College English Subject A Test

[R. Richard]

I am doing some research for a new story. In the process, I discovered some practice college English Subject A tests. I took the tests and scored over 90% each time. However, I knew nothing of the grammar rules and answered the questions out of general knowledge.
I was never taught the grammar rules, back in high school or college English. Is this a standard situation?

 

[KeithD]

You most likely learned by doing. High School English grammar rules don't fully apply to commercial fiction--and neither do College English grammar rules outside of creative writing programs.

 

[oggbashan]

If you write regularly and use Grammarly or something similar? It wouldn't be unusual.

If English is not your native language and you learned it as a foreign language? Scoring nearly 100% would be the norm.

I am old enough to have been formally taught grammar, but I still make mistakes because it was over 60 years ago and things have chaned.

 

[jehoram]

I am doing some research for a new story. In the process, I discovered some practice college English Subject A tests. I took the tests and scored over 90% each time. However, I knew nothing of the grammar rules and answered the questions out of general knowledge.
I was never taught the grammar rules, back in high school or college English. Is this a standard situation?

I think that most kids pick it up as they learned the language, and that by the time they've gotten to junior high or middle school, they've learned almost all the basics of grammar and syntax, although they might still not be able to use it in writing. It's a matter of who they were exposed to, and how those people used the language, that determines how the kids speak.

 

[R. Richard]

I think that most kids pick it up as they learned the language, and that by the time they've gotten to junior high or middle school, they've learned almost all the basics of grammar and syntax, although they might still not be able to use it in writing. It's a matter of who they were exposed to, and how those people used the language, that determines how the kids speak.

I spent my younger years as 'Whi Boy' in South Central Los Angeles. The locals mostly spoke a degraded version of the Gullah dialect. The use of grammar and/or syntax was not really stressed. However, I did manage to learn a bit by stealing books from the public library (always returned.)
One grammar thing that I did teach was calling me a crude motherfucker was suicide. (The bloods thought me a bit antisocial.)
R, Richard

 

[SimonDoom]

I am doing some research for a new story. In the process, I discovered some practice college English Subject A tests. I took the tests and scored over 90% each time. However, I knew nothing of the grammar rules and answered the questions out of general knowledge.
I was never taught the grammar rules, back in high school or college English. Is this a standard situation?

You probably just have an aptitude for it. Some do. You write a lot, obviously, so early on you probably figured out "Hey, I'm good at this" and you did it. And with practice you got very good at it.

I'm the opposite. I had a very strong education in formal grammar rules from an early age, and my brain took to it. I'm a nerd who enjoys diagramming sentences, something I don't think people do much anymore. But I didn't write a lick of fiction until I was in my 50s. Pervy writers follow many different paths.

 

[Comshaw]

I spent my younger years as 'Whi Boy' in South Central Los Angeles. The locals mostly spoke a degraded version of the Gullah dialect. The use of grammar and/or syntax was not really stressed. However, I did manage to learn a bit by stealing books from the public library (always returned.)
One grammar thing that I did teach was calling me a crude motherfucker was suicide. (The bloods thought me a bit antisocial.)
R, Richard

I agree with Simon, you probably have a natural aptitude for it. You might be one of those rare information sponges that soak up things like that by being exposed to it, like from reading. To read those printed passages, and make sense of them, your brain had to formulate rules. Those rules happen to coincide with rules that others were taught first before doing any reading and writing. You happened to do it backwards. That doesn't mean you did it wrong. All of us do not learn in the same way.

Comshaw

 

[R. Richard]

What is obvious, from the feedback, is that English grammar is NOT an academic process, but rather a vocational process. It's not necessary to know the rules, just how to produce what the ever changing rules want.
I never passed English in high school or college. I made a simple request, "Look, you fat stupid, ugly, closet lesbian bitch, I need a formal grammar for the English (American English) language." I was refused said grammar. I later found that there appears to be no such grammar. No grammar, no language.
For quite some time, I made my living as a computer programmer. I know what a grammar is. I know what a language is.
I generated phase structured grammars to use in processing computer languages.