“IT’S goING!” my dad used to say, after I had announced that I was leaving the house to play with friends.

“GoING, not goIN,” he ‘would bark across the tea table.

In the same way, he would correct me and my siblings if we left the h off ‘here’ or ‘house’, which we frequently did.

Another of his bugbears was our use of ‘me’ instead of ‘my’, as in “wait ‘till I’ve got me shoes on,” and heaven forbid if any of us called the garage a ‘garidge’.

Of course, as soon as we left the house, we dropped aitches all over the place, reveling in the freedom to do so with no fear of reprimand.

All our pals spoke sloppy English and there was no way we were going to hang around at the bus stop on an evening talking like Prince Charles.

We hated being corrected, and had I, as a child, been told that there is no such thing as ‘correct’ language or terminology, and that correcting children is a form of prejudice, I’d have clapped my hands with joy.

Had I, back then, read that university academics believed that it was okay to drop the letter ‘g’ at the end of words, I’d have presented the evidence to my dad, while smugly asking: “What time are we ‘avin’ tea then?”

Specialists from the University of Essex say there is no such thing as ‘correct’ language or terminology and there is nothing wrong, for example, using ‘ain’t’ instead of ‘is not’ or ‘am not. They say that this is simply an example of ‘multicultural London English’ developed through contact between different dialects and immigrant tongues, including Jamaican Patois

And they claim that decades of research shows that the idea that any variation from standard English is incorrect - or, worse, unprofessional or uneducated - is a smokescreen for prejudice.

I’d have welcomed this news as a teen, but as an adult I find it disturbing. I believe it is vital that we are taught the correct use of English grammar and I now thank my dad for ramming it down our throats.

From filling in job applications, to attending interviews, to meeting people socially and at work, being able to write or talk in sentences that are not littered with bad grammar and vocabulary is, I believe, of the utmost importance.

I wince when I see or hear ‘should of’ or ‘would of’, yet it is commonplace.

To learn how to pronounce words and phrases correctly is as important as learning how and when to use punctuation - another area of the English language that is gradually being ditched.

While I believe that it is essential to preserve and encourage regional dialects, which are part of the historic and cultural development of Britain, we should at the very least arm children with the whys and wherefores of received pronunciation.

They don’t have to use this knowledge after leaving full-time education, and can spend their lives dropping aitches and gs, and saying ‘wiv’’ instead of ‘with’ - but we need to at least provide them with the knowledge of what is the correct way to construct sentences and pronounce those words.

It’s not, as some may say, snobbery. My grammar isn’t perfect, and there are a lot of grammatical rules I don’t understand. My husband - whose public school education delved far deeper in to English grammar than my comprehensive - often pulls me up on bad usage, and I take it on board. It’s a question of learning what is right.

Today's use of text-speak and the lax approach on email, doesn’t help. 

Language evolves, along with meanings, and that is fine, but to accept grammatical sloppiness would put us on a slippery slope to an erosion of our language from which it would be hard to come back.