There tends to be a fair bit of eye-rolling at my house when I can’t keep my mouth shut about sentence structure – particularly when I notice things in books like agreement, convoluted sentences, and typos.
The most dramatic eye-rolling is reserved for my frequent comment … ‘If Luke wasn’t in that sentence, would you say “I” or “me”?’
I also get complaints when I’m reading aloud if I interrupt the story with comments about the way that the sentences are written. The biggest culprit at the moment is Adam Blade’s Beast Quest series, particularly the more recent books. They’re full of typos and sentence-level errors, and I just can’t keep quiet about them. How can children learn to read and write if the books they’re provided with are full of errors? (Yes, my children do tend to notice the typos!)
It all paid off for me this week when we were at a swimming pool and my 8-year-old son noticed this sign:
As part of normal conversation, he pointed out that there was something wrong with the sign. And when I asked him what, he was able to say quite confidently that the sign should either be ‘Parents must supervise their children at all times’ or ‘Parents, you must supervise your children at all times’.
Agreement is starting to make sense to him. Clearly, my pestering is working. It’s worth the eye-rolling!