Uni seeks to correct grammar deficiencies
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Monash is offering a course for students covering the basics of grammar. (ABC News)
Among academics at Melbourne's Monash University, there is grave concern the best and brightest high school graduates fall down when it comes to basic grammar.
The university has decided the problem is so bad it is offering a catch-up course, which poses questions like, 'what is a noun?'
Baden Eunson is the convenor of a new course taught in the University's English Department, a course he believes will become the norm in universities across Australia.
"We're doing almost remedial stuff, in the case of some students and that's extraordinary when you're working with a student who's got an extraordinarily high mark in secondary, but has considerable difficulty putting a sentence together or even punctuating the sentence," he said.
"We've found we've had students from all over the place, not just English, but business studies, IT, engineering, have elected to take the subject because I suppose they've rationalised, or have realised that it will look good on their CV, to show that they have these so-called generic or transferable skills of being able to write.
"In the United States it's fairly widespread with a subject called freshman composition, about 80 to 90 per cent of students take it at universities and colleges there.
"I suspect that unless we can get this type of learning under control at secondary, in the very real sense it's a waste of tertiary time."
Not surprisingly teachers are a little defensive over what many see as an attack on their ability to educate students on the basics of literature.
Education review
Angelo Gavrielatos is the federal president of the Australian Education Union.
"By international standards the evidence shows that our students are performing very well," he said.
"I think some of these discussions regrettably are reduced to simplistic headlines. Of course achieving certain standards is vitally important.
"We're all in favour of the achievement of standards and indeed for students to excel in all areas of endeavour including literacy, numeracy and other curriculum areas as well."
Mr Gavrielatos does not go as far as saying there is a problem in our education system, however he strongly believes the system should be open to constant review.
"We should constantly review those standards, we should review our curricula and indeed there's a national discussion occurring around the development of a national curriculum," he said.
"Curriculum documents are aspirational documents and they reflect the aspirations of a nation. That's a good dialogue to have and it should be reviewed from time to time.
But worries abound in academic circles, with reports that people can get through school with a good mark in English, then get into a good course and still not know what a noun or an adjective is."
Mr Gavrielatos says such cases would certainly not be widespread.
"I'm not going to reduce this discussion to a discussion about individuals," he said.
"If there is an area that requires a dramatic level of attention, it is the area of investment in our schools."
- Based on a report by Simon Santow for AM.
