Correcting Teaching Assistant's grammar and spelling

@ThisMachineWillNotCommunicate Did you mean to write “spoken allowed”? Had a chuckle at this one.

I’m a teacher and unfortunately, there are many people working in schools (in a huge range of roles) who use poor grammar. In one school I worked in, staff meetings were held for TAs to support them in using the correct grammar.

It definitely isn’t just TAs though. I’ve worked with teachers who insist that when doing a spelling test, words have to begin with a capital letter or that when writing noun phrases, they should have capitals and full stops.

There’s an EYFS teacher influencer on Instagram (her page is mainly parenting-themed though) and she says ‘I/we done’, ‘we was’ and ‘fink’ all the time - I can only hope this isn’t what she speaks like in school.

I’m northern and growing up had an awful habit of dropping my Ts and saying things like ‘I were/we was’ but I trained myself out of it when I started training to teach.

I missed out a couple of words there. It should say, "I have never heard anyone say I weighted myself."

Sorry I didn't mean to offend but I have never in real life or online say they have weighted themselves.

As others have said, it depends on the situation, whether it's going to help or just distract the children.

While I may rephrase when I repeat back with children, I'm unlikely to directly correct phrasing unless that's already been agreed.

I still remember in my first few years in the UK how some had great glee in correcting me, and it was very tiring and never really helped our communication.

I can’t agree that it’s dialect. It’s merely incorrect, uneducated English, and ought not to be acceptable in a classroom.

Yes, in a classroom, having a standard is really helpful -- but that standard has and does change over time, and those in control put how they communicate as the correct, educated, proper way and it's always someone else that's the incorrect, uneducated one.

Standard British English is based on a few dialects that were used among the well-to-do who had the resources to be part of the process. This process was only back in the mid-18th to early 19th century when there was a strong push to develop a standard, in part to distinguish those like them as 'the educated'. We can see during and before this time that spelling and grammar, even of very educated people and the texts used to educate, varied widely. They weren't uneducated, it was just normal to write as one speaks.

There are English dialects where auxiliary verbs are commonly dropped, with some being more acceptable than others. People saying 'The room needs cleaned' rather than 'The room needs to be cleaned' are unlikely to get caught in a SPAG check, but ones like 'I done' will be. That correct line is flexible, changing over time with which dialects are normalised in a particular area, and which ones get dismissed as uneducated.

You obviously cannot imagine how awful you would sound of you said this...

I’m a teacher and many of my TAs over the years have struggled with spelling and grammar. Whether I correct it very much depends on context, if it’s spoken allowed I wouldn’t usually correct the TA but I would probably try and model the correct word/ phrase in front of them. I’d only mention it in front of them if there was a word/ phrase they were regularly getting wrong in front of pupils and I was worried the pupils were going to start using it incorrectly too, I usually wouldn’t correct on the spot though and not in front of others as I wouldn’t want to embarrass them and people learn their language from others so if everybody around someone says ‘should of’ then they probably have no idea it’s incorrect. If it’s something pupils are getting wrong too then it might work to raise it in a lesson for them where the TA is present.

When there are errors in written word if it’s on something informal I would probably let it slide but if it’s on something going home to parents or which pupils will read I would correct it, not always in front of the TA if it can be done discretely, such as with typed up assessment recording. That said, I have had some TAs who are open about and comfortable with their difficulties with spelling and would be quite happy for me to correct in front of them so it does depend a bit on the personality of the TA and your relationship with them.

Well you’ve certainly illustrated YOUR ignorance!

And I did too as a child/young person. It's a word I still would probably try to avoid using as I know I am likely to say it incorrectly or hesitate whilst saying it. I hope your daughter is coping ok.

Wow. My TA has a degree and is a qualified HLTA. Her maths and English skills are better than a lot of our KS1 teachers (we are Y6)!

No, I wouldn’t correct her. I would have a discreet word with a member of SLT or possibly your English lead. That way they can sort it as a school-wide issue rather than making an example of one person who is probably only trying their best. We have had to tackle poor grammar in speech this way and it works much better if it becomes a whole-staff target.

Could this be - and I don't know, I'm not au fait enough with it - dyslexia, though? I'm not saying it's ideal in this scenario but it pacific/specific seems to be potentially this, rather than just "bad spelling". As an aside, I think it's a tricky one as on one hand it's having an impact on children but on the other it's a bit embarrassing for the TA to be called out.

@honeylulu I think it’s a bit of both. It’s under educated in spelling and grammar! That they don’t care about it is a personality shortcoming. Not what I want to see in a teacher. Very poor attitude and does no one have spell check if it’s written English? I wonder if they would write “pacific” and not “specific”? Surely some common sense should be evident?

I correct them every single time. There’s no excuse for sloppy grammar in a school.

At my primary school there was a girl in our class who had a French mum and spoke French fluently. In our French lesson the teacher taught us fruit and vegetable words for a test. It turned out that she told us the French word for "lettuce" was in fact the word for "salad".

On Friday we had the test and half French girl put the correct word for "lettuce". The teacher queried it and she explained. The teacher went ballistic ranting that she should have put the (incorrect) word taught, who did she think she was, how dare she be so rude. Whilst we all sat there thinking our teacher was making a massive fool of herself getting angry about being wrong, thereby drawing more attention to the fact that she was wrong. It would have been much better to say thanks for bringing that to my attention and explained the two words and their slightly different meanings to the class.

That was a private school too.

My daughter got told off when she corrected something a TA said when she was in year 1 or 2

Not maybe 100% on topic but this brings back a pacific (ha got you there) memory from third year juniors. I loved reading and writing stories and we wrote quite a few in class. One of them involved a character that I'd made up and I wrote his dialogue in his regional (local to us) accent and dialect. It came back covered in red pen where the teacher had meticulously corrected it all to the queen's English, destroying the essence of the character in the process. "Would you please buy me some lunch" does not have the same vibe as "gerrus summat from t'snap wagon" 😂

Errors ought to be pointed out. As other posters have said, the needs of the pupils come first.

Unfortunately a lot of people (including some teachers) not only make spelling and grammar errors but don't care about getting it right or not. The head teacher at my kids' primary school used to send out a weekly newsletter littered with errors such as "here here" instead of "hear hear" and "dates for your dairies" etc. I assumed that she dictated it and it was typed and sent by the school secretary whose first language wasn't English. However when I politely suggested HT should proofread it before it went out, she not only confirmed she typed it herself but that she was furious to be pulled up. Nothing changed.

One of my relatives is a teacher at a private school and her grasp of spelling and grammar is terrible. Her own wedding invitation had three errors in it including e.g. "St Jame's Church". If she was teaching her students like that I'm surprised the parents didn't ask for their money back.

It doesn't mean people are badly educated or stupid. They just don't care.

Forgivable to find it hard to pronounce and mess up in conversation sometimes. Not forgivable to be teaching children that the s in specific isn’t there!

😮No way!

I seen instead of I saw, really gets to me

I used to correct my teachers’ work 😬. And argue back when they argued with me 😎

Do you say "pecial" instead of "special"?

Seriously? So most of our population is uneducated then? All the children in school who gain GCSEs are uneducated? If having GCSEs is uneducated why are we even bothering to send our kids to school at all if their education leaves them uneducated.

or is this just your way of saying 'look at me I'm so educated'. Bore off

Yes I know, I dont need it explained to me.

I see 'I weighted myself', all the time on here.

I can’t agree that it’s dialect. It’s merely incorrect, uneducated English, and ought not to be acceptable in a classroom.

I am a TA in a primary school. I have two degrees, but I'm a carer, so had to step away from my career and find a job that fitted in with the demands of caring. This is not unusual; quite a few of our TAs are well educated.
The class teacher makes glaring errors in SPAG - including once telling the class that "laugh" was a verb in the phrase "a menacing laugh" - and I have to bite my tongue as she is very sensitive to correction.
I would want to be told if I had made similar errors.