change that kind of important influence. I don't think teachers should enforce students to speak what's standardized, I just think teachers should teach it so that students can speak standardized English [B]if and when they want to.[/B] In the end it's up to whoever to speak however they want.

I'm not trying to disregard your point, silver_blade, I just think that it's not sound blaming the president for our country's literacy using some grammar mistakes.

:cool:

[kalon]

[QUOTE=visualkei]I'm not trying to disregard your point, silver_blade, I just think that it's not sound blaming the president for our country's literacy using some grammar mistakes.

:cool:[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I am being a little harsh. I've been reading too many Bushisms. It isn't that I blame the President for our country's literacy; I just find it... interesting, I suppose, when he says comments on literacy while speaking incorrectly. I make mistakes too. I speak with an accent. Accents are not the problem.

And my point is not that a few grammar mistakes make us illiterate. It is that our country has many severe problems were our national language is concerned. What bothers me is not mainly the fact that we cannot speak English, but that we cannot read and write it. There are many adults who find themselves unable to comprehend documents, bills, forms, etc. America as a whole has lower literacy rates than we should considering the priveleges we have.

Sorry if it seemed like I was bashing President Bush or anything. It takes a while for me to get my thoughts really clear. I like hearing what everyone else thinks, though.

[Raiyuu]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]I think a large part of the problem is the low priority English-speaking countries place on learning foreign languages. At my school, French was compulsory until GCSE (16 years old), and Latin until year 9 (14 years old).

I carried Latin on to GCSE level, and you simply [b]cannot[/b] pass that exam without a solid knowledge of what the conditional tense is, how to conjugate a verb and decline a noun. Translating Latin is like breaking a code; you have to spot the little clues that tell you [i]this[/i] word is the [b]subject,[/b] this the object. Being taught how to identify different tenses / declensions / what have you in another language makes you more aware of the same features in your own.

Plus, having a solid grounding in those principles is helping me to a huge extent with my latest little project, learning Japanese.

So yeah. British and American schools should teach more foreign languages, for longer. You can't learn a new languages without being able to speak your own first, right?[/FONT]

[Stark]

[SIZE=1][quote name='Dagger']Some people who stutter all over themselves in public can be incredibly eloquent when they write. [/quote]

Here here! Sorry, Dagger, but you made me really happy with that comment, as I get tongue-tied all the time. My family can attest to that. :animeswea

To the topic: Yes, the level of illiteracy is appalling. But, I'm not gonna go start pointing fingers at any people in particular. Everyone seems to be blaming things on Bush anymore. It's a little annoying.

One thing I've noticed is that many parents simply assume that their child is being taken care of just because they attend a public school, and thus they make no strides to assist in that child's learning. No outside help from mom or dad, no tutoring, and just the bare essentials to enable the child to get their school work done. The home life is one aspect, as is everyone's fixation with the TV and other media. If a person can watch it on TV or find it online, then why should they read, say, Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliete' (sp?)?

And, to add on to Raiyuu's point, learning a foriegn language can really help with English grammar. After four years of Spanish, and one year of French, I can easily say that I understand my own language better. However, they teach these foriegn language in such a shoddy manner that the most I can say in Spanish is 'where is the bathroom?' and other, similar phrases.

It's stupid, I know. I think I'll get a better grasp on Spanish by trying to get my little brother through Spanish one, as he's going to be homeschooled for the next few years. I'll help him with his reading too, because there is no reason for him to enter 9th grade and proudly say that he can't read a 200 page novel because it's 'too long' or 'too hard'. I have met people in high school who have said that. It's a tad frightening.[/SIZE]

[Retribution]

[size=1]I would like to speak up for American schooling, as it's getting knocked around in here.

I attended public school all my life (except high school), and there was definitely stress on learning foreign languages. For the first four out of six years of grade school, we took ICAL (International Culture And Language, if I recall correctly), which did not teach us a great deal of any language, but was more geared to give us an appreciation for other cultures. The second two years we took Spanish (there were no other options at my particular school).

By the time I got to middle school, I was still a novice in Spanish, and took two more years of it there. By the time I left middle school I was fairly versed in the language. Once I got to private school, I took two more years of it (both were advanced courses due to my prior experience) before I quit. That's six years of study of one language by my count. These six years were definitely not wasted time -- I picked up a great deal of grammar experience (verb conjugation, syntax, verb-subject agreement, etc.) and now I could get around Spain.

My entire point is that American public school is what you make of it as far as foreign languages go. I won't lie; public schools here are definitely sub-par in many cases, and they're tough to succeed in. However, I went to public school for eight grades, and they taught me a fair amount.

And by the way, the President is a learned man, but he sure as hell isn't jumping to reform schools. He'd rather fight a war.[/size]

[eleanor]

[color=dimgray] We have a 99% literacy rate. Yeah, that very possible 1-5% gap is a large amount of people, but I'm sure there are certain circumstances (such as poverty, etc.) that prevent good education. I mean, really. 99%. This is amazing compared to other countries. And it's not the US is free of extreme poverty, like many people think.

I'm pretty sure most literate people don't speak 'proper' English. I've probably already made several grammar mistakes that are obscure and not really taken into concern by the majority of the population.

I mean... English/Lit class is my best subject, and I don't remember what gerunds are. If you named a bunch of grammar terms, I probably wouldn't be able to correctly explain them. They're just instinctively in my brain now.

As for President Bush, it's nothing serious. His grammar may be off, but it's not like he's some kind of moronic idiot. I'm sure there are immigrants who go to Harvard and can't speak with good grammar. If you can communicate well, that's enough for me. Unless you're majoring in English or something, you don't have to be amazing.[/color]

[Albert Flasher]

[COLOR=Sienna]The butchering of the English langauge has nothing to do with public schools or Bush or anything like that. The problem is far more... stupid.

Our culture is geared againts smart people. At least from a teenage stand-point (Which is when the brain does most of the learning, btw). As such, we try and talk like simpletons and idiots as to be 'cool,' which means we're not learning how to speak properly at a young age. We're also againts reading books for some inexplcable reason, and reading of any sort is often considered 'lame.' It's gotten to the point where people WANT to be stupid because it makes them cool. Like I said, THAT is the biggest problem, not public schools or Bush - our culture hates smart people!

[/COLOR]

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR=SeaGreen][QUOTE=Dagger]I'm not saying that President Bush is secretly a master of prose or anything, but the way people speak doesn't always reflect their knowledge of the language.

~Dagger~[/QUOTE]I would have to agree with Dagger. The way a person speaks in no way reflects their understanding of the language. A fair number of my Mom's relatives are from Texas and to listen to them you would get the impression that they aren?t very intelligent. They make all sorts of mistakes with their grammar and use all sorts of slang words when they speak.

Yet in spite of that one is a vet and the other a family doctor. Both of them understood the language well enough to graduate from medical school. So the way they speak is not an indication of their literacy or lack of. You get them going on medical topics and the manner of their speech changes. But for simple conversation they fall back to speaking without regard to grammar. They aren?t horrible; they just make mistakes like everyone else. I always thought it was a combination of how they learned to talk as a kid and connecting with the person they are talking to. [quote name='silver_blade'] What bothers me is not mainly the fact that we cannot speak English, but that we cannot read and write it. There are many adults who find themselves unable to comprehend documents, bills, forms, etc. America as a whole has lower literacy rates than we should considering the priveleges we have.[/quote]Here in Utah there is a high ratio of students per teacher, it tends to make it easier for a student to slip between the cracks. With forty students per class if more than one student is struggling with reading and writing the teacher does not have enough time to work with each student to correct that problem. And as Stark mentioned, a lot of parents assume that their child is being taken care at school. Unless a parent takes the time to make sure their kid is actually learning how to read it?s easy for them to attend school and yet not be able to read.

Also, not being able to understand documents, bills and forms isn?t a good indication of literacy either. Unless there is some class on it in High School, which I have yet to attend, none of my classes even covered the basics of understand forms. I?m assuming that with so many companies out there and the constant changes to the actual forms, that even someone who is literate would struggle to understand them.

I think that part of the problem with documents is that the companies who send them to you make no effort to ensure that the people they send them to can understand them. Take this example from the [URL=http://www.plainlanguage.gov/whatisPL/index.cfm][U][COLOR=SeaGreen]plain language movement[/COLOR][/U][/URL].

[B]Before[/B]
When the process of freeing a vehicle that has been stuck results in ruts or holes, the operator will fill the rut or hole created by such activity before removing the vehicle from the immediate area.

[B]After[/B]
If you make a hole while freeing a stuck vehicle, you must fill the hole before you drive away.

I?ve seen some of the bills my mom gets and honestly they are so wordy that you have to read them twice to figure out what?s being said. I think that?s an indication that the person who wrote it lacked the ability to write in a manner that the general population can understand.

Anyway, I?m sure I?ve made mistakes with my grammar, but I don?t think it?s a good indication of my ability to understand the language. [/COLOR]

[The13thMan]

[FONT=Century Gothic] [COLOR=DarkOrange]I believe there are many problems in our society that affects our literacy.

I think a lot of it has to do with our parents. If parents don't care about education chances are neither will the kids. If they have bad grammar and can't talk worth crap then it'll be the same for their kids. Smart people breed smart kids and vice versa.

Another problem is where these kids live. Upper northeast has much smarter kids than people in the south, there's no denying it. I live in tennessee, by the way. If you grow up in a poor neighborhood then you have to deal with poor school systems. The chance of you coming out of a poor school system and being half way intelligent is very small.

Another problem is the way our school systems are set up. Poor neighborhoods have poor schools, and that's dumb. Schools should be equal throughout the nation, but to fix this problem we'd have to fix our society, which would take a lot.

Another problem is the teachers. There are teachers out there that are just really bad teachers. They don't teach english, they teach methods to know english. Not only that, but a lot of them simply don't care.

And the last problem i can really think of is the person him/herself. A lot are just stupid, many don't care, and too many don't need to care. That's just how it is, unfortunately.

Later.
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[visualkei]

[B]Lunnox:[/B] [QUOTE]I mean... English/Lit class is my best subject, and I don't remember what gerunds are. If you named a bunch of grammar terms, I probably wouldn't be able to correctly explain them. They're just instinctively in my brain now. [/QUOTE]

Yeah. Speaking English is different than understanding the grammar. I don't know crap about the systematics of English, and I've always gotten good grades in English/Rhetoric classes.

Speaking language is instinctive and flows. Knowing gerunds, verbs, nouns, oxymorons, or whatever, is a different thing. It's knowing how to label what you speak.


[B]Aaryanna:[/B] [QUOTE]Also, not being able to understand documents, bills and forms isn?t a good indication of literacy either. [/QUOTE]

I think there are different kinds of literacy. You can write/speak the same language, but you use a different "kind" of language depending on the circumstances. You can be superb at your language in one kind of sense, and really suck at it in another. I read and write well when it comes to English literature whereas I am an idiot when it comes to reading legal documents. It's as if it's in a whole different language. Literacy can be understood in many different senses: language used in legal cases, poetic, literature, everyday talk, etc. Just because you aren't literate in every sense or perform standardized English doesn't mean you're not literate.

[vegeta rocker]

I know alot of it comes from people on internet too much. Teenagers spend so much time on the internet where there is no grammer check; that they start to get used to it.

When you AIM your friends whats faster? I C I L8tr or I will see you later?

I think the internet has ALOT to do with it.

Teachers can only do so much; myself, my father taught me how to read before i attended school.

[Caine]

[QUOTE=silver_blade]Although they usually have a big influence on each other, money and grades are not always related. I think it is what you are exposed to. My mother loves to read and is very intelligent, so I grew up learning lots of random facts from her. Your environment impacts much of what you learn.

My mother only makes $15,000 a year, and she is a single parent. Meaning if I do not get a scholarship, there is no way I am getting into a really good college. Personally, though, it has not made my learning ability decrease. I took Advanced English and made 103. I have a right to expect the President to speak his language correctly.[/QUOTE]

My point about Bush wasn't about grades or intelligence. His grades weren't spectacular, certainly not enough to get him into Yale, but he got in anyway.

With grades like those, sounds like you should be getting a scholarship

to deal with other issues, I want to point out that we've had an English problem since before AIM really caught on, so we can't blame the internet for everything.


I think Cygnus is on the right track. In this case, I think the problem isn't as much the bias towards stupidity (which is a huge problem) as it is the bias towards having a different way of speaking. When it comes down to it, most teenagers speak the way their friends do, and that tends to be with very poor grammar. Different groups speak differently, but very few cliques of high school kids use proper English.

Ultimately, it is a choice. Poor kids aren't as likely to be pushed toward learning proper grammar because they don't tend to have as good schools and teachers, but a poor kid who really tries can learn proper English, and rich kd who doesn't care can wind up not being able to speak properly.

[Baron Samedi]

[quote name='silver_blade']No offense to the teachers, but I think some of the problem lies with them. My eighth grade teacher spent the entire year teaching us what nouns and verbs were. My Latin teacher had to spend most of her time teaching us our own language so we could do the Latin. Few teachers have ever mentioned infinitives, gerunds, or proper formation of verb tenses, and if they touched on those subjects it was not at all in-depth.[/quote][size=1]Eighth grade? That's pretty bad, if that matches up with Australia's Year Eight. That's first year high-school, or at the very least equivalent to our Year Seven, last of Primary. We learnt about nouns and verbs in Years Four or Five...

But that second part of this paragraph is absolute rubbish. I've never even heard of those words, and I read a lot of material. I'd go so far as to suggest that whatever those are, the knowledge of their names is unimportant. You don't need to be taught about infinitives or gerunds to be able to speak 'proper' English. Grammar skills can't be formed by ROTE learning some ridiculous rules. You pick up the necessary abilities by reading. That's all you need to do. Read.[/size]

[Retribution]

[quote name='Baron Samedi][size=1']But that second part of this paragraph is absolute rubbish. I've never even heard of those words, and I read a lot of material. I'd go so far as to suggest that whatever those are, the knowledge of their names is unimportant. You don't need to be taught about infinitives or gerunds to be able to speak 'proper' English. Grammar skills can't be formed by ROTE learning some ridiculous rules. You pick up the necessary abilities by reading. That's all you need to do. Read.[/size][/quote]
[size=1]It's true that you don't need to know the official words in order to speak correctly, however it is a basic thing to know what a gerund is, as the infinitive or proper verb conjugation.

It's true that you don't need to know the names of such terms, but if you don't know what it is at all, you have a problem. Learning the basic mechanics of English really is a must.[/size]

[kalon]

[QUOTE=Baron Samedi][size=1]
But that second part of this paragraph is absolute rubbish. I've never even heard of those words, and I read a lot of material. I'd go so far as to suggest that whatever those are, the knowledge of their names is unimportant. You don't need to be taught about infinitives or gerunds to be able to speak 'proper' English. Grammar skills can't be formed by ROTE learning some ridiculous rules. You pick up the necessary abilities by reading. That's all you need to do. Read.[/size][/QUOTE]

Umm... We had to know what they were in order to learn Latin. The names are not the important thing, but as Retrubution pointed out, you have to know what it is. It is neccessary to know what they do in order to translate and learn a new language. I realized how little I knew about English when I took Latin.

And my point about literacy rates... Yes, you could say we are all literate, but at what level are we literate? There is a good number of Americans who can read but at a low level.

[eleanor]

[QUOTE=silver_blade]
And my point about literacy rates... Yes, you could say we are all literate, but at what level are we literate? There is a good number of Americans who can read but at a low level.[/QUOTE]

[color=dimgray] Again: poverty, mediocre education, etc. Some people may have dropped out of school because of bad circumstances. If all you're asking here is "why can't people read higher-level literature and talk properly"... get over it. Not everyone is going to be able to read Brave New World and write a five page essay on it. Language serves many purposes- simple communication being one of the most important.[/color]

[Japan]

[COLOR=DarkRed]There is more to literacy than simple communication. If we cannot write or read, how may we, who are make decisions or live? Voting, cooking, singing, song writing, basically any well paying job out there you can think of.

It is important to be able to read and write.

Honestly, I never learned much grammer at all till I was homeschooled in the 6th grade. I knew how to spell, but that was about it. My 5th grade year was the worse. I learned nothing, in fact, I declined in my knowledge. I had to work hard in 6-8 grade year to be able to catch up, and I still work on it today through journal entries and such.

Part of the problem is the school system, another part I would have to be the little to no positive reinforcement from the parents to help encourage their kids to do well in school and to help them with their school work. I don't think that the problem is so much for being poor but maybe bad school districts and bad life choices such as becoming pregnant right before your Senior year of high school.[/COLOR]

[visualkei]

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by [B]Baron Samedi[/B]

But that second part of this paragraph is absolute rubbish. I've never even heard of those words, and I read a lot of material. I'd go so far as to suggest that whatever those are, the knowledge of their names is unimportant. You don't need to be taught about infinitives or gerunds to be able to speak 'proper' English. Grammar skills can't be formed by ROTE learning some ridiculous rules. You pick up the necessary abilities by reading. That's all you need to do. Read.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't say that the names of the parts of speech are unimportant, they're important in teaching/learning language, but I don't think they're necessary to be literate in one's first language. Maybe what I'm thinking about is both literacy and fluency... Some of you mention how important it is to know this when learning a second language. I totally agree, because it helps show you the patterns in the language you're trying to learn.

As far as speaking [I]your first language[/I] goes, I just think it's more important to use it, speak it, write it, read it, than minding grammar rules and labels to be truly literate. I think so because you're already [I]fluent[/I], and naturally know the [B]basics[/B] of grammar rules. Your first language just comes out of your mouth without thinking. What's important is refining it by letting the person experience Reading and Writing.