Grammar and punctuation test.

[soistes]

14/14 but, like some others on here, I was taught this stuff at primary school.

Frankly, however, it's not clear that you need to know the grammatical terminology (which some of the answers require) in order to speak and write clearly and correctly.

It's more important, in my view, that people have an intuitive understanding of when to use their, they're, there etc., in order to avoid the solecisms with which NSC is routinely littered.

Only a minority of the test questions focused on these kinds of 'practical' grammar issues, so I'm not sure how indicative a test it really is.

 

[Barrow Boy]

Having left school at 15 without a single qualification, I'm quite chuffed with a score of 11/14.

 

[Curious Orange]

9/14; the stuff I got wrong definitely didn't come up in GCSE English though.

 

[CheeseRolls]

13/14 and another who didn't cover grammar in any detail in school. More than a few calculated guesses in there/their/they're though and I would like to have seen a to question in there too. That one drives me nuts.

 

[Lush]

13/14. No idea what a gerund is despite having read How to be Topp.

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

I will be honest and state if I did it I would have to guess every answer so without trying I would have scored 0/14. I present to groups in companies all the time and my fear is always having a spelling/grammer fanatic in the group as I have to write on flip charts/ white boards. I have methods to cope like using other words, getting other people to write where possible and making my writing squiggly.

I do not have the same problems that our 1st team coach Charlie Oatway had, but I could relate to the bits in his book about how he coped in public i.e personalised autographs etc etc. I would love to have a brillinat command of written English, and adore etymology but in my mid forties and running my own business I think my avoidance tactics will continue.

gerund! And part of my responsibilities are improving letter writing, now where do i find the companies spelling nazi...

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

As with others 13 out of 14. I got the prepositional phrase one completly wrong as that was a guess.

I would say about NONE of it was from anything learnt at school. Most of it was just reading the question and possible answers a few times and making an educated choice.

 

[Acker79]

13/14. No idea what a gerund is despite having read How to be Topp.

I'm in that same boat as the others who were never taught a lot of those terms. I guessed at that one thinking it read like g-end, and the only option with a g was -ing.

 

[supaseagull]

10 out of 14. Not bad...Although I use Stylewriter at work so it does all the hard work for me!

 

[Brovion]

7/14 I've never heard of a "Gerund" before

Haven't you? He plays for Liverpool and England.

 

[Ninja Elephant]

I got 8/14. Doesn't bother me though, a lot of those questions were utterly unnecessary. A gerund? Behave, completely irrelevant.

Practical ability is better than theoretical.

 

[Brovion]

13/14. No idea what a gerund is despite having read How to be Topp.

The real skill is knowing the difference between a gerund and a present participle. In the sentence "I am living in Brighton" 'living' is a present participle. In the sentence "Summertime, and the living is easy" it's a gerund.

At least that was my understanding, but being a mere 12 I'll let one of the 14/14 people correct me!

 

[Barrow Boy]

As with others 13 out of 14. I got the prepositional phrase one completly wrong as that was a guess.

I would say about NONE of it was from anything learnt at school. Most of it was just reading the question and possible answers a few times and making an educated choice.

In my defence, this was exactly what I did.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

I got 8/14. Doesn't bother me

Shut up MORON.

 

[Ninja Elephant]

Shut up MORON.

You could atleast have added a full stop to the quote, if you're going to take me out of context.

 

[skipper734]

[/B]

In my defence, this was exactly what I did.

That's wrong as well. How can you have made " an educated guess". That's an oxymoron Shirley.

Happy Birthday.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

13. All but the gerund one.

But like others, I don't see that this is a 'grammar and punctuation' test at all. More a test of your knowledge of grammatical terms. It's possible to have the skills to use all of the relevant rules perfectly well, without actually knowing what they are called.

 

[footychick]

I would have only got a couple right
I agree with HKFC. I'm not sure of the grammatical terms and haven't heard of some of them.

 

[KZNSeagull]

12 for me. My son has been doing grammatical terminology recently - Grade 7 and 8 (ages 12 and 13). I have to say that it does not serve a huge purpose, but am surprised that the Brits are not teaching it. Yesterday, his homework question was "what is the difference between jargon, slang and neologisms".

 

[Deleted member 22389]

I got 8/14. Doesn't bother me though, a lot of those questions were utterly unnecessary. A gerund? Behave, completely irrelevant.

Practical ability is better than theoretical.

Trouble with this country, too many pen pushers and not enough Engineers with common sense.