Many teachers do not have adequate knowledge of English grammar to teach the new curriculum, according to the architect of a government-funded teaching programme.
Bas Aarts, a professor of English linguistics at University College London, is designing Englicious, an online tool that will give schools access to one of Britain’s biggest databases of the English language.
He said that the English tests for pupils up to the age of 14 introduced by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, demanded more knowledge of grammar than many teachers possessed. “Many teachers feel uncomfortable with grammar and don’t know how to use it formally,” he said.
Englicious, which is based on millions of examples of English expressions, from text messages to recordings of BBC broadcasts, is intended to help