lesson
Choose conventions for the situation
1 · Learn
People use different varieties of English, and accent is not a measure of intelligence. Standard English provides widely shared grammatical conventions for many formal written and spoken contexts. Register concerns choices suited to purpose and audience.
A formal request can be direct and clear without becoming pompous. A character's dialogue may use different conventions deliberately, but a formal report needs consistent control.
2 · Worked example
I revise a casual 'Send us the times, please' to 'Please send the opening times before Friday' for a formal email. Clear detail matters more than replacing every word with a longer one.
3 · Your turn
Why is a regional accent not evidence that a speaker cannot use Standard English grammar?
Check your answer
Accent concerns pronunciation, while Standard English concerns grammatical conventions; they are not the same thing.
4 · Apply your learning
Write the same request as a friendly message and a formal email, then justify the changes without judging one community's speech as inferior.
Adult guidance and safety
Discuss interpretations using the words actually supplied. Give feedback on complete drafts and spoken contributions. These original short models must be accompanied by sustained whole-text study and a diverse reading programme; they do not fulfil author-in-depth or Shakespeare requirements by themselves.
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