Re: Propper Englesh

Jacq <jacqueline.smit@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Aug 12, 1:06 pm, Rosemary <mentally_subnor...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"CJ Dunnaway" wrote:
"Rosemary" wrote:
"CJ Dunnaway" wrote:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storyc
od e=403092&c=1

A British educator has proposed that schools stop penalizing
students for such misspellings as "truely," "speach," "arguement"
and "opertunity" rather than continue "beating ourselves and our
students up over this problem."

You're sounding more American every day. Next you'll be listening to
cRap music.

That's been all over the news here for a couple of days. I don't care
how
people spell in letters and emails and on newsgroups, but I think if
it's
something like a professional or commercial document, a book or
newspaper, an essay or anything else like that, then it's rude to not
bother checking the spellings. I can't read as quickly if the
spellings
are wrong because I tend to read by glancing at the shape of a word
rather than by sounding out the letters and reading each word
individually. If the author wants me to read what he's written, then
why
should I be the one to make all the effort to decipher it? There was
an
interview on the TV news with a fellow advocating allowing
misspellings,
a woman who was against it, and the presenter. The woman was saying
that
she wouldn't employ anyone whose CV had incorrect spellings in it,
and the bloke gleefully recited a list of people who by that
criterion, wouldn't have got a job with her, including Einstein and
Churchill. Well,
okay - maybe he's right, and all those people couldn't spell. But I'm
sure they would give enough of a *** to check their spelling in a
dictionary, or have friends check their CVs. Incorrect spelling on a
CV
IMO just shows that you don't want the job enough to make sure you've
done the CV right.

Hi, Rosemary. You're preaching to the choir. I personally think it's
lazy and makes people seem stupid - even if they are neither. If
you're chatting with your pals that's one thing - but when you're
writing at work or school it's another.

I thinkliteracyis below average here in the states, but it seems to
be worse among the younger generations (my children write very
poorly). Capitalization and punctuation also seem to be lacking, as
well as sentence and paragraph structure (no offense intended). :)

For bonus points, spot my crappy comma usage :-) Damn, I hate reading
back what I've written - I've always got so many fucking mistakes that
jump out at me the moment I press Post. (I say I don't care too much
about spelling etc. in newsgroups, but when it comes to what I've written
myself I bloody well do!)

I don't thinkliteracyin English-speaking countries is ever going to get
that great. We have a pretty crappy system for transferring the spoken
word to the page, compared with languages like Italian. It seems like
there was betterliteracyin the past, but I bet that's only because the
bottom 20%literacy-wise were doing jobs which required no reading or
writing.Those lucky enough to get a decent education got a very very good
education, and the others just got dumped on the why-bother pile. So the
ones with little or no ability in reading and writing just never stood
out at all and never got noticed, because they never needed to.

But now, reading and writing (or at least typing) are pretty much
requirements for anything you want to do, and not being able to read is
an immense handicap.

I'm not very impressed with the state of education I've seen, though.
Dyslexics don't get picked up early enough, kids with low levels of
ability in reading and writing don't get the basic skills they need, and
kids who are average or better don't get stretched.

I don't think spelling, punctuation and grammar are considered that
important by teachers, or at least, whoever sets the curriculum doesn't
think they're important. Which is kind of bad timing, cause it's arguable
thatliteracyis more important now than it used to be, since so much of
our day-to-day work and communications are text-based.

"Twinkle Twinkle Your The Star" - massive poster (of the large vinyl type
- obviously one that was distributed to lots of branches) in the shop
window of a branch of a large chain of teen fashion outlets.

"The Millenium Hilton" - hotel in Manhattan.

Rosemary


According to the historical society, in the mid-1900's there were 25
million Americans; and in published form there were 100 million
McGuffey Readers. With the ratio of four readers per person (not
counting the other literacy publishers: i.e., Little Blue Readers,
Winston Phonics Textbook, and publishers for individual school
districts), all Americans were bombarded with the tools for literacy
and the rate of literacy in the United States in the 1900 was a little
over 97%.

Robert Heinlein (born in 1907 - same year as one of my grandfathers)
writing in `Expanded Universe' states that his first grade class had 63
kids, one teacher, and no assistant. All the kids could read before the
end of the academic year.

His father had attended a better school in the 19th century (back
country Missouri, apparently) and had learnt Latin, Greek, physics,
French, geometry, algebra, calculus, bookkeeping, US history, world
history, chemistry, and geology (including things like perfect command
of the multiplication table up to 20).

In `The Happy Days Ahead' (one piece in Expanded Universe), date
unspecified but after 1965 and not after 1980 (I suspect he wrote it in
early 1980), he has this to say:

The University of California is considered a tough school on all
campuses. The UC Santa Cruz campus was intended to be the toughest of
the lot. Its entrance requirements are such as to exclude 92% of
California's high school graduates on exam grades alone.

So 92% of the kids coming out of the education system of the biggest,
richest, and most lavishly educated state in the richest nation in the
world aren't up to scratch - only 8% have a chance of getting in.

And of that 8% - the 8% brightest students from the richest, biggest,
and most lavishly educated state in the USA - about 50% of them have to
take the introductory course known officially as `Course A', or
unofficially as `bonehead English' because they are functionally
illiterate.

Of the cream of the top 8% of the students of the richest and most
lavishly educated state in the USA, 50% *entered university* without a
functional command of written English!

(all the above is claims from Heinlein, not me)

In fairness to the kids, Heinlein points out that it's not entirely
their fault because their teachers are often illiterate. And it's not
entirely the fault of those teachers because - and this was more than 25
years ago - the teachers back then themselves had suffered illiterate
teachers too in many cases. So says Heinlein.

Whole language reading instruction (also known as "look-say" or
"sight" reading) is the most widely used method of teaching reading in
the U.S. and many other countries.

It's producing very poor results in the USA at least.

http://literacypod.com/we-can-teach-johnny-to-read-no-matter-how-old-he-is/

The only universally effective method of teaching reading is through
the use of intensive phonics for a period ranging from several weeks
or months to about a school year, depending upon student age and
ability.

I'd say that claim is proven utter nonsense by Heinlein's personal
experience: when he was young, more kids learnt to read more quickly
than they do these days - and no sort of phonics was in use that I know
of.

I'd say that the only universally effective method of teaching reading
and writing relies on the teacher having a range of techniques available
and applying the techniques as seems best for the students concerned.

Of course, that means you need a teacher with experience and sensitivity
and so on rather than someone who's employed to do just make sure that
their drilled in how to pass the exams.

[snip]

Rowland.

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