In a Frenchgrammar lesson at the College Chevereus, 11-year-olds copy word for word from the blackboard, and are corrected if they leave too wide a margin.
Two centuries of Norman rule in England after 1066 significantly changed the Germanic grammar and dumped a large amount of French vocabulary into the language.
Instead, the assimilation of elements of French into English produced Middle English and, with it, the basic profile of the language we still speak: a large vocabulary of Germanic and French-derived words organized with a simplified Germanic grammar.