A Facebook fan, Lance Alvarico Villoria, recently asked me an interesting question about the terms used for primary education in the Philippines and in other countries.
Below is our conversation on Facebook: Lance Alvarico Villoria:Nov 10th, 6:18pm
Good evening, Sir!
Is it correct to say or write “Grade 8”? Someone said that the proper way is “eight grade.” What is the difference between the two?
Jose A. Carillo:Nov 10th, 7:27pm
“Grade 8” is the term currently used for the eighth year of primary education in the Philippines; until school year 2013-2014, it was called “2nd Year High School.” When the spelled-out number “8” is used as an adjective together with the noun “grade,” however, it needs the letter “h” as suffix. This is why when a pupil is in Grade 8, you can describe him or her as “an eighth-grade pupil.” The term “eight-grade”—without the suffix “h” for “eight”—is grammatically wrong. Always keep in mind, too, that unlike in the compound noun “Grade 8,” the first letters of the compound noun “eighth grade” and of the compound adjective “eighth-grade” are by convention not capitalized.
LAV:Nov 10th, 9:00pm
I think, Sir, there’s something wrong with my question.
Here it is:
In the Philippines, we are using the terms Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4 and so where the word “Grade” comes first before the number. Someone told me that American and British Englishes do not have those ways. Instead they have “first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade” and so on.
What will I tell him about his ideas?
JAC:Nov 10th, 10:24pm
Both kinds of usage are correct. It’s all a matter of convention or style really.
LAV:Nov 11th, 7:40am
Last question, Sir. Do the Americans and the British also use the form “Grade 1, 2, 3” where the word “Grade” comes first before the number?
JAC:Nov 11th, 9:12am
The terminologies for the educational stages vary very widely. To start with, the Americans and the British don’t use the form “Grade 1, 2, 3” where the word “Grade” comes first before the number. Instead, in the United States, the grades are traditionally referred to by ordinal numbers, as in “Third Grade”; incidentally, nearby Canada— like the Philippines—uses cardinal numbers, as in “Grade 1,” In England, the grades are referred to as “Year One” onwards, except the first year of school, which is called “Reception.” For a detailed discussion of educational-stage terminologies elsewhere in the world, check Wikipedia’s Educational Stages (tinyurl.com/65nxvml).
LAV:Nov 12th, 8:35am
Thank you, Sir!
I think my friend was wrong when he said that here in the Philippines, we should use the ordinal number instead of cardinal.
Another question, Sir:
Are articles “the”, “a”, and “an” adjectives or another part of speech?
JAC:Nov 12th, 3:37pm
The prevailing convention in English grammar classifies the articles “the,” “a,” and “an” as adjectives because they perform the same function as nouns, but some contemporary grammar theorists consider the articles as a distinct word class from adjectives. They classify the articles under a lexically separate part of speech called determiners, which are comprised by the following grammatical elements: the articles, the possessive adjectives, the demonstrative adjectives, the interrogative adjectives, and quantifiers. For a comprehensive discussion of these, check out my Forum posting on determiners (
tinyurl.com/ly2mq8a).
