Sir, I welcome Clare Foges’s excellent defence of standard English as precisely that (“No, professor, speaking properly still matters”, Comment, Sep 20). I have taught literacy and English as a second language for more than 30 years to children and adults. Non-readers are confused because the phonic system falls down when words are mispronounced, and developing readers, who use understanding to fill in the gaps, rely on consistent grammar for that to work. It constitutes neglect, I would argue, not to teach all students these basics and to maintain the standard at every stage of education and in the media. As infants, we learn our mother tongue from what we hear, which is why mastering a second language draws on both the spokenSponsored

Source: The Times September 20, 2021 20:04 UTC