A small passage on the US school organization

Question

Hello,Could you look at the following passage and point out any mistakes?"Schools in the US have the grade system, which is to separate students into groups by their chronologic age. That system has several drawbacks. It doesn't take into account child's readiness to begin studying. While some children are ready to go to school after they became four-five years old, some other children are not enough mentally or even physically mature at the age of six. The grade system doesn't take into account that different students have different development rates. Some students, who need more time for studying, have no time and those, who need less time for studying, have to wait for others. Another doubtful point is that students, who haven't learnt enough and don’t meet requirements for the next grade, have to repeat the year. As many researches affirmed, it doesn't help much, but causes the loss of self-concept. Overall, the grade system evaluates students in a group instead of using the individual approach, which makes that system at least not ideal."Thanks in advance. --Victor

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

Hi Victor,  Your biggest problem is punctuation.    "Schools in the US have the grade system, which separates students into groups by their chronologic age. That system has several drawbacks. It doesn't take into account a child's readiness to begin studying. While some children are ready to go to school after they became four or five years old, other children are not mentally or even physically mature enough at the age of six. The grade system doesn't take into account that different students have different development rates.     Some students more time for studying and have no time and those who need less time for studying have to wait for others. -- This sentence is pretty hard to understand. Do you mean those who take time learning concepts?    Another doubtful point is that students who haven't learnt enough and don’t meet requirements for the next grade have to repeat the year. As much researches has affirmed, repeating the year doesn't help much, but causes the loss of self-esteem. Overall, the grade system evaluates students in a group instead of using the individual approach, which makes that system, at the very least, not ideal.    Just some information for you:  Actually, parents have the option of keeping their child back another year before entering him or her in school if they don't feel he's ready, so no one has to go before they are mature enough. Most kids are in some sort of pre-school two, three, or even five days a week before "real" school, so most are ready -- but not all.     Additionally, most schools have a "K-1" class for kids who didn't really thrive enough in kindergarten to be fully ready for first grade, so there is a mixture of first grade and kindergarten for them. Then they do first grade in a regular class the next year. My daughter's first grade class was a mix of K-1, and in the afternoon those kids would go to a kindergarden class, but in the mornings they were with the same kids from last year. That way they'd have peers in first grade again.    Also, in practice, very few kids have to repeat a year of elementary school. They will have special resources to get them caught up.     There are "tracks" so kids who lean quickly have more depth to their lessons. Everyone can meet the standards, but the kids who learn things easily/quickly will have more to do. (Not all of them consider this a benefit! <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/> )

Victor_amelkin · Answer

GG,

Thanks for such an all-embracing answer.

> Your biggest problem is punctuation.

I began to study English grammar by a thick tome, which has the punctuation
section at the end. Probably, I might read that section first.

>> Some students, who need more time for studying, have no time and those,
>> who need less time for studying, have to wait for others.

I meant that different students require different amounts of time for studying
various subjects, but the curriculum doesn't take it into account providing
an "approximate" study speed. As a result some students don't get on well
because of the time deficit and others who need less time for studying have
insufficient study load due to the relatively low speed of study process. I hope
I made it clear

I examined your corrections and have a couple of questions.

1) child's readyness -> a child's readiness

Do the general article usage rules are to be applied to the abstract nouns
like "readiness"?

2) "...much researches has affirmed..."

Why are you using here an auxuliary "has" insead of "have"? As I understand
"much researches" is a plural construction, or am I mistaken?

> Actually, parents have the option of keeping their child back
> another year before entering him or her in school if they don't
> feel he's ready

The same option exists in our country, but none of parents use it, since there
is a "tradition" to send children to school at the age of seven (or six in rare cases),
which is a de-facto standard. Nobody consider whether a child is ready or not.

Thanks again.
Victor

A small passage on the US school organization

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