Who cares about fronted adverbials?

What’s driving parents mad?

Here in the UK, and because of the pandemic, children have been off school since Christmas. I really feel for parents who are trying to home school their children as well as work from home. It must be a nightmare. One of the issues that seems to be hitting the news is the prescriptive nature of English lessons, with fronted adverbials being cited as particular bones of contention. Grammar teaching comes in and out of fashion. When I was at school in the sixties it was thought best not to overburden pupils with too many technical terms, whereas my mother, whose schooldays coincided with the second world war, could parse a sentence in seconds. Nowadays the pendulum seems to have swung back, with grammar once again on the curriculum.

Having taught English for over forty years, I do in fact know what a fronted adverbial is. Ask me to explain Pythagoras’s theorem, or define an ox-bow lake, however, and I’d be completely stumped. (In case you wondered, fronted adverbials are words or phrases placed at the beginning of a sentence which are used to describe the action that follows, such as At half past three, they left the house to go shopping, and Slowly, Max tiptoed out of the room).

I can honestly say though, that apart from when I have taught that aspect of grammar, I have had little use for fronted adverbials in my daily life. And even in my new career as a writer, I have managed to write three novels without once thinking about them. Fronted adverbials, like left branched subordinate clauses (what??) are there to provide variety in a text. But we can learn how to create variety by reading a lot and imitating the features we find. Most readers know that three or more sentences that start in the same way (she got up…she got dressed…she went downstairs) can become boring, so fronted adverbials, along with other language features, help to us to avoid monotony in our writing and hence maintain a reader’s interest. But we know that instinctively and good readers can become good writers if they subconsciously absorb and recreate successful characteristics, even if they can’t always label them grammatically.

Many years ago now, Roald Dahl wrote a poem decrying the overreliance on television screens. I wonder what he would make of this generation of ipad children. It would be very hard to connect with the way teaching is currently delivered without recourse to technology. However, I certainly agree with his conclusion, that reading is key. So I will leave you with his memorable words:

Television by Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.