The mice’s nest was under the floorboards. The geese’s pond was smelly. There, I’ve done it. I’ve put two words, possessives I have never used and will never use again, into sentences. These were two of 10 awkward possessives that my friend’s daughter had been tasked with putting into sentences. Men’s and ladies’ were on the list too. My friend asked how she might go about explaining the rules behind these apostrophe positions to her nine-year-old. I’m afraid I couldn’t be of much assistance. Rather her than me.
The exercise was almost triggering for me. I hated doing these things with my daughters when they were at primary school. This was about the only homework they were ever set – learn how to spell these words and put them into sentences. The purpose is obvious. I get that teaching English spelling is a nightmare and putting a word into a sentence shows that you know what it means, and hopefully helps you remember how to spell it. But, oh Lord, the agonising, circuitous routes around words you’d have to find to construct a bloody sentence.
I found a list of words selected to teach year 5s (or should that be 5’s? Don’t ask me) how to deal with words ending in -ance and -ancy. Tolerance is one of them. OK, fine, it would be easier to use “tolerant” than “tolerance” in a sentence a nine-year-old might make sense of, but we’ll come up with something. As for relevancy, dominancy and abundancy, though, I’ll be honest, I’m struggling. I’ve never in my life used the first two. And anyway, aren’t you better off using relevance, dominance or abundance? Don’t they mean the same? I feel a rising sense of panic. Michael Gove celebrated the dominancy of his theories on teaching, dismissing complaints at the limited relevancy of the stupid words. Will that do?
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist