Grammar Challenges

 
Okay, I know I'm in Taiwan and that sometimes even the best schools and universities produce weird grammar and spelling. But perhaps these can be forgiven - or even smiled at, on occasion. Anyway, I cannot take the moral high ground when my Mandarin pronunciation has my wife forbidding me to speak outside of the home and my reading only just allows me to identify the men's bathroom.

But look at this - also from the Language Log. It seems the Australians, or perhaps just the guys from Queensland, have lost contact with Grammar Base.

According to Justine Ferrari, "Grammar guide an 'education disaster'", The Australian 2/20/2010:

ONE of the world's most respected authorities on grammar has written to every school principal in Queensland, warning them of an error-strewn grammar guide distributed by the state's English Teachers Association.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston says he was forced to write to schools directly because the English Teachers Association of Queensland refused to acknowledge or correct the 65 errors he had identified in its teaching guide on grammar, printed as a series of eight articles in its magazine.

Some examples:

In The small boy won't eat his lunch,"won't" is an adverb.
In The small boy is capable of eating his lunch, "capable of" is an adverb.
In a set of bowls, "set of" is an adjective.
In Sam's folder, "Sam's" is a possessive pronoun.

Oh my goodness! Maybe they got some of my students - the younger ones - to write this stuff.