When I went to school the teachers had a kind of hit and hope approach to the teaching of English. (I mean “hit and hope” in the sense a careful aim was not taken. I do not mean I was hit. Ever.) As I recall there was very little teaching of grammar rules or sentence structure. We would write stories, they would come back with red pen on them and from that we were meant to learn something. You could call it learning by osmosis. As opposed to say maths or sciences which are based on learning rules and formuli.…