From Mr Rupert Morris.

Sir, It’s not non-native speakers of English I’m afraid of - it’s the natives (“Whose language”, Analysis, November 9). When I was conducting a writing course in Edinburgh recently, we did a grammar-related exercise, and of the 16 participants the only two whose grammar was faultless were non-natives. The people who struggle to express themselves in written English are the indigenous Britons who have suffered from decades of failure to teach the essentials of grammar and syntax.