Re:The Awful German Language (1880)
by brightly-salty on Monday May 17, 2021 @10:22AM
(#27183732)
No, I don’t think most 14-year-olds in the USA would know what a gerund is, but most of them would know active versus passive voice. Maybe the kids in advanced or hobbies classes, though. (Speaking as an American high school student)
Re:The Awful German Language (1880)
by Teknoman117 on Monday May 17, 2021 @12:01PM
(#27184965)
Yes, we were taught what a gerund _is_, but I never had a teacher who actually called it that.
I didn't know terms like that in England in the 2000s, though I picked them up from learning other foreign languages later.
I have heard university professors complain that they can say, simply, "rephrase the paper into the active voice" to a student from <anywhere else>, but many British students don't know what that means.
England now teaches more grammar, but it is not much use generalizing from individual experiences of a particular state/country in a particular decade.